4 Year Old Child Development - Palmerton,PA

Well..I dont know if its "normal", but if it makes you feel any better, my 4.5 yr old is the exact same way. She has been counting, knew shapes/colors/alphabet, etc since she was about 2. She talks great...knows words and what they mean sometimes that I didnt even know she knew! But..she has a hard time with letters and what their sounds are. She knows her name, how its spelled and can write it perfect...but when it comes to letters besides her name she struggles. I think its pretty common. Just work on it with her. We picked up a couple preK workbooks from walmart that give her some extra practice each night. She loves it. Have fun with it!

Good Luck :)

My Aunt has 12 kids, and lots of my relatives have lots of kids. They all developed at different times. They home school, and push reading at different rates for different kids. There is also a Scandinavian country-I forget which one-where they teach reading much later than here, because while some kids have a hard time at this age, pretty much all kids have an easy fast time later when they even out, and also because they already "know" the language better, so the reading is natural and quick. Just for some comfort. My 5 year old is pretty good with reading, she's just now getting the simple words, but not as good as some considering we've been reading tons together since birth. She wasn't reading really at all at 4.5, but I wasn't really "trying" to teach her much either. I was sort of surprised she didn't pick it right up "automatically" since she was a super early talker and always great with language. She is extremely bright, and I'm not worried. This is normal for lots of kids.

Try the website www.starfall.com. This is great for some of that letter sound correspondence. I used it with my son. Also I would highly recommend the Leap Frog DVD "Letter Factory". Between those two, my son learned all of his letters and the sounds they make.