after my question about reading eggs the other day i felt this article was a timely bit of reading!
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201002/children-teach-themselves-read

mummyk x

Only skimmed the link but I completely agree and when the time is right for each child, they learn what they need to when they need to.

My daughter is at school but she wasn’t “taught” reading by them or by me really for that matter, she just declared one day that she wanted to read and did. No doubt all the reading we’ve done together and games helped, so I’ll perhaps take some credit , but she just flew with it from day one of her wanting to read herself.

ETA: there are some other good articles on that website I’ve read in the past about math and creativity - worth a read

Really interesting.  The studies are quite small, nevertheless the points made are logical… but i’m probably biased because I happen to agree with the author

A fascinating article, thanks for sharing it. Im a bit late to this thread though! I totaly agree that learning to read is completely unpredictable and is different with each child. I think its worth pointing out that some children, particularly those with SEN, may need explicit teaching in phonics at some point. The English language is built on the principle of phonics, and whole word reading alone won’t be enough. Many children will learn phonic rules without being taught, this appears to be the experience of quite a few unschoolers, or children who teach themselves to read before even attending school. These children obviously have no difficulty in hearing the sounds in written words, and learn over time through plenty of exposure to books. It does annoy me slightly when some unschoolers scoff at phonics. For a dyslexic child who cannot ‘hear’ the sounds in words, then structured, multi-sensory teaching of phonics WHEN THE CHILD IS READY is often essential especially to improve reading and spelling.