Age of Reading?

[Eddie Teach]

a four-sided ball

Do you own such a ball?

[Richard Hakluyt]

Calling them tetrahedrons would be elitist, maybe racist too 

[Malthus]

a four-sided ball

Do you own such a ball?

Well, balls don't have "sides" at all - this one has four different coloured sections.

[garbon]

I know that at 3 I had to start reading as I can remember being given worksheets (pre-school mind you) that also featured spanish words. Uvas!

[Agelastus]

I cannot remember not being able to read, so I guess I must have learned around 3 or 4 or so (my memories of my early years seem to be a lot more fragmentary than a lot of people around here.)

I do know that at some point when I was in "Infants" School my mother and grandmother were called in to discuss "how poor I was at reading", at which meeting my grandmother pointed out exactly what books I was reading at home and laughed in their faces! I guess the lesson is that whatever idiot teaching method they were using was just confusing someone who already knew what to do.

Does anyone else remember those tests which assigned your reading age that you used to take back when you were nine or ten or so? I used to have a reading age consistently five years older than my actual age; I remember as a kid wondering what the test would say when I actually got as old as fifteen or so, but of course they didn't test us like that when I reached that age!

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, but aren't you a giant? No fair, having to play against giants. 

Back then I was only about 6'3'' so pretty short. 

But I was fast and I was a white man who could jump.

[dps]

Could read by the time I turned 2.  Kindergarden and the first few years of grade school bored the heck out of me.

[HVC]

Back then I was only about 6'3'' so pretty short. 

Hate you

[Maximus]

I'm amazed at the number of people who started school at the ages of 4 and 5. When I started the minimum age was six and a half.

Anyway I remember reading my birthday card when I turned 4 and, according to my mom, when I was 3 I asked her why tea was spelled the way it was rather than "tee" so I must have been doing some reading then. I don't remember where I learned it. Probably from my sister.

[ulmont]

What age were you reading at?

3.  Like abridged versions of the Three Musketeers and similar.

[DGuller]

I'm amazed at the number of people who started school at the ages of 4 and 5. When I started the minimum age was six and a half.

Anyway I remember reading my birthday card when I turned 4 and, according to my mom, when I was 3 I asked her why tea was spelled the way it was rather than "tee" so I must have been doing some reading then. I don't remember where I learned it. Probably from my sister.

Yeah, I'm surprised too, but I just assumed that's how things were always done here.  Back where I come from, we had kindergartens, but they only babysat the children. 

The first grade was sort of an advanced kindergarten, and only in second grade did we start going to an actual school, but before that there was very little in the way of academics.

[Agelastus]

Over here when "I was a lad", infants school was for three years (age 4-7), Junior school was for four years (7-11) and then you toddled off to a Secondary School for five to seven years (11-16/18.) It seemed normal to me, but these days I get the impression that people aren't going to a proper school until they are 5 or 6 in parts of the country.

Of course, at 11 I was shoved off to a private school, which ran the same system except with different years for each school (infants 4-8, Junior 8-13, Senior 13-16/18) so there was a bit of variation even then.

[Josquius]

When I was a kid at least (unsure about these days) when you started school was '4 1/2' which ended up rather odd.
My birthday is in October so I started in September (so yeah, on thinking about it my answer is 5), my friend whose birthday is in May though started in christmas as did all kids with a post-christmas birthday.

Over here when "I was a lad", infants school was for three years (age 4-7), Junior school was for four years (7-11) and then you toddled off to a Secondary School for five to seven years (11-16/18.)

7 years at comp? Blimey...
It should be that way but I've never came across it. I suppose in giant schools with their own sixth form it may be. For me it was secondary until 16 then off to sixth form college until 18.

Also junior and infants were just differnet ends of the same primary school building in my school and they were the same in most schools in the area.

[Malthus]

Here, "junior kindergarden" = you turn 4 by December 31 that year.

http://www.tdsb.on.ca/_site/ViewItem.asp?siteid=96&menuid=319&pageid=247

They most definitely attempt to teach stuff, it isn't at all the same as daycare. Letters, numbers, etc.

[katmai]

I was reading at 4 or so, before Kindergarten