My son was like this too at that age and he taught him self to read. His 7 now and does understand the words he reads. I used to get the paper delivered and we would go through the grocery specials and pick out the words he recognised- he really loved this. I think its important that he know what the words are that he is spelling and thate it not just become some kind of rote learning with no meaning to it. This is great ! Liz
Its tough because its so exciting to see your child so eager to learn how to spell and hold such an interest in words, but for us it starts there and ends there. Although he can read many words on his own, It is still mostly just a fascination with the spelling of words themselves. The sound of the word, the sound of spelling out the letters and visually the way the word looks.
Thank you for starting this thread though, I will be interested also in any ideas anyone here might have .
Best of luck, I do hope your son can move past the obsessive part and gain something more from letters and spelling.
Hi everyone-
My 3.5 yo is really facinated with letters and spelling. He just started watching two new shows everyday- Superwhy and Word World, and they are all about spelling. He then takes his bag of magnetic letters and spells out the words he learned about on the show. Typically, whenever Ryan starts to get obsessive or perseverate on somethig, i try to ween him off of it, and he usually does a pretty good job transitioning onto the next thing (ie for a while he was really into musical instruments, hes still into them, but he doesnt go around the house naming them all the time). However, im not sure if I should be redirecting him off of this, because spelling is something he will obviously need to be skilled at once he hits elementary school. At the same time, Im wondering if there are ways that I can use his spelling skills to promote more expressive language. Any ideas?
VERY COMMON. I know a deaf boy with PDD-NOS who ws only discovered to have a form of autism once he started refusing to sign words and ONLY fingerspelled! He did this for YEARS. My son, at 16, still loves letters, numbers and spelling. The good news is that he gets 100 on most spelling tests! Often the US Spelling Bee Champ is on the spectrum.Cassidy too is hyperlexic... it hasn't done much for her language skills, but it made a huge difference with her articulation issues. :)My 6 almost 7 year old loves Super Why & so does DD, she is 4. They lobe fridge phonics too, my son likes to rearrange the letters and "decorate" them all over the fridge, then rearrange again. he doesnt spell anything but he sure likes to play with them. He has a really bad time with handwriting tho.Both my boys are hyperlexic. My 28 month old can read and spell around 30 words now