SELF-TAUGHT
Jared is teaching himself all sorts of things. He's asked me to teach him how to read, and we've worked on that a little. He can sound out all sorts of words, given enough time, but words like "come" and "oh" and "knife" are still rather confusing.
But what's amazing me is that he's spelling out words in his head. Just a moment ago, he came up and said, "Scott is spelled S-C-O-T, Scott." (Don't you feel honored, Uncle Scott?) And earlier, he looked out the window and said, "It's getting windy. Let's spell 'windy.' W-I-N, hey, that spells 'win.' Then you add a D, hey, that spells 'wind.' And when you put a Y on the end of a word, it says eeee, so adding a Y to wind makes it windy." And then he wrote it down (perfectly backwards, may I add.)
:o
He's also teaching himself addition and subtraction. As I was tucking him into bed, he held up his fingers and said, "Three plus three is six." Before I could kiss him, he said, "and four plus four is eight." Every lunch, he counts something he's eating--today it was dried apricots--and subtracts them as he gobbles them up. "I have five apricots. (Snarf) Five take away one is four. (Snarf)" and so on until the last one. "Five take away five is NONE! And none means zero."
I know I keep saying this, but the panic is slowly escalating. He's got one year and 5 1/2 months before he can start kindergarten. He's doing this 99% on his own, so it's not like I can stop him. What am I going to do with this child?