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Comment by patall | Hacker News Reader

What does "before kindergarten" mean? In the mornings? Or before she was old enough to go there? I started kindergarten at age 2 (like described in Wikipedia) and I suspect that is not what you mean.

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She was 5. Most kids in the US start first grade about 6.

The book itself recommends that most children start the program in the book at age 4, also noting that some advanced students may be ready at age 3.5.

A note on this: We used this book to teach our two oldest kids to read before they entered kindergarten. Kid #1 was asking to learn to read at age 3.5, and that's when we got the book. She could really read before her 4th birthday. It was indeed amazing. We then started trying to push it on kid #2 at age 4.5, since our expectations were set by kid #1, and we now regard this as a mistake. Nobody was having fun, so we ended up setting it aside for half a year. We picked it up again in the summer before kid #2 started kindergarten, and she finished learning to read with ease at that time. I think we're lucky that the initial attempt didn't ruin reading for her. We're being much more gentle about introducing it to kid #3.

Kid #1 was and still is an oddball in a number of ways. Learning to read so early seems to have given her some advantages, like being able to consume volumes of information at a young age, but she'll have a harder time in other ways.

At least here in the USA, age 2 is generally when you start pre-school. Kindergarten starts at age 4 and lasts for 2 years, K4 and K5. Then 1st grade at age 6.

For what it’s worth, that doesn’t sound typical to me. I’d say pre-school, it’s it’s done at all, is done at the age of 4 - maybe 3 if you’re doing it super early. I’ve never heard of “K4” and “K5,” and most kids start kindergarten at age 5 and only do one year of it.

Where do you live?

Same here, I did one year of each immediately before first grade. Never heard of two years of kindergarten before.

I did a lookup and a lot of places refer to what called “K4” as “Pre-k”. Where I grew up I had preschool and then K4 and then K5.

My son started preschool at 2.5. I guess anywhere between 2.5 and 3 is typical here. Then pre-k at 4.

Where is "here"? In the upper midwest, "Pre-K"/"4K" is age four. Kindergarten is age 5. There is not typically anything earlier than that, and parents are on the hook to find their own daycare if not home with the child.

NYC has “3K for all”. All kids get free 3K now. Many surrounding areas (like in NJ) have new programs for this with coverage expanding.

Where I live it’s private. So parents send their kids to pre-school at 2.5-3. But by 4 the public schools will take them in.

That’s interesting. Thanks.

In the US, kindergarten starts at 5/6.

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