November: I wish I had a whole classroom of students like Little Red.
1/28: Red can read. [Yes.] Red can read in Italian! [I’m learning that.] Red can read Italian words he doesn’t know. I said, “read this” and he did. He went through the whole list. If I had the first grade list on me I’d have made him read those, too, but I wasn’t prepared for him to do that.
5/12: [Chatting with Maestra Daniela in the copy room this morning. She said she had just completed some reading tests (in Italian) with the children and just can’t believe what a good reader Red is.] ” If the class is averaging 10 (including the Italian kids: Sofia and Gabriello) then Red is at 25. If you plopped him in a 1st grade class right now he’d still be decoding ahead of the class.”
[And all I could think was “I can’t believe I forgot to read with Reed for 20 minutes last night!”]
BoysRUs 
The true question is, after all of that, are you still considering holding him back a year?!
No. As I said in my previous post, I’m so very glad we did things the way we did. It was exactly the right thing.
Now the challenge will be to make sure he doesn’t get bored. Do you have access to the Harry Potter books (or something equivalent) in Italian?
We brought home many Italian materials from the classroom for the summer, have found the online version of Italian tv, and will be doing summer school with the class (taught by the teacher) in August. The rest of the summer is swimming, piano, and playdates with long lost friends. So far we’re only three days into summer, but no sign of boredom! Harry Potter in Italian will certainly be helpful in a couple of years, thanks for the tip!
Of course he’s so smart–look at his mum! 😀 I’m reading “The Knowledge Deficit” right now. It’s talking about teaching reading through the grades–decoding and comprehension (and why public schools fall so far behind, etc). Interesting book, you might like it (its not entertaining at all, but very informative).
Anyway, it’s not hard to see how good readers come from good homes. You’re doing a great job, give yourself a pat on the back! 🙂
I’ll have to check out that book when next we go to the library! You know how much I love non-fiction! 🙂