Repeat until it sinks in!
My 6-year-old is a "reading education specialist." He has a box of colored, magnetic letters, and two little brothers. The 4-year-old knows all the capital and lower-case letters, numbers, colors and basic phonics. (For all I know, he can read words, too - I figure out that my sons can read when they show up reading my mail to me.) The boy who's almost two knows all the capital letters in English, some of the colors, and lower-case letters in Greek.
Aside from rolling in the mud and jumping off things in their superhero capes, playing letters and numbers is their favorite thing to do.
I read a book called “The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson”. In it, it contains a letter written to a young friend, Mr. Peter Carr. He advises his young friend on his education saying “ I advise you to begin a course of ancient history, reading everything in the original and not in translations.” Jefferson then outlines the books his young protegee should read and in the order that they should be read.
When Jefferson talks about reading the works in the original he is talking Greek, Latin and in some cases Hebrew.
I would argue that the well educated of Jefferson’s day far exceed what we commonly call “well educated” today.
Probably best to leave those who can't read by 4 or 5 to go on to the public schools since they really aren't all that intelligent when you get right down to it.(/sarc but in some cases true).
But you overlook one wee little thing...for most of the education majors, reading IS hard.
The lowest SAT scores of any major are typically the education majors.
Most of them probably never learned to read at a high school level until their senior year...of COLLEGE./mild sarc>
Cheers!
Sounds like normal little boys to me.