Reading Readiness

Synopsis:

Convention Notes II listed "reading readiness" skills at the very end of the post.
Lazy Phil disagrees with the list. (Read why in the third comment under the post.)

I want to know more info on this subject, and guess that some others (Rico, for instance) may be interested too.

To begin with, this lady is not a dev. psych, so we can probably forgive her if she makes some mistakes in that area. She's a homeschooling mom who's been doing this for a while. Also, I don't think she intended this list as a hard and fast rule of when a child was ready to read. She was kind of answering a question from the audience on the spot and just pulled some ideas out of her head. I had the impression she hadn't thought them through very thoroughly.
Secondly, I questioned some of the things in the readiness list as well. (Riding a bike, for instance was extremely difficult for me, while reading came [sort of] easily.) Some of the things seem pretty complicated (cutting correctly with scissors), while others are simpler (skipping, threading beads). So they aren't really on the same developmental level (in my opinion).
However, I do think she has a valid point when she talks about lower and upper portions of the brain developing. The process of nerve development (basically a repetition of the same action over and over until the nerves have it down so well it comes almost automatically) is called myelination. We studied it (in overview) in Ed. So I'm not an expert on it, but I'm familiar with the concept. A child has to learn certain things before others, and certain things by a certain age or they won't be learned at all. This has to do with the body's development: inside first, then outside; head first, then lower parts of the body. It's the reason a baby learns to hold his head up before he sits, sit before he walks. His head developed first, then his back and upper body, then his legs and feet. His vision develops surprisingly quickly (causing him to be able to see things at a distance within just a few weeks of birth), while arm and leg motor skills come more slowly later. What this means is that a baby is not ready to learn to read. (I really don't like the "baby genius" programs where you start letter recognition the day the baby's born.) That ability comes later on.
How much later on is, I think, what is questioned here. Joe and I have discussed this fairly frequently recently. I don't doubt the fact that the girls could learn to read now if I tried to teach them. My question is whether that is really necessary. Joe feels that it is not.
This is partly because of his German upbringing. Children in Germany don't attend school (or learn to read) until age six. In fact, German parents purposely don't teach their children to read before they start school because they don't want them to be bored their first year in school. But most (I think probably all) of the Germans I know are far ahead of most (not all) Americans in their academic background.
I think Joe's main concern is that children will be studying something non-stop for 16+ years, so there's no reason to begin spending large portions of time on bookwork at this early of an age. In other words, let kids be kids and learn by playing and exploring their world, because they will learn many lessons about how the world works by doing so that they could never learn as thoroughly from a book. They will be in a structured learning environment soon enough, for a long time.
This is not to say that they should not start learning now, but that they should not stop being children. My personal feeling for my own kids is that I am not ready (nor are they) to sit down for formal teaching/schooling at this age. That may come next year (when they're 4). I looked at several preschool curricula that said they were for 3-year-olds. Mostly, they require 45 minutes to 1.5 hours of structured learning each day. I don't think that's appropriate for this age. I'd really rather them be able to use their imaginations in dramatic play than read right now. But I am planning to do some "pre-reading" activities: increased reading, letter recognition activities (short, fun ones), etc. and I certainly am not going to tell them they can't read now if they want to. But I'm also not going to push it. I think with the level of exposure to reading that they automatically get in our house, they will pick it up pretty easily.
Anyway, those are most of my very jumbled thoughts on the matter. Lazy Phil, I'd like to hear your opinions as well, as I have a high respect for them.