Originally Posted by mom2R&R
Then the school system says he will need to bus to the middle school to do their version of pre-algebra in 4th grade and algebra 1 in 5th grade.

I have a 3rd grader who has finished 5th grade math and we were offered the bus option to middle school next year for math. My DS was thrilled at the opportunity to ride a shuttle bus daily because we drop him off at school by car and he wishes that he could take a bus to school! But, we turned the opportunity down and instead asked the school to differentiate for DS in his regular classroom and the teacher plans to provide customized work packets for him and teach him in the extra help hours after school if he had gaps that needed to be filled.
we chose to not take up the bus option because my DS is 8 (almost 9) and he is naive and does not know how to handle himself if there are bullying situations involving older kids. He was in a mixed age math class before and got severely bullied when two older kids realized that he had overshot them in the math level that he was working on. The situation was addressed immediately, but, I found my DS in tears when I went to pick him up on the day of the incident. He is a kid who is brave, very social, very verbal and knows to ask for help if there is trouble. But, multiple kids bullying him and mocking him was too much for him to handle as he really liked and trusted that group and thought of them as friends.
So, I think that for my DS, I will not move him to middle school for math until he is around 10 years of age hopefully more street smart.