What exactly is "all day?" And how much time would he spent outside/with free play/doing arts/craft/PE/projects?
2 hours of academics for 20 kids is almost nothing...he wouldn't learn much, even if they tried to differentiate for him, nor would it probably bother him much. Can you supplement play/outside exercise/arts/crafts easily yourself?
I find that no matter whether you rely on a school or on enrichment, the hardest thing to create is a congenial peer group for our kids to connect with. In which program do you feel creating a peer group would be easiest? Public school with way more control of extracurricular time and activities, and opportunities to find a fit with enrichment with kids who fit, or private school with very little control, since he may be "done" at the end of the school day and need nothing but unstructured down time, hoping that the some of the kids in the school happen to be a fit?
We have had a good experience with a parochial school where giftedness, on the side of both teachers and kids, was accepted, not just tolerated or, worst case rejected - which didn't exactly translate into meaningful differentiation or more that a halfhearted attempt at SSA - but which meant that DS, while he had a lot of struggles finding his feet socially and finding ways not to wither with ennui, was not rejected or bullied or treated badly by any teacher, always felt part of the group and always had friends. A general ethos of learning and fairly high standards meant that while he was certainly never stretched or challenged, he actually learnt quite a lot.
If you can afford the tuition easily, I'd try it out. At least he is the kind of kid who will let you know quickly if it doesn't work out, and public school is always there.
Edited to add that I'd try to find out from each school how they'd view a full grade skip further down the road, just in case...
Last edited by Tigerle; 08/19/16 02:21 PM.
