Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Early Kindergarten - Jan birthdate?

Question.

Does anyone have personal experience enrolling a child early in kindergarten whose birthday is Nov or later? How did it go? Concerns, regrets, wish you had? Our dd6 skipped K. dd4 now will probably end up in the same boat. and maybe that's best? or with a jan birthday do we enroll in k (and yes it appears 2-3 program 'may' take her - one definately will). her full scale wppsi is a few pts shy of what i'd consider highly gifted with a verbal iq at 145.

yes. i do keep coming back to this. i should have used the screen name "onetrack". Thanks.

DS' birthday is in late November. He is on the EG/PG borderline.

He was early entranced (skipped?) to a private K at age 4 yrs. 2 mos. (after the winter break.) He had been in the PreK class at the same school. It did not work out well due to improper handling of the situation by the teacher. Nevertheless, he finished out the year there.

He was enrolled in public K last Fall at the age of 4 yrs. 9 mos. It was not really considered early entrance because he made the cutoff by two weeks. It was a half-day program but with an academic emphasis. DS is a very compliant kid and not at all the "bouncy" type. He was fine, and enjoyed the singing and crafts. The teacher barely interacted with him at all because of the demands of the other students. By midyear, he was getting bored.

We requested, and received a skip to first grade. He is really thriving there and has a teacher who really "gets" him. I am so grateful!

I think our experience so far has shown how the teacher's attitude can really make or break a skip/early entrance. Unfortunately, we usually are flying blind, making a request for an appropriate academic placement and hoping for the right teacher.

Cathy

Kickball,
Were the other scores around 130 or around 100? I'm asking to get an idea if there is a large amount of spikiness in the profile, 'Ansychrony' in other words. Are his reading and math skill more similar to a K kid or a first grader? And, most importantly - is the K program full or half day?

Good luck,
Grinity

We did not early entrance my son with a December birthday because we didn't get his tested completed until September and K had already started. We are actively pursuing the skip of K and enrolling directly into First Grade for this fall.

I like your list Dottie. I see a lot of parallels with my DS.

1. DS has been asking to go to K since he was 2. He was not satisfied with preschool. At age 3 he told me, "I'm tired of preschool. I would rather go to medical school." He was eager to move up for both of his skips (PreK to K and K to 1st). He has a streak of ambition that you wouldn't expect in a young child.

2. He is outgoing and loves adult interaction.

3. He prefers older playmates.

4. He doesn't panic in new situations, he does his best to figure things out on his own. My DD could not have handled an early skip. She was hanging on by her fingernails just to handle first grade at age 6. By that I mean dealing with spilled drinks at lunch, being scared of fire drills, being dropped off without crying, etc.

My second ds was an early entrant to K (5 full days) at 4yrs 6mths, moving to 1st at 5yrs 3mths. The early entrance worked really well and he managed to avoid all the problems his older brother had experienced being massively out-of-step with his age peers.

My dd (Nov b'day) will start K next term as an early entrant at 4yrs 5mths, with the view of moving to 1st at the beginning of the next school year. (We're in the Sthn Hemisphere, so school runs Feb - Dec).

I agree with Dottie's list. It is important to make sure the school is really positive about it, too, and understanding of any asynchronies he may have.

Good luck,
Cassandra

We did not early entrance DD8 and I wish we would have. We did not know she was gifted at the time. She doesn't want to skip now and we've respected that. I've had to do a LOT of advocated at school in her behalf. It's been really hard/draining but I think we are in a good place. We've been lucky to have a great principal.
We didn't early entrance DD5, but this time we had the information that she is highly gifted. She is a summer birthday and her behavior was such that we thought she might stage a kindergarten coup and try to gain control of the principal's office. We figured since Kindergarten was half day, we could see how she does.
The psyd. that tested them recommended that both girls should be skipped/accelerated, but we are making it work.
I don't know if things would have worked better if we skipped.
I can't go back in time anymore than you can tell the future!
Make the best decision and go with it. Don't worry TOO much about making the "wrong" decision, because you can certainly always change the plan.

Good luck!!

Incog

if you break it verbal/processing speed/coding. the assesser remarked of her verbal that she'd ceilinged out. her processing speed was in the gt range but not in the 140s. coding as a specific was her lowest at 'above average' apparently she kept explaing she knew what he wanted but it was better her way and developed some story for whatever this non-verbal piece of assessment is.

so a yes and no to your question. it isn't like she isn't gifted in all areas. but she isn't "highly gifted" in all areas like her big sister. and we are holding off on achievement testing until closer to summer to give her newly developing reading skills a chance to go one way or another. I'm not sure how I'd grade level her without an achievement test.... I can say she clearly has pre-reading skills - is quasi-reading dick and jane level... she counted out her snakc by 2s the other day... she can draw better than her older sister... and she just explained to pre-school class last week that mosquitos breed in stagnate water, carry malayria, but that frozen water isn't the same as stagnate.

your question hits on the one bit of data I worry about because the assessor made a big stink about how much schools would love dd#1's processing speed because it demonstrates they can move through one thing and into the next with focus. dd#2 could give the clintons a run for the money in a debate. but can she listen, do, and move on with the chance of talking. to some extend - observing a half day program will help I just don't know if she isn't ready or if it is because I'm comparing her to her mature sister.

Exactly! Go see what the school has to offer. I think that having her fill out a few worksheets from those workbooks at the bookstore that have the level written right on the front, or checking the lexile level for the books she is reading is a great way to assess the level she is working at now, but visiting the school and observing what they expect of children is the best best best way to know.


I've got a debater also, and if you want her to continue to listen to other children's point, you have a responsibility to get her around other children who can express a point of view worth your daughter's while to listen too, yes? Maybe not all day every day, but maybe, as the school day is a long time for a kid who is 4-8 years of age.

If the coding is 'above average' even with her not staying on task then IMHO you don't have a kid with a spiky profile. Even MG Processing speed is WON DER FUL. Really. My son's coding score on the WISC III was his worst, and that was without a story to explain why at that was at the 25th percentile. And he's in the YSP. So you can see that there is plenty of room to be truly spiky way beyond your daughter's picture. Of course I'll bet I know more kids with verbal scores in the 140s than her assessor does. We had a local assessor and he was not only useless, but dangerous, as he downplayed the LOG, and pointed us off in the 2E direction due to the spread. Since then we've had phone consults with assessors who really have experience with highly gifted kids, and been convinsed that some of the subtests just don't measure giftedness very well.

BTW - if she ceilinged out on verbal, then it probably doesn't make sence to say she is 'shy of highly gifted' as she ran out of test. If she had been tested on a test that allowed her to run to her internal limit, it might have pulled up the rest of the scores quite a bit. You can say, 'She is as high as the test can measure at this time.' Which is what they say over at the Young Scholars Program. There is LOG above what tests can measure, it's just really hard to measure it. Giving your daughter the opportunity to learn at her readiness level will let her show herself in ways that the test couldn't.

Coding on the WISC III involves manipulating a pencil AND lots of eye movements. If it's the same on the wppsi, you can always address those particular areas. If the reading development bogs down, or she's clumsy, you can have her vision-muscles checked and her core strength/fine motor checked. You can always do those things anyway to strengthen up the areas where she is weak just plain due to being younger, IF you see that she needs it once she get the 'least-bad' placement.

I wish so much that classrooms were created with the needs of our young children in mind. But until that happens, looking for the 'least-bad' fit is all that can be done. Both alternatives will have their pluses and minuses, but I'd rather work on 'eye-hand' coordination than have a kid with a poor work ethic on my hands any day.

Hope this helps -
Grinity

The cutoff here is Sept. 1st, and our oldest DD has a Nov. 30th birthday. She went to a private school for 4K and 5K, and since they have an advanced curriculum there, they really adhere to that Sept. 1 deadline. Now that DD is unhappy in public school, I wish I had pushed the issue.