Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Early K Entrance-Feedback

Our montessori school called me today and they feel that DD4 is ready to go to their Kindergarten program in the Fall. She turned 4 in March.

This happened with DD8, with a late Nov Bday. With DD8, we put her with her age group when we moved her to public school. Mistake, we didn't know how far ahead she was compared to the Public school. I now complain a lot that DD8 isn't challenged. I know my husband will be worried about more complaining from me . I am worried that DD8 might be very upset if we decide to leave DD4 ahead, Of course that will be 3 yrs in the future so we have time to deal with that drama later.

Feedback, thoughts. Is it just to young? Age deadline is 5 by 9/1 and she'd be 5 in March. I tend to go with the recommendation of the teachers who work with her everyday who think she is ready.

Do your research. Then follow your heart. One of ours was a Jan. kid. I know it is hard to do - and I need to take this advice myself. But one kid at a time, one semester at a time.

Is the montissori a mixed age classroom setting? If she is gravitating to the older kid's work, to the older kid's in general, and her teachers are recommending it, I would probably do it.

However, are you moving to public school for certain after K then? You might already want to be looking to see if your public school is going to allow her to move right to 1st grade and what possible accommodations might be. Since you have an older child, maybe you already have a good feel for how/if it is going to work. Good luck! I'm sure it will be great whatever you decide.

Yes we've been through it once already. I know the drill, made some mistakes. Honestly I didn't expect the same thing with DD4 until recently when I started doing the research for DD8.

My plan with DD4, is to keep her at the montessori at least until 2nd grade (longer maybe if they can increase class size). There were only 4 kids in 3rd grade this year, unfortunately most of the kids move after K or 1st. 1st is still decent sized, and 2nd grade is maybe 6-10 kids. I just didn't know that they would move her up early.

Not sure why everyone moves at that point. I'm sure it is a variety of reasons (cost, thinking it is time to get a logner term solution whether public or private. We moved DD8 since DH thought "it was time for her to make neighborhood friends so she doesn't get left out later and she needs to be with her age group cuz she's little". He felt strongly, I didn't know any better. This time I feel more strongly after reading a lot more.

Just polling for other opinions since there is maybe something I didn't consider. My instinct is to let her go ahead and re-evaluate when it's time to move, whenever that is. I'm sure we will work through any issues with the montessori as they come.

I'm with kickball on this, I'm going to be putting my DD4 in K, she has an Oct b-day so she's a little bit older, She is also very ready for it, she was ready this year. just couldn't part with her yet! Good Luck!

Thanks guys, we will probably go for the Kinder and deal with other issues later after we see how she handles it. I should say that the Kinder program at our montessori definitely starts ahead of public kinder (at least in our area) in that I don't think they do the learn to count, shapes colors and the alphabet.

From experience with DD8, they are assumed to know all this and they start in with spelling tests, reading comprehension fairly early in the semester. They aren't supposed to be fluent readers to start but they want them to understand many sight words and "blends"-phonics thing. and several math concepts. I know by first grade DD8 was doing second grade work at the montessori.

I guess I'm still in a bit of denial that DD4 is ready for all of this even after all the reading that I've done recently for DD8.

We didn't have a good experience this year with grade skipping at our Montessori School.

DS has a late birthday. The cut-off date for kindergarten in our district is September 1, and his birthday is October 1. If he went to public school, he would have started kindergarten this past fall. Instead, he started first grade at our Montessori school Since the classwork is differentiated, he's doing 3rd grade math and 3rd grade reading.

We started Montessori school so that we could do this type of acceleration. DS has been reading since before his third birthday. We started him in a mixed age Montessori primary (mixed pre-K and K) classroom last year, because he was already well past the kindergarten curriculum and the first grade curriculum at our public school. The Montessori school agreed and this fall they moved him to the lower elementary classroom (1st-3rd grade). That's been great for his academic work and not that great socially. He's not very socially mature, and was the youngest kid in the class. He didn't fit well with the older kids in his class, and become somewhat disruptive. It's been a rough year, behavior wise. I wish that I had left him in the primary classroom and asked his primary teacher to do more differentiation with him. Montessori is all about differentiation, so it wouldn't have been that big of a deal.

YMMV