Maybe we should just start in K and then skip later if need be?
Hi Amber - I wanted to let you know that doing k with agepeers and skipping 1st is a commonly recommended path for gifted boys. Ruf, for example, seems to blanket recommend it for boys who are highly likely to need a skip.
Is your local Kindy a half-day program? If so I think that this is a fine plan, particularly if your son was 'behaviorally ok' in preschool with agemates. Some kids start acting out or getting tummy aches when placed with agemates due to poor fit even at age 3. Some kids don't.
It seems to me that preschool and kindy teachers are the most comfortable with a large range of development in their classrooms - which is nice for the asynchronous gifted kid. Trouble starts up as kids move into full day, let's get everyone on the same page with reading grades (1st around here, kindy in some places.)
My son came home with 'books' from school every week in 1st grade, and he seemed to be shamed by their existence. I didn't really know what I was seeing at the time - just that the books upset him for some reason. By the end of the year the little pamphlets, which look to have been printed from a computer, had a full sentence on each page. My son wasn't an early reader - but he felt that he was being personally insulted that he had been given books like this. I thought that by explaining that 'everyone got the same book' and 'that's the way school is some of the time' and 'you just have to get used to it' that I was parenting him effectively. Within about a year it was obvious that I had misjudged the situation.
I wasn't the only one who didn't get it, of course. The teachers and staff said: "He was such a good boy in kindergarden, so polite, we wonder why he is acting out now. Let's start a behavior chart." I was very trusting of school authority at that time.
So by the middle of 1st grade the whole 'problem' was cast as his 'bad attitude.'
Amber, you are way way ahead of the game compared to where I was when my son was 4. I don't blame you for not wanting to drive 50 minutes to school. To me, the best thing about early entrance is that it is sweet to see the kids making in friends in kindy that they 'grow up' with. But unless you stay at this private school, he'll have to make new friends anyway. And for most of the kids here, a single skip isn't enough anyway. So if the local school was offering your half day kindy early entrance, then I can see the upside, but a year of driving doesn't seem appealing to me compared to a year of homeschooling/unschooling.
I would say that I doubt your son will be needing to 'relearn' the school rules because of a year of homeschooling (unless he had problem with the rules in the first place - that's a different story.) Most kids are great at looking over their shoulder at what the other kids are doing and doing the same. Sometimes the problem is that they are too good at this. Some kids don't, but being in a poor fit classroom doesn't seem to help with that one.
Hope that helps,
Grinity
