I think your situation is amazing ACS! One thing about my DS is he does not typically show his true ability in a group of non-GT kids nor is he willing to ask for harder work. He does whatever he can to blend. He gets the small amount of "extras" they have in the classroom for the top 5 kids. At the moment, he is happy socially, but that has come and gone several times this year and he verbalizes that he is not learning anything at school. My son is absolutely delighted to homeschool, despite the fact that he has good buddies at school right now.
Jamie - we are in a very similar situation with our first grader. He is reading around jr. high level, and is capable of math well ahead of grade level (but hasn't been fully assessed here). Our school is very much against skipping and I have the ability to homeschool now, so that is what will likely happen at our house next fall. Can you feel your daughters out to see if that would be something appealing for them? It would be hard to pull a child from school that REALLY wanted to stay. But I'd re-evaluate the situation often if they are going to stay and see if you could talk to the teachers ahead of time. It also might be more appealing to your girls AFTER a summer at home?
It is nice that they have such a consistent pull out as a break at first grade! We have nothing like that at our school. I do agree on your thoughts on differentiation. They seem to do fairly well at our school with kids reading within 1-2 years of grade level. They do very little for math and don't assess beyond grade level.
