I don't have any helpful answers, I just wanted to join you in being unsure what to do when my ds was approaching kindergarden. My ds8 has a September birthday that is the very day of the school cutoff, so we had the choice of putting him in a situation where he'd be the youngest in his class or the oldest. Luckily, the school had a preschool program inside the elementary school, so we started him in that. His teacher immediately noticed his skills and bumped him up to the kindergarden.
However, we had two immediate problems:
1. His fine motor skills were not near good enough to write at the level the teacher was wanting.
2. He was still well above the grade level he was bumped to in intellectual ability.
The school found a happy medium that worked for two years, in that he stayed in his grade level, but bounced around the school for math and other subjects. I know he spent a good deal of preschool nap time doing math in the second grade class room.
It was still so imperfect though, because he changed schools after K, and he no longer gets bumped up. But he still doesn't have the fine motor coordination (or self-regulation abilities) to thrive in higher grades despite being academically ready for them.
Personally though, I do think fine motor coordination is more important than, say, size when it comes to whether you should place the child ahead. We would have been in a whole different ball game if ds had the physical writing ability to match his math and reading ability.
Last edited by mgl; 09/12/12 10:39 AM.
