I found this forum when my son was about 15 months because he was not like the other babies and I wanted some answers. My son recently turned 3 and he had to start daycare/PreK full time as I returned to work.
He is in a lovely play-based program that is probably most aligned with Reggio philosophy. It's all about the process and not the product, they are outside for at least two hours every day, and my son adores it.
I met with his teacher recently for his twice yearly progress report. The school uses a program to track developmental milestones (it's an inclusive school) through kindergarten level and my son was off the charts in literacy and math. Literally. The program did not keep going to track where ever he is. I assumed he was academically advanced but it was nice to hear it from someone else. He turned 3 not long ago.
The center wants to go ahead and move him up with the 4 year old children as soon as a spot opens up. This is fine with me but my son misses the cut off for Kindergarten by a few days and this would mean he would be in the actual PreK classroom for almost 3 years!
There are zero gifted schools in our area. There are zero options for any sort of gifted testing or programming until third grade in our district. I'm leery about IQ testing for the purpose of early entry into Kindergarten because what if they can't accommodate him? His center now deals with several similar children but would this environment be enough all the way through age 6?
It's so hard to know what to do for him. He got some markers for his 3rd birthday and I let him draw on his own while I nursed his baby brother. When I came back he had written "ROCKET" all by himself. I never taught him to write nor spell rocket. It was all in a line too and could have easily been written by a child in first or second grade. This is a pretty common occurrence in my house.
I feel like 3 is too young to do any testing and wouldn't accomplish anything anyway. What about 4? 4.5? Is it too soon to start getting documentation so I can advocate for him?
