My son started K this fall. The gifted support teacher at his school has been in contact over the past couple of days. She has suggested skipping him into first grade, but we are reluctant to do a full grade acceleration right now for social/emotional reasons. Instead, we may be looking at single subject acceleration in math. The school is still evaluating him, but second grade is likely to be the best placement. The potential problem is that he has a sister in 2nd grade. Various folks have suggested to us that it may be damaging to her to have her little brother in the same grade level, even for one subject. I know the IAS takes this into account, as well.
I asked my daughter how she would feel if her brother came up to her classroom for math. She was surprised, but said that she would really like that. Our kids are close and they love being able to see each other at recess, lunch, after school, etc. They're also great about supporting each other and cheering each other on. However, I know my daughter does sometimes feel threatened by her brother's greater prowess at things like board games. So I'm afraid that she might not like having him in class as much as she thinks she would. I don't think he would surpass her in math (she's good at it too), but it's certainly possible.
Given her positive reaction, would you consider having them in the same class? Does anyone have experience with having a younger sibling accelerated into the older one's class, either for a whole grade or single subject?
