Hi, Mom2Two!
In our state the Kindergarten cutoff date is Dec. 3. DS's birthday is in late November, just two weeks before the cutoff. We sort of played it by ear with regard to school entrance.
At age 2yrs 9mos, DS started preschool at a private program (birth to K). We talked the school into letting him join the class for 3 year olds since he was toilet trained.
At age 3yrs 9mos, DS started PreK at the same school. He was then accelerated to the K class midyear at age 4yrs 2mos.
At age 4yrs 9mos, he started public K. He was then accelerated to 1st grade midyear at age 5yrs 4mos.
He is now in 2nd grade (still in the public school.)
From our experiences I would say that the teacher is the most important factor in the success of a gradeskip. An unwilling teacher can undermine a skip and make your child miserable. That happened to DS in the private K. Fortunately, this year's teacher (public 2nd) is great and happy to have him in her class. He is happy, motivated and well-behaved (knock on wood
)
For us, it was hard to make the decision to skip, not knowing what teacher he would get, etc. But DS has always wanted to forge ahead and was very unhappy in an unchallenging situation. So we decided it was worth the risk.
