My daughter is wrapping up kindergarten. She is has an October birthday, and with the September cut off is one of the oldest in her class. The first week of school her teacher at least clued in that she was advanced and gave her the first grade math book. She also eventually agreed that the letterbooks, where the kids learn the letter sounds and beginning reading, were below her and let her read books of her own choosing and do the accelerated reader tests on those.
In terms of level, she is at at least third grade level in reading and likes multiplication, addition and multiplication of fractions, etc. She can write well (her handwriting isn't perfect).
The problem is, she won't do work unless she wants to do it. She has an incredible attention span, so if she is thinking about something, she will not stop to do an easy worksheet in the classroom. She struggles with open-ended writing assignments (they are supposed to write stories in their journals) because she wants to write a complete story (when she tells a story, it takes quite some time since she includes lots of detail).
We have been trying to convince the school, a small private school, to let her skip a grade. They think that she shouldn't because she can't get the work done in the classroom. They acknowledge that she knows all of the material--when she tried out first grade for a week, the teacher got frustrated that when she introduced some simple multiplication ideas, my daughter wanted to talk about some other things about multiplication, and the teacher didn't want her to confuse the class...).
Any advice on how to teach my daughter to play the game, to get the easy work done so she can get on with stuff that is of interest or to just write what she has to to get credit? Horrible lessons, but it is a skill that we all must learn in some form or another.... I just don't think she is going to get anything out of first grade next year except more boredom.
