Hi! I'm so happy to jump into the conversation, too.

DS6 will be a 2nd grader in September. We met with his school in May and everyone agreed that he needed to be subject accelerated to 3rd for math, with the possibility of being accelerated in other subjects if the schedule demands it. We're good with that since really he's academically at least 3rd grade across the board save writing. The problem is that the scheduling is turning out to be *very* difficult. Last I heard, they were working to rearrange several teachers' and specialists' daily schedules in an attempt to accommodate DS. I'm trying to be patient and give them time to work through it as well as enjoy their time off, but if I don't hear anything by the second week of August I'm going to have to call and find out what they've worked out. I don't want to find out on the night of the open house that things still aren't in order. I really want him to start the acceleration on the first day of school and I really want to be able to introduce him to both teachers at the open house. There is another boy who also is requesting harder work in math, but he hasn't had any of the ability testing or achievement testing done (other than the MAP), so he isn't likely to be subject accelerated but will be placed in the same 2nd grade class. We know this boy and he is bright in math, but not nearly at the level of DS or even really above-level in anything but math. Still, it will be an added benefit to have another mathy kid in his class. While scheduling would be easier, we don't want to do a full grade acceleration because in all things non-academic he seems to get a good fit with the class he's in now after having skipped K.

As far as summer goes, he's just having a good time relaxing, traveling, swimming, and playing soccer. He's been writing a letter today to his 1st grade teacher and I'm really impressed with how good he is at spelling now. I think the Words Their Way curriculum they used last year really helped him internalize a lot of spelling rules (even though the words themselves were way too easy) and now he just seems to "get" spelling. So that's fun to see. The one thing that he didn't know how to do on the end-of-2nd year math test he took in May was rounding (it hadn't come up at home yet), so we talked about that one day while we were swimming and now he's got that down cold.

The one problem we're having is that when people ask him what grade he's going to be in next year, he always says second *and* third. Of course that always leads to a lot of questions for me, but to him that seems normal since year-before-last his sister did essentially do 2nd and 3rd grade together. I've told him just to say 2nd, but so far it's not working! smile I try not to call any attention to the fact that my kids' academic programs are different than the norm, although I will answer questions honestly but briefly when asked, but he's not helping! On the other hand, he's just stating fact when asked and not bragging, so maybe he's got it right?

She thought she could, so she did.