Originally Posted by mom2twoboys
DS6 is so excited about it; he's mentioned it every day this week. And he now talks about how he LOVES science.

Yay! I think this is what we all want -- our kids to be excited about something - anything - at school. As for science in DS6's 2nd grade, their class will be learning about trees and planting apple trees at the school. I asked DS6 about science class, and he said he hasn't had any science yet. He has, but it's not the science he was expecting.

Although we're really happy with the school -- the classroom teacher, principal, and gifted coordinator all seem to be supportive of whatever DS needs -- at home we're finding that things are still not quite challenging enough. The grade acceleration was completely necessary, but we're hoping things fall into place in the next few weeks. DS6 said the other day that "Math is as hard as finding a needle in a needle stack." DS6 did 3/4th of the 2nd grade math book in kindergarten last year (getting 100% on most unit tests), and now the plan is to just leave him in the class for things he misses on pretests and go to the gifted coordinator for other math, such as Zaccaro's challenge math. I'm a bit concerned that this is just pushing the problem off another year - he should be in 3rd grade math now, IMO. He's just missing things like strategies other than counting. My DH says I need to put some trust in the school, so I'm trying.

And in reading, DS6 let it slip that he was picking easy books and just flipping them over and reading them again during silent reading. Happily, when I told the teacher, he made DS6 pick a more appropriate book. So I'm not as worried about reading. And DS's spelling and writing is age-appropriate, so he does need to work on that.

I have general worries about the other everyday stuff not being challenging (like science/social studies/computer). But it seems like they might be giving him keyboarding lessons in computers, which would be great. The biggest issue is that I'm pretty sure that if DS6 is given a choice between something easy and something a bit more challenging at school, he'll take the easy route. DS6 does not ever want to make waves, either, so I worry that his teachers will just say "He's happy and doesn't need more." But at home we get comments like, "My teacher is taking school to a whole new level of boring." Of course, he could just be pulling my leg. I'm just rambling now. Thanks for letting me vent!