Hello, welcome to the board! Of course every kid and every situation will be different, but I'll share our experience. For us, regular local kindergarten, with lots of differentiation, worked OK. DS had no interest in learning to write (he has perfectionist tendencies, and when writing didn't turn out how he wanted it to when he was very young, he gave up trying). So, we figured kindergarten would be perfect for learning to write. The teacher was good at in-class differentiation for reading, and DS went to gifted pullouts and also was basically tutored with 2nd grade math. This was all-day kindergarten, so there was a lot to get used to in the sense of "doing school" - more so than his part-time preschool. We kept our goal for the year as learning to do school and learning to write, and anything new he learned was bonus. It was pretty pretty good. We decided not to ask for the moon, but to push for the most in math, because we figured that would be easy for them to do (and easy for them to see how advanced he was), and we thought that reading could be more easily differentiated in the regular classroom.
He then skipped first, which in our district is a "learn-to-read" year, but he still needed a lot of differentiation and pullouts. An opportunity came up at a school for HG kids, which works a year ahead and faster, and we transferred DS(now 7) mid-year. He's been there a little over a month, and it's been great. We don't have the constant worry that he's not learning anything new. Best situation so far. We are hopeful that this will work a few more years, since the school goes through 5th grade, but we take things a year (or less) at a time.
Be prepared for a lot of advocacy, and try to always be on the good side of the school, if possible.
We had some misunderstandings with the first second grade class, which reminded us of a few things: 1) you need to do your best to work as a team, 2) always be respectful, 3) most teachers and school staff have no experience with EG/PG kids, and so they don't know how quickly they can learn and it takes time for them to see for themselves (which you should give them, in reasonable amounts), 4) principals have wonderful powers to choose teachers who want your child and who will be good at differentiation, 5) try to get some sort of plan in writing, in case you do have to switch schools and there's no record (we learned that the hard way, even though the school switch was in district).
Also, what sort of options do you have? Do you live anywhere near schools for gifted kids? We drive our DS 45 miles each way to his new school, but it's been worth it for him to have intellectual peers, and we have not had to worry that he's not learning. His handwriting is still pretty bad, but we're working on it, and the new teacher gets asynchronous development.
Best of luck!
