Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Skipping K?

I've been in a similar situation. I decided that I need to have confidence that I know what's best for my child because I know him better than anyone. He is much better socially with kids a year ahead of him and I think skipping K plus differentiation and online courses will work well for him. We are going to talk to the school about the skip this week. So far from what I've read this is our best option since we have no gifted schools and subject acceleration is too difficult with scheduling. My son went to full day prek this year because I thought full day would be an issue too but it hasn't been at all and now he's bored. I wouldn't worry too much about the full days. That transition happens quickly. Anyway that's my opinion and what we are doing =]. Good luck!

May I ask: who is Ruf, and where can I find his/her work?

If you can give any other pointers to source material on gifted boys likely to need a skip, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks!

Ruf Estimates™ Gifted Assessment FAQs | TalentIgniter
What are the Ruf Estimates of Five Levels of Gifted and how do I learn more about this before I pay for this assessment?

www.talentigniter.com/faqs

Educational Options
School Issues and Educational Options (2005) (formerly titled Losing Our Minds: Gifted Children Left Behind) by Deborah L. Ruf, Ph.D.
educationaloptions.com

If you think about the bell curve, then you will see that about 2/3rd of gifted kids cluster right up against the cut off (this is true no for most of the commonly used cut offs)

It's good to figure out if you child is in the big group fairly close to the line, or way off in the tippy tail, because the more unusual a child is, the less the usual advice will work.

The main question to ask is: is my local kindy a full day or half day program? Is my kid 'in the ballpark' for our local school district? (We call this optimally gifted or 'in good company' gifted here.)

In other words, if you put up a 'lets read together' club for kids your child's age at the local library, would you find any other participants. Plenty of wildly gifted kids don't read early, but most of the very early reading kids are gifted. Particularly the ones that learn with very little adult help.

That's logical, becuase cracking the code of reading is a good signal of advanced problem solving.

Smiles,
Grinity

I'm vaguely considering a skip for my DS, who is reading and writing, and can count as high as you'd like him to, do basic math, and read 4-digit numbers, but will not start K till fall 2013. (He just turned 4.) He happens to be very tall, is not psychomotor excitable, and can sit and work. However, emotionally he is very much his age. It's a tough call.

If you extrapolate to where he will be academically in a year and a half, a skip will probably not seem like a tough call.

My son started K at 4, and he was horribly insulted by the level of the "work", and decided that the teacher must have thought he was stupid or she wouldn't have been offering him such low-level stuff.

Well, he will presumably have his sister's gifted magnet available to him in 2nd grade, which is great. He isn't as driven as his sister, either, despite the fact that I suspect he will start K reading even better than she did (she wasn't reading till almost 5, so he's going to have an additional year to build skills, which are rocketing along; yesterday he was reading me phrases like "North American Owls" and the "The female anglerfish has a glowing lure to attract fish"). So if we skip, we're looking at a skipped kid in a GT magnet, most likely, which I would want to consider carefully, though his sister could probably handle a skip right now except perhaps for the writing and research element, which is big there. The good news is that the school where the magnet is is open to skipping--I know of at least one recent case where a K kid was skipped to 1 on the school's initiative because of the skills he came in with.

Thanks for the info!

(I suspect the answer to "...would you find any other participants?" is no, given the look I got from the librarian when I asked about grade 1 books, but with preschool appropriate content.)

Most Ks are really boring. If your kiddo is doing 2 digit addition and reading on his/her own, skip to 1st grade. Kinders are writing A,B,C and learning 1, 2 ,3 and taking 1 hr nap, LOL.

Both of my DDs skipped (1 birthday is in late Oct and the other in late March). The kiddo needs to take the test anyway and if the result come back >95%, you should strongly consider moving up.

1st and 2nd grades were a breeze for both of them. Last 2 years (3rd and 4th grade), we wonder if we made the right decision for older DD (although she skipped only 2 months), she is shy and not as organized as younger DD. But somehow, she is doing fine in the 5th. My younger DDs never had any problems.

I guess, different strokes for different folks.

K and first grade are, IMHO, mostly social, not so academic. However, in third and fourth grade, there is a huge leap up in terms of the work load and focus required. Some posters on this site who have skipped grades seem to find their kids' executive functional and organizational skills lack when they get to the upper grades. Something to think of.

I skipped kindergarten. I'm a middle-aged middle school teacher now, and I still speak when it's someone else's turn to talk and forget to tuck my chair under the desk (or remind my students).