Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Kindergarten Jitters...

My ds5 is starting K next month and my dd7 finished two years ago. With dd we didn't tell the teacher anything we knew about her. The teacher was a 40 year veteran and we decided that she would know what she was looking at with dd.
Unfortunately, that teacher was burnt out and done. DD was a lovely, compliant child in the classroom and spent much of the year bored or answering questions for other children. Thankfully we had her in Montessori in the mornings that year and she did her real learning each day there.
DS will go to all day kindy, they just changed it this year. (BOO!) At his IEP meeting for next year (hearing loss) we mentioned that ds was also "bright" (3/5 people there knew dd)and let it drop. I think that it is a good idea to allow the teacher to "discover" the child's talents on their own and if they don't, then bring it up.
Send books from home for him to read each day so that he won't get stuck with Dick and Jane when he wants the Great Stinks.
Fingers crossed for all of us!

I'd keep an eye on that. K was a HUGE letdown for my DYS boy. He was so excited to be going to the big school where learning "finally happens!! And when he didn't start learning, he got pretty sad about it. It was a frustrating year, even with a teacher who really did quite a bit to accommodate him-- for instance, moving him up to a 2nd grade reading group (which wasn't high enough, but no one wanted him in a 4th grade reading group as a tiny kindergartener). We did keep doing enrichment for him after school, but since it was all-day K (no choice, and I didn't know better anyway), there wasn't a tremendous amount of time. Anyway, just be aware that they might not be able to satisfy him and you might need to do something for him at home.

Thanks for this. Anticipation is a wicked thing. I remind myself that any decision we have thus far made can be unmade at any point.

My twelve months of wisdom... our only kid DS6 has a December birthday and is tall for his age. We were lucky to get into a gifted feeder magnet (no official testing until 2nd.) Since the 3-5 gifted magnet is in the school, they are very accomodating. They use an online reading system for accelerating/test and different types of pullouts.

The send home parent sheet asked "What do you hope for your child?" We only put down "that he is challenged"

Connecting with the gifted coordinator was helpful as well as volunteering and a friendly relationship with the teacher. Supplemental reading material in his backpack, definitely useful.

In the "modern" US system, I figure we are offering a guaranteed achievement test pass and are only asking them not to impede his learning.

The one offer of advice I gave our DS (I didn't figure out until around 3rd grade myself):
Don't try to answer every question, just the ones no one else knows.

Evemomma, anticipation *is* really tough. My advice is to try to not worry about it yet. You're aware of what might happen, so you can keep your ears and eyes open for challenges and address them as they arise. I think it's great to talk to the teacher informally first just to let her know where your ds is at, but otoh, just fwiw, my experience in early elementary, particularly K-1st grade, was that so many of the moms I knew were convinced there kids were gifted and just about 100% of the moms in our school were urging the teacher to give their children challenging work. That doesn't mean your ds isn't gifted and doesn't need challenging work, but it does mean that his teacher may be used to hearing the same thing from lots of parents and is going to filter out what you're saying until she really has had a chance to get to know your ds.

I also don't know if it will ultimately work out this way for your ds, but my ds12 was also just short of making the age cutoff for kindergarten, and our district is also adamant about no early entry. I was very disappointed that he wasn't able to start k when he was almost 5, and worried that he'd be beyond bored - yet kindergarten worked out a-ok for him, his kindergarten classroom was about much more than learning letters and phonics - it included lots of fun projects, group activities, field trips, and time just to hang out and be with the other kids building friendships, and that was all good for him. Later on in upper elementary, I was glad we hadn't forced the issue and demanded he be accelerated in grade level, because socially he really does fit in well with the age group he's in school with. Chances are he would have done a-ok with the slightly older kids too, but it hasn't held him back in any way that I can see socially. Intellectually, boredom hit him pretty hard by the time he was in upper elementary, but middle school has been much easier because he's had opportunities now finally to be intellectually challenged. I'm not sure that starting him out one year ahead of age-schedule in a regular elementary classroom would have really helped all that much with intellectual challenge because he would still have been an intellectual outlier in his classroom.

polarbear

Thanks for sharing hour personal experience, Polarbear.

I've thought the same with my DS about entering last year, he was way ahead then also. With his immaturity last year though, I think he would've been an easy target.

He amazed me today with a friend who was being mean to him. He handled it so well (good thing as I was having a mama bear moment). I know he 's exponentially more confident this year.

Out of curiosity, did your kids entering K have peers who were also reading /advanced? Did they tend to pair up together as friends? My DS would love having a friend who loves science /geography /math as much as he does. He goes along with superhero-ninja-spies play because his friends love it.

My kiddo didn't have peers at his educational level when he entered K, but it worked out OK. There was so much new to him just in learning how to "do school". And he had other friends in his class that weren't at his level, but with shared interests (like Lego). DS didn't make close friends until he was in a program specifically for HG kids, in 2nd grade. Could also be the normal time developmentally for him to make friends.

DS made friends out of grade level too in afterschool activities like Lego league. We got special permission for DS to take some of those classes even though not normally open for kindergartners. (Once you get on a roll with advocacy, you learn that good things often come if you keep asking questions. :))

Thanks for your input, st Pauli girl. I wanted to try my ds in some science camps this summer, but he wasn't old enough.

I am very irked to learn our teachers may be striking. My ds is about to burst he's so ready to start school. He'll be crushed to have to wait

I think the schools view kindergarten as mainly a social thing, IMHO. That isn't a bad thing, I guess. Some kids have never been in daycare or preschool, so they need to learn how to sit quietly, how to wait their turn, that type of thing.
We switched schools at the end of kindergarten for my little one to ensure that he got a spot at our highly ranked local public school. The teacher sent home books like "Hop on Pop" which he had read in preschool. I told her several times that he could read very well, could do math, etc. but she always just smiled.
So... I don't think kindergarten or even first grade is all that academic. It's mainly social. Just do academic things at home and hopefully your child won't be too bored.
Actually, at the start of first grade, I asked the teacher how he was doing. I figured she would say something like, gee, he is a great reader! He can multiply things! Etc. All she said was that "well, he said penis, penis, penis very loudly in the class and I had to take him outside to explain we didn't talk about with our friends in school." I was like, oh... I didn't know what to say since he had never said that at home before! She probably thought we were all perverts or something!