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One teacher told me he told one of the teachers "I like the first school, not the second school".  (he meant I like the pre-k class not the language arts pull out class).  The teacher asked, "what do you want to do, give it a week and see how he feels?". That sounds about right to me, just go with the flow, right?

He said he prefers the new morning schedule to the previous afternoon schedule.  He said the new class doesn't have as many kids in it, they don't talk as much, and the bell rang which didn't give him enough time to finish his paper.

The kindy teacher sent the work home he complained about "not having time to finish.  It was to trace "here" once, circle it from a list, color it, and write it 3 times.  He wrote h, did the "e" in a bubble letter style because he saw it somewhere else on the page, erased it, wrote it again erased it... How do you write e in a bubble letter but you can't finish copying the word "here"?  He's never done bubble letters before, he just copied one off the page effortlessly.
Me and the hubby were telling him stuff like, "I know it's a lot more work, but that's kind of what school's about".
He answered, "it's not a lot more work, it's only a little bit of work".
That's true.  When they said he didn't have time to finish it I thought it would have been a couple of pages, not a couple of words.  He wrote more words than that taking notes for fun  on a movie we watched.

I've been a little worried because I don't know which one is the right answer.  Worried that my kid doesn't want to miss pre-k to be in the language arts block.  Worried that he might want to be in the class and it's just the third day so it hasn't got interesting yet.  

I think if I see his pre-k teacher in the morning when I take him to breakfast I'm going to ask if she has a minute and ask Wyatt to do a handwriting without tears page in front of her, the ones where he's copying a few sentences at a time in a few minutes. 

Then I'll tell her, I don't mind if he takes the language arts class or not. I honestly don't know if it's just like the hubby & the k teacher says, he just needs some time to adjust.  But I just wanted you to see him work.  Then I'll say, I trust your judgement.  However you want to teach him the ropes at school. 

The hubby thinks the boy was confused because it had so many types of letters on the page he thought he had to do the bubble letter ones.  

Yesterday I thought it was all good.  He came home with a singing about (the language arts teachers name) and singing "let's get started, we have a lot to do".  We make up cheesy songs instead of humming when we're cheerful.  The language arts teacher sent home a note that he did his work, with a smiley face and a Yay ! With an exclamation mark.  

When I picked him up today his pre-k teacher said, "he's breaking my heart every day when I send him to that other class because he says he doesn't want to go".  I asked her.  She  said he's not crying, he's just saying he doesn't like the other class.

It seems to me like the pre-k teacher had a change of heart about sending him to the pull-out- rightly so, given that he tells her he doesn't like it.  I think she wants to quit sending him.  Personally I think that's fine.  She's obviously willing to differentiate since she's the one who recommended the pull out.  She obviously cares a lot about him since he's breaking her heart.  I don't want to dig my heels in over the change of heart and then they might not want to risk further differentiation.  I  want to tell her I trust her to make the school decisions.  She has 20 years experience.   Her caring kindness is obvious.

My husband keeps saying, you go to school to learn, if you don't want to learn don't go to school.   You can either do what the teacher says, learn to do what you do in school all day, or don't go.

I think that makes sense too.  If he doesn't want to do the pull out, he's not going to want to do school for that long.  

That's why I brought up the IAS.  I've read the statistics are good for kids who are bored and want to accelerate and bad for kids who are forced into acceleration.  I think the pre-k class is more fun than the kindy class.  Given the choice between spending that hour of the day in language arts or pre-k 
he wants the pre-k.  When I told him "both classes are part of going to school, do you want to go or you don't want to go?". He wants to go.  
Maybe I should ask, "if you couldn't go to your first class you could only go to your second class would you still want to go"? 

I was surprised by the answer.  He said without hesitation, "I would still want to go".   I expected him to get hung up on debating the first part of the question before answering.  But a few minutes later he got a certain lightbulb look on his face and said, "but if I couldn't go to (language arts teachers) class then I could only go to (pre-k) teachers class.  

What is the wisdom on this?  The language arts teacher is encouraging and says he needs just a little while to get used to the pace of school.  (true- they sent home a library book for him to take a quiz on, he went back the next day & they said "we'll quiz you next week").  What is the wisdom for this?  Is this the IAS contra-acceleration thing?  Is this where he just needs to get used to going to school if he wants to go to school and get used to the way that the school does things?  

I've settled on my reaction, for now.  I found out him he doesn't hate the language arts as much as he'd just rather the pre-k (by asking if he still wanted to go to the harder class if he couldn't go to pre-k).  I've told my son, "both classes are part of going to school.  quit complaining and trying to talk your teacher out of going to your second class".  

I told him "I'll make a deal with you.  I'll give you 1 month of cards and you can circle smiley face, question mark, or frown for class # 1 and class #2.  At the end of the month we'll look at them and decide if you like either class.  If not you don't have to go.  If so, you keep going.  It doesn't matter.  But, you can't complain.  You can't say, "I don't like this class" or "I don't like this work".  Or the deal's off.  You can say, "I don't know if I like yet" or "I don't know if I like this homework yet." 

Thanks for helping me work through my thoughts on this.

This time the problem is not about the language arts subject pull out. This time the complaint is about going to school in general.

He complained for about a week that he didn't like going to school anymore because you always have to put your head down. If you finish your work, you have to put your head down. If you finish your lunch, you have to put your head down. I said then eat slower and ask if you can do more work if you'd rather do that then put your head down.

Now he's saying he doesn't want to go to school. I don't think there's anything more to it than what I've said here. I think going to school is just starting to seem like a chore. Today he did the first meltdown, "mamma, I don't want to go. Nooo."

I told him before the meltdown, "You said you wanted to go to school before I signed you up. You said you said you wanted to continue school after we gave it a 30 day trial. Now you have to go until Christmas. You can quit at Christmas if you want but until then you have to go, you already made your choice, and quit complaining."

Mainly I came here to complain about it, but also to ask if it's something I should tell the teachers about or just a parenting problem. I mean the crying and not wanting to go to school.

Ok I also came to complain that school is slowing him down. I quit working with him at all, even though I know school wasn't going to teach him at his achievement level. I was only teaching him up to an hour a day and now he's going to half day pre-k. I did very little since school started. We baked the apple fractions book pie twice and I bought him an adding fractions and decimals book which he did one page out of because it was new and he's done most of a page of division because he got the concept so he could practice the problem. I have him read to me three times a week and he's been texting a few emails with my grandmother. In other words I've given him no homework since school started. Because he's already spending time in school I wanted him to focus on attendance and good behavior. The other day he just started doing a kinder math book that was laying around, just for fun. He couldn't do the 2s, 5s, and 3s straight. He kept getting them backwards and asking me which way they go. It looked just like they say when kids go back to school after the summer it takes them a while to remember how to do the work. I told the hubby about it. He thinks I should complain to the school. I was going to go back to teaching him about an hour a day. Who's right? Should I complain?