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It's a tough call for us for a couple of reasons, and I'm not at all sure I'm temperamentally suited to teach. We may have no choice, in the end, if the school won't teach him.

Thanks again for your kind comments and suggestions ... keep 'em coming.

No apology necessary, and you don't sound presumptuous to me but you might to the public school folks.

I think advocacy is especially difficult when you are coming into a school and need accommodations right off the bat. I had good results by enrolling my son in K with his age cohort and didn't request a grade-skip until the school had gotten to know him for a few months. He was then placed in first grade after spring break. It sounds like you may not have that luxury if you are concerned about behavioral issues resulting from underchallenge. Do you think starting the year in first grade and learning the ropes of public school for a few months and then switching to 2nd is a viable option?

We're right in the middle of this process with DS5 who is scheduled to start K this fall. It's hard to approach the school without hard data (like test results) and without them observing your child. I wish I had more advice to offer as it sounds like a similar situation... We're just starting this journey.

What did work for us so far was meeting face-to-face with the principal, bringing samples of DS's work, and asking "how can we work together to help DS?" If nothing else, our principal has matched up with a teacher that she thinks would work best with DS. That, coupled with at home work we'll be scheduling (15 min/day) is likely what we'll do next year. Sort of like "homeschool lite" if you will...

Good luck. A lot of us have been through this or are going through this now.

JB

P.S. We don't watch a lot of TV but one of the shows that I discovered through this forum is PBS Cyberchase. DS--a mathy guys--loves it.

One thing you can do if you are planning to request a skip is to get copies of the actual district policies on acceleration. If you ask the principal, "Do you allow gradeskipping?" The answer will probably be, "No." Instead, ask for a written copy of the board policy--it may even be available online--so that you know what requirements you need to fulfill and the timeframes involved. There may be a deadline for making the request and testing may be required. Our district also has a referral sheet that the teacher fills out with questions like, "Does the student complete all work on time?" etc.

You need to know what hoops you and your DS will need to jump through.

One of the nice things about homeschooling GT kids is that the teaching is the easy part!

Childcare and a homeschool group can help you to get enough time alone while your child gets enough social time. I'm a highly social introvert who desperately needs time alone. A babysitter has been a lifesaver for my sanity and the group has given DS7 enough time with kids.

If you're worried about the opposite problem--being an extrovert trapped in the house--well, the homeschool group makes that easy, too, only more for you than for your chid.

No need to respond if you don't want to, since you're not headed this route. Lots of people just have misconceptions, and I like to correct them when I can.

We had some interaction with the principal this year and made a couple of missteps (on both sides, I would say). I am researching district policy, but trying to do so in a way that will not give the appearance of going around her. If it comes to a confrontation, of course, even if we win, we lose, as the atmosphere will be spoiled.

I expect a month or two of in-school experience, plus some hard data and careful argumentation is our best shot. The challenge to us will be to coach our DS through the initial period, while pushing back against complacency from the school's side. Our DS lacks the 'respect for authority' gene (perhaps our fault), but we may be able to teach him at least to fake it on occasion. In any event, his emotional versatility is growing now with some speed, and who knows what two more months will bring?

Thanks again for the interest from all sides. It is a huge relief to be able to get views about such things from adults outside the immediate family.

I second Singapore Math, both the workbooks and the Challenging Word Problems. I also love Zaccaro's Primary Grade Challenging Math. That's what we will use to homeschool DS5 next year (1st grade on the paper, 4th grade math).

There are placement tests for Singapore Math, you may want to look at them first. Kriston is right about the curriculum being ahead by half a year.

Good luck dealing with the school.

I hear you...

Our DS wanted to skip, so we were able to convince him to do all the easy, (pointless for him), Kindergarten work. We told him to "show what you know." We explained that the teachers didn't know him and didn't know that he already knew these things, so he had to show them in order to get more interesting work.

A lot of times, I would change the instructions on his homework to make it more challenging and interesting. For example, the Kindergarteners learned about Abe Lincoln for Presidents' Day. The homework was a dot-to-dot of Abe's hat and the "challenge" work was to draw a log cabin. We extended the challenge work by looking up a picture of Abe's cabin online and reading about how log cabins are built. Then DS drew a log cabin in perspective using the photo as a model.

DS did some extra writing assignments in which he wrote about science topics of his choosing--planets and so forth--and turned those in to his Kindergarten teacher with his other homework.

I asked the K teacher to assess DS' reading level. I also asked the vice principal to write a DYS recommendation for DS, so she "interviewed" DS about money and saw that he could add and subtract double digit numbers in his head and that he could count money and solve multistep word problems.

These kinds of efforts are pretty much the only way the school will "notice" that your child is above grade level. If he just completes the work assigned, he is, by their definition, "on grade level".

...or if he's bored with it and doesn't finish the assigned work (because some kids are like that, like mine!), then they don't think he's even on grade level, let alone beyond it.

We had that problem at our Montessori preschool. They wouldn't let DS7 (then 4yo) move forward throught the language arts curriculum--even though he was reading easy chapter books--because he hadn't completed the phonics work, which was stuff he had been able to do for literally over half his life by then!

Frustrating!

Yeah, Kriston, when DS was 4 he figured out that if he told his teacher that the work was "too hard" she would let him play with legos all day.