Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy How was Kindergarten for your child/ren?

Nutshell: Knee deep in advocating for early K for our DS, 4.5. I guess he's HG-99.5 percentile GIA on WJ-III Cognitive.

I need some perspective. I am highly motivated to continue advocating for early entry, also-I'm terrified of the possiblity they won't approve it.

If you have a child was beyond Kindergarten academically, but they attended at 5, how did it go?

It might help to elaborate on what type of kindergarten it is - full day, half day, play based, academic focused, Montessori/Reggio/other, etc. When is his birthday relative to the cut off? (ie. if he started without acceleration his birthday is 4 months from the oldest or something along those lines) Do lots of people red-shirt in the area?

(sorry I'm answering your question will a million more but I think they will help in the end)

All three of mine were far past K material in K and their experiences depended on the teacher and the peers in their classes. They all had to practice counting and do ABC work with their peers, but my kids also had some opportunities to do higher level math, to read higher level chapter books with their peers, and to do interesting projects related to those books. The availability of those opportunities differed between kids depending on the teacher. Kid #3 had some behavioral issues in K that may have been related to boredom, but those issues may have surfaced anyway because of his personality.

None of our own have done so (skipped K or homeschooled for all of them), but I have seen a number of children professionally who were subject accelerated, including one who was grouped with the first grade for both reading and math (not that this would put yours in his ZPD, but it would be slightly less bad), during a half-day K--IOW, only nominally still in K (pretty much opening and closing circle time, snack).

I agree that it is highly dependent on the individual teacher and administration.

You've received great responses above. The student, the mix of classmates, and the teacher can create very different results.

Possibly not the perspective you're looking for, but some may say learning about advocacy may be the first step. Laws, policies, factual/unemotional presentation, active listening, gently probing questions, developing options/alternatives, documentation...

Why does this terrify you? How does your son feel about early kindergarten? Looking at a previous post, some may say that early kindergarten will not alleviate the emotional issues of anxiety/depression/highly explosive expressions at times. A school may even blame any such issues on immaturity especially if a child is accelerated (either through early entrance or a grade skip). This is not to dissuade you from acceleration, but to mention that you may wish to learn all you can about these issues and continue addressing them at home. Have you looked into books such as The Explosive Child, Make Your Worrier a Warrier, Searching for Meaning?

While a child is adapting to the routine and getting to know the other children, s/he may be positively engaged and mentally occupied. This can give the teacher the opportunity to observe the child's relative strengths/weaknesses and make recommendations. A child will typically not begin to develop underachievement from lack of academic challenge in his/her school day at age 5. If your child wants to learn something in an area of interest at his challenge level outside of school, would you be able to find resources and/or enrichment activities/classes?

Our child was 6 when he entered half-day Kindergarten and was way beyond it academically. We didn't actually realize he was so far ahead until recently, though (WISC-IV GAI > 99.9 percentile and WJ-III Achievement results consistently 2-3 grades ahead).

Believe it or not, he still enjoyed himself and we considered the year to be a success. It was valuable for him to learn the routine of school, he enjoyed some subjects immensely (like music and gym), and he made lots of friends.

Agree, it was a success for us too. The novelty of being at school and learning routines, making friends etc was pretty absorbing, plus reading is a big focus of that year and the teacher was great at just skipping the reading ahead all year as necessary.
The next year was a stinker and the next two years reasonably better. From my POV it all starts to unravel about age 9 … if I could do it all again, I'd skip that second year.

Early entry into first (first grade of elementary school where I live) was definitely a success, and that first year went better than expected. One years acceleration in my experience (sample of me, a number of friends, my kid and a number of friends kids) is socially fairly unnoticeable and academically a breeze.

The problem with acceleration by grade skip as accommodation for the gifted of course is that you are playing catch up and after three years at the latest, you'd need another acceleration...and so on.
I agree that now for DS8, almost nine, another skip would be needed. However, that one would be the skip into middle school (5th where I live). I know of a few examples ( online and in real life) for whom acceleration two years and beyond has worked. I couldn't bring myself to push for it and DS8 didn't want to anyway. And in year, congregated gifted programming will start, which is the kind of acceleration I prefer anyway.

So, let's hope that for a couple years at least, with early entry you're good. Maybe there are alternatives by then (different school, gifted programming by third grade whatever). It's all year by year.

Ours was in Montessori (officially, the third year of the primary cycle). It was very good. I suspect that had we put him in the local public K, the first month or two would have been fine. When the novelty wore off, not so good. Purely a guess based on the first grade experience.

We are about to have our first more traditional K experience with YDS (not testing, guessing maybe HG, even EG?). Fortunately, the teacher previously taught a higher grade level and the school is expecting that challenges may arise, based on his sibling's giftedness. So many variables are at play with children, though. This child has been far more eager to take on the art, craft and play aspects of preschool than his older brother was at the same ages. I'm guessing we'll have a grace period. Then again, he's starting to read and the pace of fluency is increasing.

I really feel for you, I am so frustrated by all these arbitrary age-based rules. My best advice is to do what you are doing... research, advocate, look for backup options, remain flexible.

But even if you don't get early entry, there's a good chance you're good for the first year regardless. I think that was the reassurance you were seeking?

It's going to depend on the kid and how well they adjust to the school routine. In our case, we never even considered early entrance to K (he would have been 4 throughout the entire year, and I can't imagine he would have been socially or emotionally ready for that much school). Instead, we enrolled him in a play-based pre-school 3 days a week. It was an amazing place, and we liked it so much we enrolled him for a second year there.

That made him very old for K, and I guess we're paying a bit for that decision now, but as Tigerle points out above, there is a pacing issue with gifted kids over the years, and even if we had enrolled him in 1st grade this past year, we'd still be having some challenge issues; they'd just be a bit less severe.

So we're course correcting now and are excited about it.