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.

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

We didn't do that.

We started to-- and (thankfully) were steered toward homeschool instead by some kind veteran classroom teachers who took one look at DD (even without test results-- it was THAT obvious that she in no way belonged in that setting) and said "do NOT do this."

Our plan B was to delay the merge until 3rd grade. Unfortunately, that plan only lasted about 14 months, because that's where she was in 14 months (at 6yo).

The work was still inappropriate, and ill-fitting.

This was largely about factors other than DD's academic readiness, by the way, but that was a part of it. She would have been five for the entirety of her kindy year. Instead, she entered a cyberschool 15 months later as a third grader.

In other words, we bypassed early kindergarten entry entirely, and slipped through the loophole which permitted ANY appropriate "grade placement" for a student who was "eligible" for school-- as, being over 6yo, she then was.

She's apparently PG, though, and was always socially VERY "old" for age. That makes a big difference.

Kindergarten went fine, it was very center-based and only half day, so it was interesting enough. It was 1st and 2nd grade that were disasters and eventually we did both subject and whole-grade accelleration.

If I could go back, I would definitely have pushed early entry to K.

We bypassed regular kindergarten. We hit the wall with DS in daycare at 3.5, had to push for early pre-K a few months later, and he blew through that in 4 months even though he was hanging out with the kids 1-2 years older (pre-K and K mix a lot in daycare - when they left at the end of summer, he was left drifting)... the biggest issue we had was boredom and not feeling comfortable with his peers. Teachers loved him and saw no signs of issues (he is so compliant when teachers look at him and he is so charming that peers usually like him, especially the girls, but he was just not happy anymore).

We ended up sending him full time to private GT program at age 4, at DS's insistence for a change, and he was the youngest there but he loved it so much - his classmates were exactly the peers he had been looking for. However, it was a compressed K-1st grade, and he was 2 years younger than he would have been eligible for public K. I can not imagine making him go into public K when he was eligible. But - like HK's DD, this is really a statement of who he is and what he needed, not really an example that you are looking for.

I had a little different approach...for perspective, DD is averaging 2 grades ahead in achievement and it looks like she will be somewhere in the neighborhood of 99.8% for IQ. I told her to just go to kinder and have fun and make lots of friends. I supplemented at home with whatever interests she had. I did not give the kinder teacher much of a heads up and they figured out pretty quickly that she was ahead. They started having her spend 20 min per day with the reading teacher and brought her to the attention of the gifted teacher (who usually does not get involved until 3rd). The school is doing many things right and could be doing more...but she will most likely be nominated for the districts special classroom with the top 1% of students. Because of the available programs in place, I have not advocated for grade acceleration...she only has one more year before the special program starts and all the teachers and administrators at the school know her and are watching out for her.
For us, it was the right decision because dd had some sensitivities that she worked through with age and she learned some good socialization skill and I figured that it would be a good year for the school to get to know her.

DS enjoyed his play-based (public, Canadian) kindergarten. He made friends and enjoyed most of the activities. The teacher got him advanced reading material when it became obvious he needed it, and tried to do more advanced math with him.

The main benefit for DS was they helped him with his pencil grip and other fine-motor skills. These are things he resisted us teaching him at home. Also, his K teacher was the one who picked him out as gifted - so, it was pretty good overall.

Grade 1 was actually harder. Hoping gr2 is somehow better...

K was mostly OK for my DS16. He went in reading at at least a 2nd/3rd grade level. He was 1 out of 2 early readers in his class, and there were two others that joined them mid-year. For us K was only 1/2 day 3 hours of lessons and a twenty minute snack/recess in the middle. If it had been longer perhaps it would have been a problem but they switched activity every 20 minutes most of the time so there wasn't much time to get bored. And it was good for him to see phonics (he taught himself to read at 3) and practice handwriting in a formal way. Watching their schedule almost made me dizzy. DS didn't really mind as there was a lot of variety. Although he didn't learn a lot academically.

The teacher did know that he was ahead academically. I was volunteering once a week and the teacher made me in charge of taking DS & another student to library to find appropriate reading level so they could participate in the AR program that the older elementary kids were doing. But not much was done for math enrichment. They only spent 20 minutes a day on math, and the level they expected was particularly low.

As other parents say the older grades was more of a problem. DS had the most problems in early elementary in 2nd grade mostly because the teacher wasn't a good fit.

With my first DS (crazy gifted/2E), his first kindergarten was a nightmare. He was really young and small for his grade but very advanced academically. I switched him a few months into K bc he was clearly distressed, wetting his pants and telling me the teacher gave hugs to the Good Kids, but he didn't get hugs because he was one of the Bad Kids. When I talked to the teacher, she told me that DS "didn't put away his Crayolas, the first time he was asked" and that I should pray (yes, really!) for his behavior with him before each school day (at a public school). So I transferred him to a half-day kindergarten with a really kind teacher, classroom pets, and emphasis on friendship/creativity/learning the routines. Probably not ideal in terms of academics, but he was happy. At the end of the year, his teacher told me she thought he'd be president some day, and that he was the brightest child she'd ever taught.

With DS2E#1--he always had straight As and blew the top out of every state achievement test in every area, without fail. However, his report cards always stated he was "off task." I didn't know then what I know now (I went on to get a degree in gifted ed and taught), but I knew enough to know that didn't make much sense. Used to beg them to just give him MORE and keep him busy. He was a very busy kid and academically motivated, and more would have helped, because he was so quick and interested.

With second DS2E#2 (also 2E, but different profile), K went okay, good teacher and fewer complaints (although he would NOT "color" and preferred drawing, socializing, etc.). Not much academic learning but a fairly happy kiddo, despite being light-years ahead of curriculum in reading and mathematical reasoning. He is not a "give me more" kid, though, because he is so happy in his own head and does not prefer to do a lot of worksheets.

Second grade year (with DS2E#2) was our horrible year--it's interesting to see others have had the same experience. In our district, anyhow, it seems that second grade is really a repeat of first grade, trying to get everyone more "even" in their skills and abilities. DS spent a lot of time just sitting and waiting, it was a highly traditional classroom (no differentiation, the teacher didn't believe in that), and a lot of time making puppets out of erasers that he'd play with while he spent every recess sitting on the steps (punishment for talking). A *lot* of time. He is one to invent little games and will entertain himself for hours.

I think *so much* depends upon the teacher's educational philosophy and approach toward the students. My kids' (public) elementary school is part of the PYP program (pre-IB, inquiry-based learning) and it was an excellent fit for the most part. I also think a lot of early success in school depends on the child. Some kids are happy just being the top dog and others may wither on the vine.

I wish both of my sons had more academic challenge in their earlier schooling. Naively, I was under the impression that everything was (more or less) okay because they enjoyed school and the teachers were communicative and positive (mostly). Middle school for DS#2 has so far been pretty nightmarish, and if I'd had better information about DS and his ability to adapt, learn, and progress, it might have been a little less of an ordeal.

I guess I'm saying: whatever you decide to do, keep your eye on your child and make sure he is learning something that puts him in the zone. I'm not sure it matters exactly what that is, but they need to learn how to learn what someone else wants them to learn.

My son entered kindergarten at 4 and had a lot of issues with social/emotional maturity. I didn't push him ahead -- he made the cutoff with a week to spare. Even though he was already academically advanced for his age, I seriously considered holding him back a year for the emotional maturity but since he had already taught himself to read, I decided holding him back would be an academic disaster.

He had an amazing kindergarten teacher who was able to challenge him and gave him work on his level, while dealing with other kids who barely knew their letters. Socially and emotionally he struggled and had morning meltdowns frequently. His teacher often had to peel him out of the car for me. He didn't really make friends in his class.

I'm glad now that I didn't hold him back, because 1st grade was a total nightmare academically, although it was a great success socially. He was so bored and unchallenged in 1st grade, that I couldn't imagine where we'd have been if I'd held him back. I really learned what a difference the right teacher makes, since he went from an amazing kinder teacher to a terrible first grade one. He had a great year socially however, and made good friends and wanted play dates with school friends.

I guess my point is that the success of early kinder will depend on how mature your son is. If maturity is an issue you might consider starting kinder on time and skipping a grade later when he is more mature. The difference in maturity between an 8.5yo and a 9.5yo is much smaller than the difference between a 4.5yo and 5.5yo.

Our daughter is a November baby and her kindergarten school allowed early entry - she was SOOO ready for it, academically as well as emotionally. I think you have to have both to be confident putting your kid in early will be successful.

My son on the other hand is a December baby and the school district we were in at the time did not allow early entry at all, so we enrolled him in a head start program instead, 3 hours a day, weekly... so he finally enrolled in K when he was 5 and 7 months. And it was a miserable experience. He hated school. Every day he would cry that he didn't want to go. He wasn't being bullied, he just couldn't sit still for as long as they required and he was so bored! To make matters worse, his teacher didn't believe in testing Kindergartners for gifted, so we never even got the chance that year to get him tested. In first grade he was tested, and we even had to move him into the "gifted" teachers class, but it was a much better year for him, being challenged with work though we still have issues with him not wanting to sit still for any length of time.

All that to say, if we had been given the opportunity to put him in early, we would have taken it - thinking he was academically ready, and likely regretted the decision. He was no-where near ready for what traditional school requires at that age.

DS turned 5 in June and started K in late August. He was already reading independently and could do all the counting etc they were expected to learn.

His K teacher was awesome! She did her best to differentiate and actually worked with him on his reading (his strongest subject by far). She seemed as excited as we were to see how far he could progress. In some of the metrics like counting to 20 she would just let him go as far as he could, just to see what he could do.

His first grade teacher was awful, and we just had to hold our noses and deal with it. Second grade was pretty good, and I am cautiously optimistic third grade will be more like K.

So really, YMMV, it depends on the teacher and how GT friendly your school system is.

Hope this helps!

DD is one term into kindergarten and already completed the 40 week course (in 10 weeks) - the teacher is amazing and doing her best to differentiate.

DD loves going because of the social side and is getting used to school culture. I really think it has helped starting her at 5 and not earlier as (even though she is exceedingly mature) the social dynamics are confusing to her, at this age she is just that much further along in being able to reason and therefore when there are difficulties at school socially, she is able to address them in a way that isn't damaging to her self esteem. I'm not sure at 4.5 she could have achieved that.

I supplied the school with her report at enrolment - I haven't mentioned it since although she does do a private gifted pull out program once a week as the school does not have a GT program. (arranged prior to school start, as school isn't compulsory until 6 this wasn't really a drama, many parents choose to keep there kids home once a week until they adapt to the new routine.)

Teacher has already advised that next year DD will be skipped one year, we have 20 weeks left and it is likely she will be skipped 2 plus acceleration.

So I guess I think that a "normal K" experience is best and then push hard for acceleration once faculty knows DS better and you also know how this school works.

DS's summer birthday meant he would have been a young 5 or a young 6 going into K. (I can't have imagined putting him in as a young 4.) We opted for young 6 to give him an additional, wonderful year at his preschool, figuring we could always accelerate if it became necessary. We also had no idea he was HG.

When it came time to have the acceleration discussion with the school, it was met with a lot of resistance. They were basing his reading ability on a test he had taken several months previous (when he was reading slightly but not dramatically above grade level), saying that the last time they skipped a kid, he was reading at the 4th grade level. Of course, not a week later, DS's reading ability skyrockets and quite obviously goes well past easy readers. His WJ achievement scores that he took later in the year came out average 4th grade ability...so go figure. Yet another reason to trust the opinions of parents.

We ended up enrolling him in the first grade of a gifted private school for this year, so we stopped short of getting a grade skip at the public school. K was a great experience for him, though. It was half day which I think made it less dull for him, and he got to meet kids his own age who live really close by and gets along with well. So there was a lot of non-academic, valuable experience for him. It's too bad the academic experience fell short.

My DD had a half day kindergarten experience too. She had a clasrsroom teacher who were truly affectionate and encouraging to her. That teacher had us read "The Spirited Child" because she recognized our daughter as a very sensitive, perceptive and spirited little girl.

After reading that book my first reaction was that my daughter had a spirited dad and my wife had a spirited husband LOL.

It was the first inkling that raising daughter was not going to be a "just add water and watch it grow" experience...

I don't think early entrance would have worked for my DD. To make it an academic fit, she would had to go from preK to 3/4/5 grade, depending on the subject matter with writing skills that are still developing.

Her K/1 program is play-based and child-centered. The irony of spending a little fortune on her tuition for her to not learn anything academic is not lost on us. Come second grade, when she is 7, school will administer a comprehensive academic evaluation and develop an individual academic plan for her.

We're still very uncomfortable with the whole idea of her being at this school but she seems happy and for now, if she is happy, so are we.

My HG son did all right in K but he was accelerated part-time to 1st and the teacher gave him a lot of his own work to do and excused him from some assignments. Basically, he got the K experience but was allowed to skip some of the K boredom. I don't know how common this is. His teacher was special. For reference, DS was reading Harry Potter in K. His math skills are not as strong but he was certainly beyond K math.

kindergarten is a waste of time for a gifted child unless a child needs it in certain areas (for instance, learning rules/social skills, motor skills like cutting/pasting, etc). If the kindergarten is focused on academics and the child is already beyond those academics, it is not an ideal situation, because the child gets very little out of it.

We accelerated DD after 3 months (and the district dragging their feet in terms of testing her, meeting, etc). She did fine in first grade, indicating that K really is a waste of time even though she missed all that material.

I didn't want to accelerate DS because of various delays. Academically he was doing great but he had motor and speech issues. The teacher did her best to differentiate some of the work, like math and reading. He fractured his skull a few months after K started and had severe double vision for months, so then it became more about survival and getting through the year than learning anything. I didn't do anything with him whatsoever but when he got to first grade he was recovered, and so far ahead that I knew we had to do something since first grade was even more of a poor fit than kindergarten, esp. with a teacher who refused to do any kind of differentiation. The work in K and 1st grade is so easy that most highly gifted kids could probably skip right to second grade and do fine (I'm not necessarily advocating that because of other issues with accelerating that much, but in terms of academics, both kindergarten and first grade are pretty much a waste of time for kids who are already reading when they start. The writing curriculum had some benefit).

My PG son has decided that he could have only done the even years of elementary school....2 and 4...if kindergarten had totally focused for him on writing (handwriting and composition), fine motor skills, play, and discussion of real literature (not beginning to read stuff) he would have loved it and it might have helped his chicken scratch he has 5 years later. Years 1 and 5 were just time place holders (three wasn't only because we grade skipped him over it). Hindsite 20/20 I wish I had homeschooled K for him and paid for OT.

Kindy was great for my HG oldest. She never wanted to learn how to read before then, and she learned that year. She loved being in big kid school, and her teacher was awesome. First and second grade were the terrible years. 3rd and 4th were bearable.