Hi,
I'm new around here and trying to figure out what to do with our 5 year old son. A little backround - We have a nanny who has a degree in early childhood education and she's been with him since he was around 1, so much of the credit goes to her. She spends probably 2-3 hours per day teaching him. He also goes to a play based preschool for a few hours 3 days a week and apparently behaves wonderfully and is a leader in the classroom. I guess he only argues with his older sister.

He learned all letters/sounds and reading Bob books a little after 2. Progressing from there to now, he's read many magic tree house and goosebumps books.

Knew his subtraction/addition facts by 4 including regrouping. Now knows multiplication/division. He just loves math. He has papers everywhere filled with numbers he's been adding up for anything he does - how long he's read for the past months, Rummy scores, uno scores, just anything he can keep track of.

We have a second grader who has weekly spelling tests and he pretty much aces those without studying them. Handwriting is fine and is currently learning cursive. Could use some improvement here because he just kind of mixes caps and lower case in his words.

Excellent with games, puzzles, word searches, word scrambles, etc. Overall, I really don't think I could come up with an academic weakness if i tried.

He's currently scheduled to go to kindergarten this fall. He's fairly small but is also right at the cutoff age so would be one of the older kindergarteners. Remembering our daughter's kindergarten curriculum we thought that just might be a waste of time so we spoke with principal about a grade skip. In order to do that they required an IQ test above 130 and a woodcock-johnson. We weren't really sure how he would do on an IQ test. Didn't know whether it was natural intelligence or just someone working with him a lot at an early age. Anyways, the Psychologist came out and said He's going to be an engineer and start saving up for MIT . Here are his results:

Verbal IQ 135
Performance Scale IQ 150
Processing Speed Quotient 128
Full Scale IQ 147

Verbal Subtests
information 17
Vocabulary 16
Word Reasoning 14

Performance Subtests
Block Design 17
Matrix Reasoning 18
Picture Concepts 19

Processing Speed Subtests
Symbol Search 13
Coding 17

Woodcock-Johnson III
Academic Skills 191
Academicc Apps 169

Letter-Word Identification 183
Calculation 187
Spelling 169
Passage Comprehension 151
Applied Problems 157
Writing Samples 168

Now, I'm just trying to figure out what all of this means and what to do about it. The pschologist recommended a few gifted schools in the area that cost about $20k per year each. While both my wife and I do fairly well, that's pretty much out of the question. Our school district is very good, but recently cut the gifted program for cost savings.

I just turned in the results to the school and they need to take it to the board for approval to skip to 1st grade. Now, I'm starting to think that isn't enough. But, I don't think it would be wise to start him out any higher due to his age, size and no full day school experience.

I think a single grade skip will be worthless academically, but can be good to do anyway at this stage. Recommendations are usually against skipping more than one grade at a time for social/maturational reasons anyway, and this way the school will already have acknowledged that your son has special needs. I'd also apply to the DYS program; your family consultant will probably have some useful input and can help advise the school. Good luck, and welcome.

I agree with Iucounu 100% - do take the skip if offered, and keep you eyes open to see if an opportunity arises to ask for subject acceleration in maybe Math or Reading or Both. I seriously doubt that your local gifted private school would be a good fit without some serious accomidations, and while some private school are wonderful about that, most have a sort of snotty 'all the kids here are gifted, so you get what we offer' sort of attitude. It may be worth touring the school, asking about scholarships and bringing work samples to use while asking very pointed questions about what grade level this sort of work would fit in with.

Another idea is to keep the nanny for another year and 'homeschool' kindy, and start school next year as a 2nd grader. Is the kindy a full day or half day? Kids seem to do better with half day programs even if they don't meet his needs academically.

Anyway - Welcome, and get to work on the DYS application, ok?

Smiles,
Grinity

We are definitely on board with the kindergarten skip. As Iocounu mentioned, it's not really going to solve much academically since he's well above the 1st grade level. But at least he wont have to sit around while the other kids learn their ABC's and counting to 10.

But, I think going any further would be a bad idea due to his age/maturity and never having experienced full day school.

Starting this fall, Kindergarten is now full day in our district.

We do have another two year old so the nanny will still be around. She can work with him a bit after school. Fortunately, he enjoys school work.

I had never heard about DYS until a week ago. Just stumbled across it looking for gifted discussion, so don't really know anything about the program. After a brief review, looks like he might qualify.

Thanks for the advice.

Perhaps instead of saying that a single grade skip is worthless, it might be better to say that a single grade skip is only the first step in addressing your child's needs. It is very likely that your son will need another grade skip down the line, but you can't get a second skip without having a first.

You might look into scholarships/financial aid for the private schools around you. We had to tighten our belts when we sent our daughter to a private school, but I can't imagine what elementary school would have been like anywhere else. Unfortunately, as wonderful as the the private school was, it only went through 5th grade. However a good foundation is in place and helped set our daughter up for a second grade skip.

Push for the first grade skip now, and start planning when you might want the next round of acceleration (whole, or subject) to occur. Having a highly gifted child means you will always be looking to keep him challenged.
-S.F.