I'm completely new to this forum but have found it a great resource so far. My son's birthday (Oct) falls just after the usual cut off for the school year. He is almost 2.5 yo and shows all the usual signs of being advanced, possibly gifted, his pre-school music teacher wonders if he's a genius but we take that with a pinch of salt.

There's a public montessori pre-k program that accepts kids who turn 3 by September. I'm wondering if we should get him evaluated/tested so we can make a case for getting him into the Pre-K program in spite of his age. It would make a huge difference 1) financially, as it's a public montessori 2) offer him engagement in a mixed age (3-6) classroom.

has anyone had experience with trying to get kids into pre-K early? or with the birthday cut-off issue?

the other question is about music lessons. My son really wants to play an instrument/all instruments! My husband and I don't have any music background so we enrolled him in standard toddler music class which is basically circle time with some rhythm activities and singing. Is it too early to find private instruction for him? should he just be playing and having fun banging on stuff instead of proper training at this age?

thanks much for any insight.

This young, honestly, PLAY is important. Very important.

I would not want to enroll in anything that led to a curtailment in available time for play and age-appropriate development in other (non-cognitive) domains.

Even if you're right and readiness is there, the sooner you introduce formal instruction, the sooner the gap widens to the point that you begin to be pressured to find an alternative when your child outstrips the rate/content faster than peers (even those older).

Personally, the longer you can delay having to deal with that asynchrony gap in a formal learning environment (that is, handwritten expression limited by motor development, literacy limited by emotional readiness for YA content, etc.) the better.

Unless your child is truly YEARNING for a formal setting, I'd hold off and/or seek something play-based.

I agree completely! We're running into that now!

With Montessori, you might be OK with this, but we are struggling right now because my daughter's Pre-K program put her in a year early (we came up with another plan to keep her on par with her age group, but her school couldn't keep up & accelerated her). Now, we need to figure out next year... she graduates her pre-K this year (with pretty much no asynchrony -- she's even the size of the other kids!) with pretty much no option for next year.

Public has a strict no early entry policy (even in charters), so we've had to go the private route, which still involves evaluations and paperwork, etc. So, if you can avoid acceleration until they are at least old enough to be in the "public system" you might be in a better place.

Personally, we have our little girl mostly play oriented with a single instructional class (she takes Ballet) at this age (3.9) and she is thriving. Best of luck on your decision making process!

My child loves music. Loves it. At 2, he really enjoyed the standard toddler music offerings for a few weeks. We tried both music together and kindermusic. About 3-4 weeks into each of them, the repetition got to be too much. They each pretty much drove the love of music out of him. Just too much repetition. After a break of months (is it really possible to deschool a 2 year old), he loves music again. When he is older, we will try one on one lessons with a fun professional adult, maybe something like School of Rock.

Just an aside, one private piano teacher I contacted after he turned 3 told me she would not take a child younger than 4.5 because it was not developmentally possible for kids younger than that to understand counting to five. Like many others here, that was something we passed before 1. I consider it a gift she was so honest with her preconceptions, it saved us a lot of heartbreak.

For us, exposure to instruments was key to restoring his love of music. We never pressured or told him to do anything, just have a little instrument corner. My husband and I can't play anything but by having a little piano around, my son has pretty much taught himself. I have no idea how.

DS started asking at 2 if he could learn the violin. He kept at it and a month before 3 we started. We found a teacher that usually took children from 5 (non Suzuki) and she has been great. He didn't particularly enjoy group music but loved one on one teaching. He's 6 now, still loves it... . He did Montessori 3-6 at 3 1/2 for one year but we elected to send him for only 3 hours, 2 days a week.

We did some piano lessons pretty early, I think my son was an older 3 when we started. I did not want suzuki for him because he was reading and I thought he would enjoy learning to read music. I had to really search for a non-suzuki teacher that would take that age. It all depends on the teacher. This teacher spent only stretches of a few minutes actually at the piano. They had other activities such as a big floor mat with spaces and lines (a staff) and would play twister (put your hand on a line, now your foot on a space, etc). Or jump on a space, now on a line (later jump on the c note, etc) They had music bingo, and a computer game to learn names of notes. They would go from activity to activity with momentum and an air of fun.

If you call music teachers ask if they have experience with the age group and examples of what they do during lessons.

The books we used were from http://www.musicforlittlemozarts.com/ You can even buy the characters.

Agreed. This is pretty close to our experience too. DS just turned 4 on Wednesday. He's graduating from his PreK this spring and we've run into strict age cut off policies in the public systems here. He screened this week for a private kindergarten and will be enrolling for September. My understanding is the school will be filing with the state monthly on his progress for ongoing demonstration of appropriate placement. Before prek, the preschool was required to do the same thing for a few months (2.2-2.7) when they moved him in from the daycare. I'm not sure what the following year will look like. It's likely that to transition him to public, K will be required again. We'll figure that out later I guess. At this point we just have to move forward with what's best for him. So depending on the state regulations and private placement opportunities in your area, it's possible to follow an accelerated track (though I don't know how far). Some days I feel like the whole thing is such a mess; it's been challenging. With DS though there were no other options. DS has made it very clear through his words and behavior each time he's needed to move up. I feel lucky that so far he's been fairly well received.
Good luck with your decisions! Does the Montessori accept students on a rolling basis? I wonder if you decide the programming and environment is right for her there, if they would consider a mid year start after her birthday?

on Music:

DD insisted she start violin at 2.5 (saw my old tiny suzuki violin). The lessons were very inexpensive so I agreed (they are very expensive where we moved so I wouldn't have started her here at that age). She likes it, but doesn't love it. She could play as well as the 4yo's at her recital before she turned 3.. but to what end? She's sort of indifferent about it and doesn't care to practice. She is now just-turned 4 and still playing suzuki. She likes the concerts so doesn't want to quit but doesn't like to practice. She is the type that wants to try everything but doesn't want to continue so we are letting her keep going even though she just wants to play so she can play in the concerts. Just FWIW.
Your DS sounds more musically inclined.

Preschool: I would totally do it if the school allows. It sounds like your DS barely misses the cut off so not that big of a deal anyway. DD does Montessori and has been in 2 different schools. The first was a younger class (still 3-6) but they didn't challenge her. She went to school crying and hated it despite the teacher. We moved to a new school & went in with showing her reading skills, math, ect. She loves it. LOVES it. They have her read to them at her level, does the math of the older kids. She has fine motor issues & they are addressing that too. Not every montessori is the same - even though I loved her first one, it just wasn't a good fit for DD.

Thank you for all the responses! I'm taking everything in. In terms of widening the gap with formal instruction, I think that gap already exists regardless of my choices. However, he's not-fully potty trained and he can't dress himself so he's got lots to learn developmentally, but things like that fall on parents to teach outside of school. I do like the idea of just letting him play as much as possible until he definitively shows us he's bored or not challenged. I have been trying to pre-empt the problem because of how hard it is to get into any school in our area. Every childcare, pre-K and kindergarden has a wait list or lottery system.

Jenna, the montessori doesn't accept on a rolling basis because it's in high demand - spaces given through a lottery system. There's a private montessori I've talked to about letting him start after his birthday but even then I'm on a waitlist and they seemed extremely reluctant. As with your son, I guess it feels like you have to fight the system every year?!

I waffle between "give him opportunities to excel early in the areas he seems passionate about" and "hold off just in case it's a passing 2 year old interest"... I would really hate for lessons and practice to bore him or kill his love of music. Whereas now, it's this big smorgasbord of all music is awesome, all instruments are fun.

SAHM: love the idea of the instrument corner.

My husband and I have decided to chill out a little bit... it can all get pretty overwhelming very quickly.

I would look for a high quality play based program where kids are encouraged to explore and have free choice of many activities going on concurrently with a little bit of circle time/story time thrown in.

Is this montessori program the only acceptable public school in your area?

When DD was around 33 months, I thought Montessori would be a good fit for her. Her father on the other hand was not all that convinced so I stayed home with DD this year and she did (too many) classes and lessons. I'm exhausted.

We are looking into a couple of 100% play-based programs for next year. DD was a very academically inclined child but she has changed somewhat recently. The old DD is still somewhere in there but she prefers to play these days and the only "schooling" type of activity she wants to do is music.

DD was probably ready for music lesson at 2.5. However, she wanted to stick to free play and would run away as soon as we tried to teach her so we outsourced music lessons to a professional when she finally said she was ready to learn music. Once her teacher got an overall picture of her cognitive development, lessons started moving much faster so much so that it seems to be going too fast to me but DD is forging ahead. I don't' want her to burn out so I'm trying to focus on enjoyment rather than progress. She gets wiggly then teary time to time but when she is focused, she looks and performs much "older" if that makes sense. Overall, I'm really happy that she is learning music.

Regarding music: We started lessons in piano at age 4 (traditional and not suzuki). It was hard for me to find someone who taught traditional piano for children at that age.
Before that, for my very musical son, we enrolled him in a very good play based developmental pre-k and preschool program 5 days a week. They had daily singing, circle time, dancing to music, music at naptime, sing-alongs with music instuments etc. I also bought him a cheap keyboard and taught him things like Twinkle Twinkle and Old Macdonald (I just googled for these songs as I don't know music). 4 was a great age to start music, in retrospect. My child is a hard worker and he is very eager to learn and is an extremely compliant and musically inclined student. But, he would have had a hard time with the practice requirements if he started earlier than that. And with instruments, practicing is essential to progress. Otherwise the child might get frustrated and want to quit. And be aware that at the early ages, the music teacher might expect you, the parent to be available at every lesson to take notes and learn with your child so that you can go home and help with the daily practice sessions. You need to be with your child while he practices (in our case, our teacher expects my help at home until DS is 8 years old). So, that is a long term time commitment for the parent.
I recommend that you wait until your child is atleast 3.5 years if you want to enroll him in formal music lessons. Piano is a lot easier for very young kids to learn than violin from what I see at our music school. And until then, keep the music exposure constant.
Good luck.

Oh-- one tip that we've learned over the years about music, too:

listen to EVERYTHING. World music, folk idioms, classical, pop, country, big band-- everything.

This is the exposure that means that my DD finds even rhythmically "difficult" or "strange" piano masterworks quite trivial to learn.

I also agree with ashley about age. We found a piano teacher who would take DD before she turned six, but that was unusual-- the key was that she already had quite advanced math and reading skills (she could learn to read music quite well).

Until then, we had a musical instrument petting zoo at our home. My DD loved the recorder when she was two.

You have some great advice here!

In hindsight I agree that play based learning is probably your best bet right now. it means that your child is having fun and figuring out things for themselves - in an academic environment they learn too quickly that this is moving too slowly.

On music - Aiden started piano at 3.5 years - I managed to find a traditional teacher who met him and then agreed to teach him. She was great at going with the flow and showed him the guitar, recorder, some drums and more over the 6 months he was with her. Then he started nagging for the violin - we stopped piano, took a 6 month break from lessons and then started Suzuki violin. now fast forward 3 years and all three of my kids (7, 5, 3) do suzuki violin and the older two do suzuki piano too. I love our teacher as she is gentle and kind and ALL about the original Suzuki concept of making beautiful people first and beautiful music as a result of that.

They are allowed to learn non-suzuki pieces, they are allowed to jump around to a certain degree (eg Aiden only wants to learn the piano pieces that match the book 1 violin pieces - he was already picking them out on his own so she is teaching them to him now. ) She also offered reading music as soon as she could see that he would enjoy it - but it's only there when he wants to do it.

We have always had an instrument box at home - with a host of percussion instruments, recorders, home made shakers etc.

Ditto the instrument box and petting zoo. The recorder, shaker eggs, guitar, and little piano saw the most love here. We still haven't bought drums but I have no doubt he'd love them too...

Montessori was a wonderful fit for our DS (PG) at every age but 3, when he had a teacher who was extremely rigid (think Tiger Mom vs. a true Montessori approach). So I can't speak for that age, exactly, but all other years there went well (from right after age 2-to-nearly 6, he spent the full three year cycle in primary). The school he was at had very well-trained teachers and they were always willing to borrow more materials from other, including older, classrooms. He became friends with some other, slightly (1 year?) old boys who were also quite smart. DH and I suspect at least MG for three of them. Unusual cohort indeed. DS thrived because he could so easily balance the play he needed there with access to math and reading materials. It was a great fit. Honestly, I don't know if a play-based school would have worked for him. We did try another school (loosely Montessori, far more play focused in reality) during a summer break time and it was a disaster. Not enough structure to keep him interested/occupied and his energy was a big problem as a result.

As others have said, there is a big difference in Montessori programs, so I would certainly visit and learn about it. See if they would be open in her case to admitting her a few months below their normal cutoff.

We got DS6 into pre-K early. He is a late Oct. birthday and the cut off is Sept. 1st. Best thing we ever did. He is in 1st grade at a private school, started there in K. It was so much easier to get them to make an exception to take them early since he had already done Pre-K at a different school and proven he fits just fine with older kids.

We did have to push a bit to have the Pre-K school agree to taking him. They did some tests etc. but still, way easier than showing up for K asking thme to take him early without him doing Pre-K first.

Did the same exact thing with DS4.(Late Nov. birthday) This time, much easier due to the history they have with DS6. They know we are not kidding when we say the kids need to be accelerated....:-)

mlam: I think thats a great choice for music... Maybe find an older play-based music class he can join? Then it's still fun & games but slightly more advanced. They have "little twinklers" music classes (a pre-suzuki fun music class). They didn't have those where we used to live, but that would have been a better choice for us if it had. You can google "little twinklers, suzuki" and the city where you live.

Have you checked what their criteria is for entry? In my experience, most preschools/pre-k programs are most concerned about emotional readiness, social skills, soft skills (e.g. listens, follows directions)and self-help skills (e.g. potty trained)with advanced cognitive ability being the least of their concerns for entrance. As you evaluate your child's current ability levels in each of the above criteria, consider whether the demands of the program would outweigh the benefits. I personally think that many programs demand complete toileting independence at an age that is not developmentally appropriate.

For my DS3, I realized how challenging the emotional and social demands are for some gifted children even while very young. They are so asynchronous and may be beginning to realize how different they are from other children. Meanwhile, they may end up in a social netherworld between age groups unless they have the verbally expressive skills, emotional/social skills and motor skills to fit in with an older group. Before committing to any program, spend time observing how well the teachers provide social/emotional skill building and how well they scaffold children during conflict resolution. When evaluating programs, consider which ones offer the most opportunity for development in all areas especially ones you already think may need more support.

Carefully compare the schedules of all the schools. I've found myself enthralled with lovely program description only to see a schedule of "circle time, x planned activity, snack, circle time, x planned activity or free play, circle time". If you think your child will flourish in a very structured environment with lots of transitions, this may be for you. For my DS, the complete opposite holds true, although a very fair argument could be the nature of pre-k is to prepare your child for the structure of k. At your child's age, having predominantly the freedom to choose activities may provide the best opportunity for discovery and growth.

Finally, there could be a more advantageous middle ground for the music interests. Some performing halls offer programs where children can freely experience all types of instruments, and I've heard of teachers who offer an investigation of sound, rhythm and ear training using both traditional and non-traditional objects from around the house for children without the necessity of committing to an individual instrument or the rigor of lessons. Perhaps this might be a first step for your child.

The montessori school is the only public pre-K program. We could keep him in his current childcare/preschool program which is mostly play based with circle time, art, science and music sessions, It's synagogue-affiliated, NAEYC accredited.

In circle time, the young 2's class he's in is learning letters, one letter a week. My son is learning to read and can do sign language for the whole alphabet. But again, if he's not complaining, I guess we should just leave it be.

GHS, thanks! We have just talked to his toddlers music class teacher and she will evaluate over the next few lessons if she feels he can be moved up to twinklers! There are 3.5 - 5 year olds in twinklers so it will be interesting to see if he fits in class with older kids. It's just once a week, so no harm done either way.

Mlam, I PMd you.