Nathan is starting pre-school on 18th January. He asks me every day at least 4 times a day when he can go.

he is so excited to learn "real things" (because, you know, the things mom teaches him at home are somehow not real??!!??)

poor dude - I hope he won't be too disappointed once the allure of being at school wears off.

Sweet.

Your kiddo's excitement is a good indication that you've done a great job of making him feel secure and confident to go take on the world without you. Kudos!

My daughter (2.75) told me the other day that she wants to go to preschool and learn math. I worry about her disappointment as well.

DD5 came home on the first day of kindergarten, wouldn't speak to me, sat down and had a big tantrum. When I finally got her to settle down and tell me what was wrong, she said, "They made us sing the alphabet like we were three!"

I think she was hoping to write her dissertation this year.

I know my son was expecting a lot more out of K than he got. When he had his first evaluation at age 5, the psychologist testing him asked him if he liked his kindergarten class. "No, not really," he replied. "What don't you like about it?" she asked. "Well," he sighed, completely dejected, "they don't teach any chemistry there."

Aculady, your child and mine may be clones. :-)

DeeDee

Madoosa, that is fantastic! Hopefully he loves it and has a great experience. My DD was just the opposite and begged to never go to school again. We ended up pulling her out of preschool. Similar to what doclori's child said, DD told us her preschool did work for babies. If I could find a strictly play based school with zero academics (do those even exist anymore?) maybe she would like it better but then again, I think part of the problem was her lack of relating to the other children in her class.

I see this in my daughter's future, and I don't know what I can do about it. Her daycare provider already spoke to me about my daughter's tendencies to try and opt out of group activities and "look down on" the other children. My wife and I spoke to my daughter about it and got her involved again. I think she expects that preschool will offer educational activities on her level, but I'm not so sure. IF they put her with the 4-5 year old children in a type of pre-k perhaps. The curricula posted by the preschools in my area aren't very specific. I'm going to start visiting schools in the new year, so my daughter can start after her birthday in March. I'll try and get detailed information during those visits.

The alphabet, letter recognition, basic shapes, counting with 1-to-1 correspondence, and number recognition will all be review for her. She's already learning to write numbers and letters and constantly asks me how to spell words. (I got a good chuckle when she finally asked me how to spell "spell". hehe.) At home I'm teaching her about patterns, simple addition and subtraction, and simple fractions. She loves starfall, and her vocabulary is huge, but she's not reading yet. She's getting a calendar for the new year to learn days and months, which she's showing some familiarity with already.

So... is preschool for review, fun, socialization and art projects, and home is for learning? Or should I maintain hope that I'll get help expanding her intellectual development? She's currently under the impression that preschool is for learning. Should I change that impression before she even begins?

I kind of dread the conversations I might have with the preschool reps. I'm expecting them to assure me that she has plenty to learn everywhere I go, and perhaps tell me that book learning is inappropriate for this age group. Will they believe me when I tell them that she asks to play with counting cubes and starfall, and to read her children's encyclopedias?

DAD22: My DD was pretty much in the same place as yours when she got to pre-K, and she loved her pre-K experience. She's an extrovert, so she loved the time with other kids. The learning part of the day was not dominant, and DD's ability was recognized immediately by her pre-K teacher, who found ways to keep DD engaged by enlisting her as a teacher's helper and mentor to the other students... for instance, DD got to read books aloud to her class. The students really admired DD for her intelligence.

And, more importantly probably, pre-K was just a few hours out of the day.

Anyway, it wasn't until she got to K that she found the educational experience extremely disappointing.

My DS3, almost 4) goes to a little in-home daycare run by a very smart woman. They don't do anything academic, but they paint, do yoga, frolic outside, sing, and read. He loves it, though it was a little bit of a better fit when he was younger (he is now on the older end). It's probably more like an extended playdate than anything, but that's fine. We can teach him at home.

I would be looking for something somewhat different if this was full-time daycare, but it's two half-days a week. You might want to ask around about small, good in-home places. I think DS has had a much more positive experience than DD, who went to a large center.

I'm glad your daughter had a positive experience with preschool. My daughter is extremely introverted. When she meets new people she goes mute for about an hour. At the park she prefers to watch other children instead of play with them (and she's told me so) but she'd rather they weren't there at all. She'd rather it be just me and her and the equipment. She does like calm, older children though, and just about anyone she sees regularly.

I'd be very pleased if she ended up in a roll like your daughter did, but I'm doubtful that she has the right attitude for it. Perhaps in the right environment she will surprise me. She'll be at full day preschool while her mom and I work, but only for three days a week. I think she'll spend the other 2 work days with her grandmother learning Chinese. My wife told me not to expect grandma to teach much else though.

I'm also concerned when I try to extrapolate from her current predicament what her kindergarten situation will be...

Doclori: <cleaning coffee off the keyboard> that's total blackmail material when she's 12.

-Mich

Mr W goes through this several times a week even with his acceleration. He questions much of what they are doing in class just about every day.

The greatest source of friction is the 1.5 hour nap time - he has not napped in 3 years. The rest is just the slow pace. ( He recently tested in the 90th percentile for a 7 year old on an achievement test. ) Some days he is perfect, others not so. Another is that he is seen by the staff as a PreK kid and not as a 7 year old in a Prek body.

I spend time every other night with him doing geometric puzzles and reading books. He is a lot better the following day.

We've got another adjustment coming up after the new years that may be the last one for a while. He is really excited about this and asks about it every day. We get a new set of questions every morning. Will I have to nap? Will I get to read big boy books? Will we talk about numbers? Can I study the solar system? Do they have dictionaries?

DD3 (almost 4) informed us over Christmas break that she was ready to move on to a real school now, she had done what there was to do at preschool and she wanted to go to a real school like her older sister did. When asked what she thought she would do at a 'real school" - her answer was, "what ever the teacher asks me to do!"
She is having a hard time right now at school because of boredom, we've talked to the teachers and asked for more,even brought in her books from home so she could do writing and stuff, and nothing has changed and she does nothing differently from the other kids. She has started to take over the teacher's desk though and tries to get the other kids to do what she wants them to do and then complains to the teacher that they aren't listening. Rather than seeing this as a ploy to get more interesting things going, the teacher sees it as a cute little game she plays.

What grade is her older sister in?

When I was a little kid, kindergarten didn't happen for some reason when I was five. I kept asking when I would get to go to school, and they kept telling me, "When you're six, when you're six." So I turned six in April, didn't get to go to school right then, and I think I may have thrown a tantrum.

My older sister was in second grade. The teacher was kind enough to let me come to school and sit on a stool next to my older sister's desk. I remember it being all day long, but maybe it was just an hour or two.

Um.... She is now being home-schooled, so by age she is in 3rd, if she were still in school she'd be in 4th, but at home she's doing a range of grades, mainly 6th.

This is what makes the comment so much more interesting - when we asked her if she wanted to stay home and have Daddy teach her like she does to DD8, she said no, she means she wants to go to the school her sister went to last year.

Every kid is different, and gifted kids are more different than most.