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DD5 has a just-beyond-the-cut-off birthdate and my request to start K early was denied. She's now in K, after a year of DD displeasure, and has a teacher who is giving her some grade 1 work already (teacher initiated - imagine that!). DD5 is adamant that she will be skipping grade 1 and is tolerating K only on that understanding. Leaving aside my obvious need for a copy of The Manipulative Child, I do agree with her about the skip.

I am wondering how extensively, if at all, those of you who successfully advocated for a skip attempted to cover off the target year's curriculum prior to advocating?

At home DD5 is already zooming through the math workbooks I know the school uses in grade 1. I am intending to add the spelling and writing workbooks, both for her pleasure (where else could I post that without sounding delusional!) and as documentation for the school. When early entry was denied, I was told a skip would be possible, if appropriate. I don't know of anyone who's done it at the school, so I don't know what 'appropriate' means in this context and I don't intend to ask until I have my documentation ready.

My plan is to have her complete as much of the workbooks as she wants, test in January/February, complete the Iowa Acceleration Scale and bring it all to the school February/March. Is that a realistic time frame or do I need to start earlier? The school is putting a lot of effort into her 2E older brother, which I'd prefer not to distract them from during this term.

Many thanks.
We didn't do anything -- the school knew DS from preschool and that he needed to skip K, and they did the work in that direction. They gave him the WJIII test just after the second year of preschool, which gave them whatever they needed in their paperwork to make them happy. They had told us that they couldn't skip him *into* K, but that they could skip him *over* it and into 1st, and they did.

His birthday is five days past the cutoff.

Since your school already appears to be working on the skip, I would just check with them in March or so and see how things are going -- they will probably want a meeting at the end of this school year to set things up for next year.
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