Hi Annette,

You've got some great advice already, but I did just want to chip in that I agree with the others that 3.5 is too early to be planning too far ahead. I can relate so much to what you are saying - I had all the same thoughts as you when my PG daughter was your age and I felt like I had to make sure I got everything right. I contacted schools when she was 3.5 to enquire about early entry etc. I was really worried that she was never going to fit, that if I didn't get the mix right straight away and getting her in with older kids she was never going to learn a thing. I had read every book going, attended seminars by experts in giftedness, spoken to them about my daughter's specific circumstances and felt I knew exactly what she needed. I was convinced of it.
Then she started school and I realised that all my reading was only useful in terms of knowing what options were out there, what COULD work, etc. What I had created in my head was an ideal scenario that in reality was brought down by asynchrony and the reality that school really IS about more than academics, especially when they are just starting out. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any issues with acceleration, including radical acceleration in theory. But all the theory in the world doesn't deal with the fact that at 3.5 - even at 5.5, which is my daughter's age, they are still little kids. They only have a few years life experience.
In dd�s first six months of school we�d changed schools, reversed a grade skip and we�re planning for reinstatement of the skip down the track. The path I was so convinced of when dd as 3.5 has turned out very differently to what was planned and if there is one thing I have learnt is that there is no right way of doing this. The books are useful, the gifted experts too. But they don�t know your kid.
I was convinced my daughter needed either early entry in to school or entry in to grade one when she was 3.5 and we ended up with her starting in grade 1 / 2 composite having just turned 5. She did the work without issue and made friends easily, however we really found that her sensitivity and lack of worldliness were no match for the rough and tumble of the older kids at school. She is not emotionally immature by any stretch. Most people think she is a couple of years older than she is as she is tall and articulate and appears very calm. But she just melted down every night after school. She�s now in a kindergarten class with an experienced gifted teacher, reading 6th grade + books and working across a range of grades in maths from grade 2 up. She loves it. However socially it�s not perfect and there is only so much differentiation a teacher can manage, so she will be skipped, possibly a couple of times on recommendation, in the future.
I guess what I am saying is the path can be pretty twisty and turn-y . My kid at 5.5yo is a very different girl to the girl she was at 3.5yo. While always sensitive, just how sensitive didn�t become apparent until she was around 4.5yo, when her awareness of death and injury overwhelmed her for example. She�s now much less anxious about those things, but I didn�t see that coming for example and it impacted her ability to cope with her skip significantly. So take it year by year � even month by month and see how things go. And don�t invest too much in one plan because it can, in my experience, make it harder to see if it isn�t working.
Good luck!


Last edited by Kvmum; 07/10/11 08:17 PM.