Mr W (3y7m) is in an all-day academic preK with 4 and 5 year olds. The material in PreK is Kindergarten level for the local publics.
They spend 2.5 hours in the AM and the same in the PM doing letters & words, writing, numbers, and then art in a rotating stations. They are read to twice a day. He plays outside for 30 min at least twice a day.
He knows all of the standard material in the class, so they give him worksheets from the 1st grade work books to do which he mostly does perfectly. For example, he is working on number sequences and filling the blanks, ie 1,3,5,, and spelling of simple words like F_ll or S_mmer.
He loves to sing and they introduce new songs every other week and he gets twice weekly piano lessons with the 5 year old kids.
He also gets to read on his own during nap time which is 1.5 hours - he does not nap. He can fluently read level 1/2 books on his own silently.
His comment to me after his first day was, "Daddy, the kids can talk!" when I picked him up.
The staff has been great, with just one funny comment when Mr W first started after they saw his age but she is now a big supporter. But Mr W's weakest skill, writing, is on par with the best kid in class - and he is very charming, too.
We had the option of starting him in K, but wanted to take things slow - and we already know that Mr W's target school for 1st will not take him as a 4.5 year old.
The school did assess him without asking us last week but to their credit, it was to make sure they were giving him appropriate self-study material. He has a baseline achievement test coming up and they already know not to use any age-based ceilings.
And best of all, he wants to go to school every day.
