I would be really interested to hear from anyone who considered switching preschool/K type schools part way in and had their child attend days at the new one before exiting the old. How did you approach that with your child? What did your child decide? Did any decide to stick with their old school just out of being in a comfortable rut with it? Did they choose the new school just because it was novel rather than fundamentally a better fit? How did you help them make a good choice but without manipulating them?
Mr W was at a Montessori prior to his current school. Things were fine until he moved into the class with the 3-5 year olds. It was not much of a move.
He exhausted the opportunities of his "primary" class there in four months. He had two 5 year olds in with him and the rest were his age. They did little writing, reading, and there were few books and the puzzles were 18 piece or less and the other toys were on the same level. In other words, at 3 he was working on stuff he knew at 18 months. He was withdrawing into himself and spent the majority of the day just goofing off with nothing that interested him. At home he became "spacey" not listening to us and just running around smashing stuff together rather than the boy we known before who sat and read his books, focused for hours on his computer, or who engaged with us for hours. He also did not want to go to school.
They "assessed" him with an in-house achievement test and then proudly presented it to us. They stopped at the 3 year old skills and did not go any further. All the stuff they assessed him on he had known for years and almost all of the 4 and 5 year old stuff he already knew. The teacher said he had a problem doing his work, which consisted of doing the 18 piece puzzle he could do when he was less than a year old. When I asked if she thought he was bored, she said no. LOL. It was pretty clear that he'd be stuck in there for the next two years. Not good.
We briefly looked at trying to get him into the K program there, but as he had just turned 3, the size difference was too much. We also looked at moving him to another room, but everything was the same. He was too far ahead of what they could offer.
So. We started looking for an academic Prek/K program that was flexible with stuff that had a component that he did NOT know and which introduced new material and found one that would work. We then began the discussion about Mr W's skills and what our current problems were and they agreed to bump him up on a trial basis.
Mr W visited the new school during the early part of the school day and did not want to leave. His visit was a big hit as well and helped the executive director feel comfortable with skipping him. We then had to give the other school notice. Mr W spent the next two days talking about his new school, and he was such a pest about it, that the old one relieved us of the 30 day notice and we moved him the next Monday.
The first day of school with the older kids he told us he really liked it and thanked us for moving him. A few weeks later the director said he was a great fit and we could put him in PreK or K our choice. He started Prek a few weeks ago and is still very happy.
We just recently started play dates with his 4/5 year old classmates and its still a secret that he is 3. He fits in great and you cannot tell that he is the youngest by 11 months.
