Do I remember right that he is mostly not miserable at school, and not feeling an intrinsic need to race ahead?
No, unfortunately...this is not the case. He seemed fine for about the first half of the year, and then things fell apart. It has been a struggle to get him to school every single day for months,with attendant tears on many occasions. His complaints are that it is boring, that it's too easy, that he has to do the same things every day, and that he never learns anything. The teachers have actually tried their best to give him some additional/different work (harder puzzles, some K worksheets; they write instructions for him instead of giving them orally, and have given him some other tasks in the classrtom to help with, I think). He is allowed to bring in books from home to read. He has friends and likes playground and center time, but he does not like going to school and is very vocal about it.
He remains well-behaved, so that is thankfully not an issue. I after-school him some and he likes that.
My feelings about DS and school have done a total about-face this school year. I was not worried about school for him really at all earlier in the year, because he is such a tractable and cheerful little dude and is also very social. Now I have seen that he can really become...depressed by school. He is actually doing worse in this school than DD ever was in the school we pulled her out of. He seems fine on the weekends and when out of school. It's clearly school-related and really, really different than anything we have gone through with his sister, where it's always been "Is it school? Oh, hell...who knows?"
