This is just my two cents, and I don't know anything about your school district's policies on acceleration, so:
You may want to help him learn some of the 2nd grade stuff that he doesn't know. Sometimes schools can be amazingly pedantic about the need for curriculum mastery. Remember, 98% of kids in a given school aren't gifted and most of this large group can't fill in gaps in knowledge as quickly as gifted kids can. Teachers have very little experience with kids who can just skip stuff and pick it up easily later.
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As an aside, this board sometimes has a lot of negative posts about "hothousing" (xoxosmom, I'm not referring to your post here, but to ones I've seen over the past couple years). I think these posts can be a little unfair and can lead to the misconception that if a child is truly gifted or highly gifted, s/he'll learn everything without help (and that non-gifted kids need to be taught).
This isn't true at all. If it were, there would be no need to send gifted kids to school at all (or homeschool them) and places like the Davidson Academy etc. wouldn't exist. Everyone, no matter how brilliant, needs instruction from someone who is more knowledgeable about a subject. Two of my kids adore science, and beg me to teach them about it. My eldest says that learning is more fun when I'm helping him. Does this mean they aren't gifted?
Also, over-emphasizing the statement that "my child teaches himself" can undermine arguments for getting accomodations in school (overworked teachers can use this as an reason to deny help, saying that "if he can teach himself, my primary duty has to be to the others, who can't teach themselves.").
Sorry, not trying to offend anyone, but this, umm, hothousing stuff, kind of bothers me. It can be divisive.
Val
