We are currently moving my DD6 from half kinder/ half grade 1 to fulltime grade 1. And anticipate more grade skips later in the futre. My question is what do you do about the subjects/topics that your child misses when they skip a year? In particular I'm thinking about social studies stuff that is done in one grdae but then may not be done again later, but that the kids are expected to know. I'm not really concerned about this, more curious as someone asked me and I didn't have an answer for htem.
In my mind, I divide elementary education into a few catagories:
Skills: Telling time, Being able to do long division, penmanship
Fund of Knowledge: Why do we celebrate Thanksgiving?
Social/emotional: Gaining the skill to balance my needs and the group's needs.
With skips, I think that the Fund of Knowledge area is the least worry, because most gifted kids are 'alert' to their environment in ways that ND kids aren't. At our house, DS used to hold the remote control while watching simple TV shows, and pause anytime he didn't understand why something was supposed to be a joke. He got a lot of cultural history that way. Also he spend at least on whole school year (4th) reading during class, and really got a lot of general knowledge that way.
I was at a lecture by Deb Ruf, and she pointed out that in the achievement test areas that don't depend on actually being taught, that gifted kid's achievement scores actually go up during the summer, when they have more free time for learning.
The problem areas we had were when physical and emotional maturity that only really come with time were so outstripped by intellectual development.
I reccomend that you spend some time in the classroom that your child will be missing - I think you will be suprised at how little goes on from your perspective. I don't mean to imply that the classroom isn't 'just right' for the ND kids, I think that it is, just that we Gifties are so used to ourselves, that we assume that the rest of the world has the same pacing needs.
While you are there, look at the level of repetition. I expect you will think that there is a lot of it.
Best Wishes,
Grinity
