I agree that it's a very individual thing.
On the one hand, K has more play and fine motor skill work and less academic stuff. Grade 1 is pretty focused on academic stuff and so might be a good one to skip, especially for someone who's beyond parts of it already at the start of K anyway.
With our DD, DH and I both realized that skipping K was necessary for her. Her fine motor skills are beyond the K level anyway, and she loves to write. So going straight to first will be a good match for her desire to write and she'll get better at the lowercase letters. I think a problem with NOT skipping can be that the child self-learns stuff that could have been learned in school instead, if it had been presented earlier, via a skip. A lot of our kids will still be ahead after a skip in some areas, but at least most won't be ahead everywhere. If a skip is delayed or doesn't happen, some wind up being too far ahead in every respect and don't learn study skills (or even the concept of needing to study).
I never skipped a grade but spent most of elementary school wishing I had. I enjoyed kindergarten (arts & crafts, stories, etc.) but was bored silly in 1st grade. So K was a good fit for me.
We did a lot of extra stuff with DS9 (sports, afterschooling, trips) when he was in 1st and 2nd grades and wound up feeling tired all the time. Now we try to make most of the extra activities "organic." This is to say that travel time is at a minimum or non-existent (e.g. gymnastics next door to the school). League sports are out, for example. No way am I driving 30 miles to a soccer game on Saturday morning.
As for the aggressiveness about wanting to learn, I haven't met many teachers who go out of their way to help. A couple spring to mind, but the hit-or-miss aspect of it all is frustrating. I told DS9's pre-K teacher that he could read, but she just looked at me blankly. His K teacher was very helpful in that regard, though. The next good one was last year.
Val
