Hi, ivysmomma!
We were in a similar situation 2 years ago. My DS has a November birthday and was the youngest student in his K class. After his reading was assessed as being above 2nd grade (they didn't test him further than that) he was offered a trial of first grade in the Spring. He would go to K in the morning (it was a half-day K) and then join the 1st grade class in the afternoons. Everything went smoothly, and we decided to move him fully into the 1st grade after 3 weeks.
He did well in 1st grade for the remainder of the year. The following year he started 2nd grade and stuggled a bit with writing and timed math fact tests, but he scored at Advanced on the state testing at the end of 2nd grade.
He is now in third grade, and doing even better than last year. He is making friends and writing is no longer such a struggle. There are still challenges, but challenges are part of the reason we decided to accelerate him... we want him to have the opportunity to learn to deal with challenges while he is young.
Our school has no gifted services for primary students, so in our case the choice was acceleration or nothing. I didn't want to burden him with afterschooling since he needs free time to play, and there is already so much homework (even in Kindergarten they had several pages a day!) The Kindergarten here is highly academic and he was not at all engaged with the curriculum or socially with the other students his age. Kids 1-2 two years older seem to be a better social fit.
