Thanks, Nan. To answer some of your questions:
By writing I mean composing rather than handwriting. His handwriting is actually pretty good and he has no problems with writing. He actually likes it enough that whenever he creates things (paper pretend calculators, ATM machines, etc.) he usually encorporates writing into it. He's actually a pretty good speller, too. The problem is that he has rarely written more than two sentences at a time. The concern would be that he would be required to write page-length papers every so often. He could learn to do it, but it might require prodding. Then again, with the huge range of abilities in any given class here, there would certainly be others in the same boat.
By speech problems I only mean articulation. He is not sensitive at all to it, but it is the one thing that makes him seem younger than a 3rd grader. In his 1st grade there are several kids who receive speech services and don't articulate as well as DS (who doesn't receive services but was evaluated by a SP who thought we should try to work on it some at home). He can prounouce virtually all the sounds, but tends to speak "lazily." The plan is to work on this over the summer so that he goes from being able to pronounce words correctly to actually pronouncing words correctly.
BTW: I just got clarification that selection of the third grade teacher isn't an issue. They all have virtually the same schedule. So, at least that part doesn't need to be figured out. A full-grade skip would be easier, but his current teacher thinks he wouldn't be as mature as the 3rd graders would be (and she's right, although he does often play with kids that age and older) and is worried by the writing piece. So, I think that may be off the table this year.
