Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school Kindergarten is coming

Yikes, I just realized that Kindy is only a few months off and I'm getting nervous.
My son, who is the opposite of my laid back DD8, is way too prideful, impatient, and advanced for Kindy; yet there we go anyway. Hopefully we get a patient teacher who understands that major differentiation will required.

Anyone else starting Kindy in Aug?

September! Maybe we should set up a thread for that

DeHe

I am thinking kinder is going to be a waste. We had ds tested for early entry to first grade and he isn't quite where they wanted him in reading (he scored 79% spring of kinder on the NEA MAP and needed to be at 90% .. math he scored 91%). So in the fall, he will be in the 99th percentile to start the year. What are they going to do to keep him engaged and not a problem. I am so worried about this.

Most of the people here have early readers... mine is a mathy kid. Any ideas how to help him "like" to read? And let me add... he is a perfectionist and doesn't like change or new things. He is afraid to be challenged and likes things that are easy at this point


edited for my wonderful spelling skills

Kindy is mandatory in FL; skips are not even an option till 1st. My DS is also a math nut, I am hoping they will let him do EPGY during math time. Our county K curric doesn't even start counting past 10 till after Christmas, and double digit addition doesn't start till 2nd grade.

"Any ideas how to help him "like" to read?"
Try to find books that are easy, yet have hard words mixed in. When my son was breaking through into reading, I use to get him phonics readers to help build confidence. The library had a "See it, Say it, Hear it" phonics series that was great. They were easy, yet they had difficult names to sound out on every page.
My son is very prideful so motivationg him is as easy as saying "I bet you can't..." or "I wonder how fast you..."

our school year starts in January - so next January Aiden starts the equivalent of your K - Grade 0. He is in a school for "high potential" learners, but I suspect he will still be bored (as he is now already there)...

Floridama -- I think the skip option totally depends on the school and the principal. I live in Florida (Orlando), and have one friend who skipped from kindy to 1st mid year. I'm sure they would push back at skipping him at the beginning of the year, but if you go in with testing, let the teachers get to know him, and become familiar with the principal and the gifted administrator, perhaps you could work out a mid-year assessment to skip into 1st for the remainder of the year.

Here is the relevant legal information on Florida enrollment from the DOE.

have you tried starfall.com, i know a few kids who were not reading and gifted and this got them over the hump - its good to start with the letters and sounds but you can jump to the read along books - there is a ton there. And the format is oddly not book like so it might take the pressure off.

DeHe

Re: getting into reading. Mine was an early reader, but he didn't "like" reading until recently. We found that he really liked the DK early reader books, which come in different levels and many topics. My DS liked the DK books about Star Wars.

Re: kindergarten. We were advocacy machines. The school knew going in that DS was at levels higher than kindy in math and reading, but the teacher wanted to get to know him first. Although I understand this, it ended up seeming like a waste of time to us. We decided not to argue for too much in reading, as the teacher seemed pretty good at differentiating with that, and we went for math. What finally convinced them that our DS needed more was when he took their MAP test and scored really high. The GT teacher ended up basically tutoring DS in 2nd grade math, compacted curriculum. We advocated/begged/asked a lot for 6 months before our DS got this appropriate math. We also offered to pay for EPGY in the classroom for our DS, which they were willing to entertain, but they came up with the better plan for math.

For us, skipping kindy probably wouldn't have been so good, since our DS didn't want to learn how to write yet. Our goal for kindy was learning to write and learning to "do school", and anything extra was bonus. Our DS then skipped first.

Good luck to all, and get your advocacy hats on now!

Yes, the DK early reader books are what brought my son out as a reader as well, as he really likes nonfiction topics. He finally realized he could read about a topic for himself, and once he started trying, he quickly realized that reading silently was MUCH faster than reading aloud. He moved from finally reading the DK books on to reading Magic Treehouse books within about a month. He particularly likes the Magic Treehouse "Reading Guides" which are nonfiction companion books that go along with the fiction books.