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Things have already devolved to being rather tense with the preschool. I am guessing they are as glad DD is finished as she and I are. I am trying to find a way to compliment what was great, and that is the part of the letter already written, but I honestly feel that they need to start looking for giftedness along with all the other developmental issues they are watching for, given the apparent prevalence in the school community. And they need to cater for it, either through willness to accelerate or through developmental play that is actually developmental for advanced children.

I am concerned about not burning my bridges, but I am equally concerned that the preschool that feeds into the school is turning off the parents of bright & gifted kids. I have started hearing about the kids that have been pulled out because it wasn't challenging or engaging enough. If we did not have an older DD already in the school and thus have the experience of good differentiation in the school then we would have been long gone too...If parents just keep leaving and nobody speaks up and points out the problem then the pool of similar children for my kids to go through school with will shrink.

On the other hand depending on how things go over the next 6 months we may have given up on school and started homeschooling before DD#3 ever becomes an issue.

The environment is really wonderful in many ways. If I could spend 3 mornings a week there with my 16 month old she would be like a pig in mud. At 3.5 yrs the 3 yr old room was really pretty fun for my DD to go without an adult by her side. But it's just too ceiling-ed for a gifted 5 yr old and they are SO aghast at the idea of accelerating a child because children should be children and play for as long as possible, etc. The preschool is deeply deeply entrenched in what is age appropriate for a 4-5yr old.

If DDs friends had not all been moved to school and left her behind, if the play had been developmentally appropriate, rather than age appropriate, as per Grinity's dream school, then DD would have been SO happy to stay on at preschool. But that is not the case. She made friends with children 6 months older rather than 6 months younger than herself, felt as ready as they were to start school and then watched them all leave her behind with no friends in an environment she had exhausted her interest in. It's a weird and difficult system having two intakes per year, and she unfortunately falls into being one of the eldest of her intake rather than one of the youngest...

A friend with a DD a year younger than ours has learned from our experience and tested earlier in order to have better chance of organising acceleration or changing schools in time. And has met the exact same response we did. "Don't rush their childhood" and "Oh look at this wonderful social activity from today!" - without ever acknowledging that our children's needs are not being met and that by staying on for the extra 6 months their social needs are not being met either. We go in trying to talk about our child's developmental needs and get met with a social story, one told as if we had just come to them deeply concerned about our child's social development, which neither of us are.

Being a private school they strictly and absolutely limit places in the classes, class size being one of their selling points, and the first year of school class is always full. This makes it very difficult to move a child at the last minute, which is one of the many arguments for either knowing which children need acceleration well in advance or offering them truly developmental play if they are not going to engage in routine acceleration. At the moment they are regularly missing gifted kids and messing up the transition to school (or loosing them all together), which is why I want to write a letter.

Sorry for waffling.

DD is SO excited to finally be going off to school, I so hope it works out for her.

I have been thinking a bit about ratio IQs this week. I understand the reasoning for changing to the new method/s and it seems sound to me. But I think giving a child's IQ as a mental age is likely to be more accessible to teachers (and parents) than a number. I suspect a report stating that my DD had the reasoning ability of say a 7 yr old would have meant more to her preschool teachers than a number. They might still have said they didn't see it, but it would perhaps have been easier to say "And what level of engagement and persistence would you expect a 7 yr old to have with this task? Would being keen to return to self directed imaginative play be normal for a 7 yr old faced with this task?"

Sorry i didn't get much of the book read to write recommendations MumOfThree, as you know its a bit chaotic here!

Personally, I have an 'avoid confrontation' mindset, so interprete my comments in that light, but I sometimes wonder if it is even possible for these people to get kids like that. I mean if they ahve never seen the light in their eyes when they are learning, or never felt the joy of a new idea, can they possibly understand it?

I don't know really, I guess I'm asking

If I was personally writing a letter like that, I would focus on how much play children can get from learning and how my child needed different learning activities in joyous way in order to enjoy his childhood. (or some heavily revised version of that)

... or I'd chicken out and not send it As I said, I'm not good at confrontation.

ColinsMum, I completely missed your post somehow... It's so hard to clearly define what I feel is wrong. Because I DO believe in playbased preschool and I DO believe that they can self extend beautifully... The center is really great in lots of ways, and they seriously do NOT need me to give them resources. I can not think of what I would give them that they don't have. I would not even give them puzzles, as I am aware that the puzzles I would want to give them are not practical for a preschool environment or I would have sent some in. The issue with puzzles is their complete failure to identify WHY DD would not persist at puzzles they presented her, or why she avoided participating in any of the extension activities they tried to engage her in once they had decided she was old enough to be ready for them. The gifted kids are the ones they are labeling not ready or immature because they are pitching too low and not engaging them.

The issues are subtle but over the course of two years we are not the only parents that have gone from delighted to deeply disenchanted.

I think what it boils down to is that the preschool is not a purely free play based program but rather has a lot of directed / planned developmental play activities. And those activities are carefully planned around age appropriate norms, which is not very developmentally appropriate for a gifted child. The staff feel very strongly that it is not appropriate to teach children anything overtly academic - such as reading, writing, maths, etc and their feelings on this are clear enough to my DD that she believes that she should not participate in activities like this at preschool. I don't believe that they should be trying to teach the children academic skills, but I do think they should be supporting the children who are seeking those experiences and I certainly don't think that the children should be getting the vibe that is inappropriate to read at preschool.

The vast majority of children going to my childrens' school go to the schools attached preschool, and are expected to go for 2 years. Upwards of 95% the children the first year of school have come from spending 2 years together in preschool, there is a genuine social disadvantage to not going to the preschool if you are going to the school. But 2 years in this environment is just too long for a gifted child and acceleration out of the preschool is generally not an option because of how many years in advance school spots are offered and accepted. And if they accelerated every gifted child that would be too regular an occurrence... Which is presumably why we, and other parents, are getting the run around.

I don't think 2 years in play based preschool is too long either. But it's too long in this center, partly due to the above mentioned issues and partly due to the fact that although they have children leaving for school mid year like my DD most children leave for school at the start of the year and their curriculum shows a bias towards this. So a child who does two years ending mid year will have joined the 4yr old group at the beginning of a school year and will done a full curriculum year with slightly older children and feel part of that group, only to then be one of very few children left behind. When the mid year kids leave they are a much smaller group leaving a much larger group behind and they leave having spent their last 6 months going over the same materials as a year ago - with the teachers finally trying to also do some extension work with them, which my DD was not prepared to engage in, having learned that "work" is not what preschool is about... Multiple school intakes based purely on age is a weird system peculiar to my state that I think is working out particularly badly at this preschool/school. Many of the mid year children have struggled with it, particularly the girls (actually most of the boys may be fine). The gifted kids who wanted/needed the (slightly) older kids socially and were as prepared as the older kids to move on at the beginning of the year are the most effected.

Here is an article about a pre-school in New Zealand.

http://www.giftedchildren.org.nz/national/selwyn.pdf

Perhaps there is something useful in here?

Kiwi

I don't know if writing the letter is a good idea or not, given your desire for a long future at the school, but if you do, I strongly suggest letting other people read it first and heeding their advice about wording, if they have any. When we are close to a situation we often find it hard to express ourselves neutrally.

If the school is very specifically play-based, though, I would bet it is impossible to get them to do reading and math. Many parents are looking for that play-based environment. I had more trouble with the NON-play-based aspects of my DD's preschool experience, because they were too easy. The rest was great.

Well #2 started school today, obviously the experience is all shiny and new at this point, but so far so good. And I have yet to find time to write a letter. I will sit on it a bit longer. But at some point I am going to have to either write, talk to them or find a new preschool. Of course finding a new preschool for #3 would require then explaining to the principle why I am cancelling #3's enrollment in preschool but not school. The issue can't really be avoided, not permanently, but I have plenty of time to procrastinate :-).

Actually, the issue may be avoided by a possible move interstate forcing a complete school change. So there's that.