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They stayed in "primary" until they started in-house K or went to K somewhere else. The same room Mr W was in. The teacher claimed they "worked" with them but I did not see any evidence of it.


Mr W has bounced around a bit. He was a preemie but with a high apgar and mature enough lungs so he went home like a normal baby. When we put him in daycare and he got sick a lot. So we pulled him out and got a nanny. She was great but Mr W was manipulating her. We then looked around for toddler care but Mr W was very advanced, ie already keyboarding, doing puzzles, yet still in diapers. We realized it would not be fair to him to put him in with other toddlers nor would it be fair to ask for him to be in preschool while in diapers. So, we found a home schooler who did in home daycare. That lasted about six months. We then put him in the Montessori right before he was 2. He was in their 2-3 class yet was reading, adding, doing any puzzle, and played with the kindergartners on the computer and their games. He moved up to primary at 2.5 and when he turned three the behavior issues began. It took us a couple of months to clue in and then we moved him again after a month of searching.

So, daycare, nanny, homeschooler daycare, montessori toddler, montessori primary, and now academic preK. It was either Kriston or Grinity who said you had to listen to your kids and make changes as they change.

Mr W will bounce along for a few weeks then make huge leaps. He will really get into something for a month or two then move to a new level. So, I hope this school can stay ahead of him, but it probably won't given past performance. Maybe once he can read at a 3rd grade level, he can sit by himself and read or do ALEKS as in place acceleration.

Children are resilient. School choice is a mighty big decision to give a child. Dr. Rimm talks and writes often about the V of love and how we often give kids so much responsibility and independence at a young age and then spend the rest of their development trying to pull it back.

I want my kids opinion on what a "good" school means to them. I want to be able to imagine their fit. But for us, grammar school isn't the time they get to pick on their own. They need to relax in the knowledge that it is my job to figure that out - with a if it doesn't feel right in 8 weeks - it isn't permanent. When kids switch schools higher up 2nd, 5th, 8th grade to a more challenging environment - there is a honeymoon period often followed by the perfectionist panic because in a more challenging environment they will risk being wrong - a new challenge to deal with for them. Just like a child's claim of boredom doesn't always equate to a lack of successful planning by the teacher... claims of ill fit in a more challenging environment may not be the unlying problem a child states.

Personally, I prefer social/play based pre-school options for most HG/PG kids. It is highly unlikely that most will find that places that academically nutures so instead of always hearing that your reader is learning an alphabet letter - better they learn to resolve conflicts, take turns, listen to a teacher (and fundamentally be prepared for the early entrance or grade skips they will need ;-).

With my demented yardstick - I took Grinity's advise all the time! Listen to your kids - because it is us - the parents - who need to make changes. Think Grinity or DYS counselor was best to keep pressing - one year, one semester, at a time.

That is what the Montessori program is. And Mr W was falling apart under it. He was acting his age when he was capable of being much more mature.

At 5pm, at the Montessori place, all the kids would be put in the gym to wait for parents to pick them up. The first week, Mr W got the Kindergarten kids to accept him and from then on spent time with them. He was 2 years old and these were the kids he connected with. He was tremendously happy being with them. And they really enjoyed him, telling me "he is really smart!" and "he is a lot of fun to play with!"

How can he learn anything socially if his classmates could barely talk? With whom could he talk about dinosaurs? Or play hide and go seek?

After his first day in PreK with kids 1-2 years older, his first comment to me was, "Daddy, they can talk!" - meaning his classmates.

Last night when we picked him up, he was working on the computer learning "big words" while the other kids 4-6 were running around playing. Sitting next to him was an 8 year old boy doing the same thing who was in after-school day care. They were talking back and forth about the game and how to get to certain sections.

Again, in which case is he learning to be social and forming bonds with others?

In my own recollections, I was tremendously lonely in school unless I was with older kids. I do not want that for him. He is much more social than I am to begin with - as well.

Reminds me of when DS at nearly 4 finally had a playdate with a compatible child. DS said, "He understood me. He stopped when I asked him to" in a relieved and slightly awed voice, as if this was very unexpected in a child. Poor kid.

Today we had a great start to our conversation about switching preschools... not...I conversationally mentioned to DS on the way home from preschool today that I'd been visiting other preschools the last couple weeks to see if there are any others that look interesting: he immediately burst into tears and abruptly changed the subject, refusing to talk about it further. He was so upset I still haven't found out if maybe he misunderstood my comment -- for example it could have been interpreted as me meaning we'd now send him to additional hours of preschool somewhere else. Or maybe he's just more unhappy about the current preschool than I realized. Or maybe he is upset about the general idea of changing schools even though I didn't get to that.

Sigh. Will give it a day and try again.

Polly

PS. Good comment kickball about not always leaving these big decisions up to the child. I agree that many times DS does not realize what details of an experience are making him upset or happy or which things have value, ie that he may not recognize challenge makes him happy and calm and that prolonged sitting without a intellectual focus makes him tense. My goal is to somehow ensure a smooth transition -- I want him to give the new school a chance and he's neurotic enough to forever hold it against the preschool itself that I sent him there against his will, if I did.

This our experience as well. DD(3y3m) loves going to her "real" preschool. (We do two other structured activities every week at the children's museum and botanical gardens that call themselves "preschool" but they are not "real" to her because I stay and participate.)

Her "real" school is strictly a play school (her favorite things are snack, playground, and playing cars with the boys,) so we have no issue with what they are teaching her. Also, she is in a small class of only 7 students that, save her, are very old for the class. The next youngest will turn 4 in December. The rest have been 4 for awhile now. I feel like that makes a big difference because the older children seem to challenge her socially and emotionally in a good way. There is a little girl in her class that will be 5 soon that has a really strong personality. Having to be independent from me and deal with older children will probably be the best thing we get out of this program. That, and just having barrels of fun. (To be honest all three programs are just outlets for her to act her age with other children. We needed that.)

Although they teach very little, the school still has a lot of expectations of the children--be a nice friend, use your listening ears, sit criss-cross applesauce at circle time--and I am told that despite her being the youngest in the class she is the best behaved. They call her "the observer." When chaos breaks out, she will sit and watch with a sparkle in her eye. She takes EVERYTHING in, and relates it all to me later in the day.

This school is great. The ECE director is fantastic. She does not believe in pushing academics onto young children in the traditional way. So, it is a perfect place for a child that has already learned how to read. We have really just lucked out with this school, with the class size, the ages, and did I mention the teacher has gifted certification?

We have also applied for 1 of 20 spots at a full time gifted academy for pre-K next year. At the very least we will get scores back that might help us with another school down the line. It seems insane to test children so young, but it is an outstanding program, and DD might need it.

Um, otherwise we supplement a lot at home. A LOT. But, this mostly consists of hands on learning while we are out and about, reading, watching youtube videos about subjects she asks for, or "conversations." We do no curriculums or table work. She plays by herself for hours at a time, no exaggeration. She is quite easy in that respect.

Our "conversations" in the past few weeks have covered what things are made of, cells, elements, chemical formulas--H20, O2, CO2, how we breath in oxygen, breath out carbon dioxide, the plants reverse, photosynthesis, the color spectrum, the dwarf planets, (thankfully we have moved on from history ATM,) compound words, and just tons of word power, lol. Today we were talking about the difference between using the word "random" and "anonymous."

It is surprising just how well she fits in at preschool, but she really does. She is shy and has an easy-going temperament. She blends right in I think. Maybe if it was a full time 8-5 kind of day we would have problems. I don't know.

Hanni is at a preschool that is mostly structured play, which they are awesome at. Every day there is some new clever activity or type of toy or puzzle to engage the kids. When I go pick her up, I may find her running up a gym-mat ramp and leaping onto a huge pillow, or taking turns on a rope swing that's been temporarily hung from the walnut tree, or painting her own face wild colors in front of little stand-up mirrors they've set up on the tables, or dancing to international folk songs. They also do Spanish semi-immersion.

BUT . . . they do do some "academics," with learning letters and so on. Frankly, I'm not crazy about this, but I'm okay with it so far because 1) Hanni is not a reader yet, and 2) it's a small part of the day. Hanni's small-scale spatial skills are not up to speed with the rest of her intelligence (she's hopeless with puzzles, for example), so her brain is simply not reading-ready yet. Learning to recognize the letter H is just a fun challenge for her at this point. But I do worry, what happens if she suddenly turns into a reader within the next year? Is she going to spend her pre-K year stuck practicing the letter H still?

(This is why I have a problem with academics in preschool. Some kids just aren't ready (Hanni is not going to read at this age no matter how much they teach her), and the kids with the early-reader brains have already blown past that stage. The number of kids who are on that cusp, who are really at a point to take advantage of reading instruction, is going to be really small.)

I guess we'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it. Meanwhile, we're lucky to be in a program that's a very very good fit for her needs right now.

Annette, I think you and I are just using different definitions of "academic." The program you are describing sounds almost exactly like the one my child is in.

Hi again Annette, I wrote that in a hurry and I think it may have sounded snarky when I didn't mean it to. In my original message, what I was calling "academics" was JUST the pre-reading activities -- and it sounds like we agree that neither your child nor my child particularly need these, for opposite reasons! All the rest, learning about bugs and the ocean and outer space and world cultures and music, that's all good, and I think it's up for grabs whether you call that "structured play" or "academics."

Cheers,
Meg

Personally, when I think of "academic" preschools I think of "promises to teach" and expectations and pressure on the children to learn. I also think of learning through lessons rather than play and "tests" (continued evaluations of the children to mark where they are at.)

Where we used to live these preschools were expensive and were advertised and geared to teach pre-reading skills as well as the skills needed to do well on the IQ tests taken to get into the exclusive private schools in the area.

I think it is a semantic issue, which might be location-specific. Here play based do a lot of early literacy/numeracy but those are integrated in the flow of play activities. Lots of attention given to motor/sensory issues too.

Whereas the "academic" programs in the area have 3-5yo kids sitting all day memorizing phonics, sight words and math operations, pretty much Kumon style. My friend's 4 yo had maybe 2x30mn of outside play a day.

I guess the definitions are different where Annette is?