Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School Officially registered for Kindergaten!

After months of thinking about what to do and what not to do I finally took the big step and registered DS4.5 for Kindergarten this morning. It helped that today was the last day to get a discount on the registration fee!

We are fairly happy with his IEP (still have to add in all the health and allergy policies), we should be getting the special door to door busing because of his cold allergy, he is excited about going to Kinder and since it's only 3hrs / day I am NOT going to worry about academics (or the lack there of) until we actually start running into issues. And if he gets too sick again come winter we might just pull him out to homeschool at that point but for now we want him to have fun with other kids. Will see how that goes!

I am still contemplating testing at this point. I know the school won't do any in the next few years at least and I would really like to know where he's at. Not really for school purposes just yet but to be honest more for my husband. While he knows our boys are smart he doesn't get in contact with other kids much and can't really compare where our boys are compared to their friends. It would help me eventually advocating at school and possibly homeschooling if I actually had my husband on OUR side rather than standing by watching me play the game. I'm just not sure if I should wait till DS4.5 starts reading on his own or if I should go ahead and test him before K anyways. There are some areas where he just blows my mind (just the opposite areas than his brother's) and he gets in trouble with us as parents on a daily basis because of things he does and says and I always have to take a step back to remind myself that this is the way he thinks ... it's his BRAIN and he's simply asking for engagement. Not for trouble! So, we might have to do the testing soon for everyone's sanity! Plus having something on hand might help if he has behavior related issues in K. We'll see ...

I'm just not ready to have a school age child!

Congrats on getting him registered for K! It was a really huge thing for me to grasp in my head... sending my first child off to K! The childhood years fly by so fast - enjoy them!!!

Re testing, jmo, but I'd wait unless you have a program you're trying to get him into that requires it. I'd wait simply because the reliability of the tests goes up slightly as your child gets older - having a set of WISC scores is going to be easier to advocate with than the WPPSI etc. Even if your child does well on the early testing and you're confident in the results, school staff may question them.

One thing you *can* do (and I wish I had done when my ds was very young) - is to keep a record/journal/whatever of the things your child does and says that are those lightbulb "wow, he's really gosh-darned smart!" type things - because you can use those later on when advocating for your child. Not just milestones like "started reading chapter books at 14 months".. but ideas etc that your child has that show he/she is thinking differently, advanced, creative etc.

Best wishes,

polarbear

i used DD5's book of inventions and some other stuff for a little show-and-tell with her teachers, but i just realized i have literally three years of our most interesting conversations recorded on a private blog. how i never thought of using it to help me advocate, i have no idea! thanks so much, Polarbear!

I post a lot of stuff he does / says on Facebook for the amusement of our friends (who, surprisingly, LOVE it!) so one of these days I'll got through it and pull it all together

I wouldn't really do any in depth testing as of yet I don't think ... but Northwestern University Center for Talent Development has some good class offerings for kids starting at age 4 I think and if he qualified, we could put him in one in the Fall to see how he'd do. They do KBIT-2 and KTEA-II brief form for $120 to qualify for their program (if you haven't done other private testing). So we would have some idea of where he's at and would have a shot at their classes if he qualified and the cost is doable.

And one of their testing places is only about 5 miles down the road from us! Just 10 months ago there would had been no way of getting him tested. He just didn't have the patience, will and overall was just all over the place but right now I think he's in a great place and could do well enough to at least get a decent idea of where he's at. So, yes, the testing wouldn't be for nothing ... it would be to qualify for the gifted classes from Northwestern.

Oh absolutely - I'd do the testing for the Northwestern program! It sounds like a wonderful program

What I meant I didn't recommend testing just for the sake of testing (especially if it was going to cost a lot of $) until a child is older.

Good luck!

polarbear