Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What's your opinion based on your experience?

I think one reason to keep a kid in kindergarten versus first is your child's ability to sit still in a classroom. Although our DS4 knows the entire kindergarten curriculum, we're still going to wait until he's 5 and send him to kindergarten. Part of his learning involves running around when he learns something new, and he would think we were sending him to jail if we told him he had to sit still for several hours.

Also, there's a lot of fun stuff in kindergarten too, and for the academic portions, we're hoping he can be accommodated while still enjoying the fun stuff. (Of course he's not eligible for kindy based on age until 2009, and we're also teaching him stuff he wants to learn at home, so our plans might change by then, but those are our current thoughts.)

One thing I'd like others here to comment on ... writing. I've been told by a couple of friends w/ gifted kids that that is the one thing that either a) kept the kid from being skipped or b) the kid had trouble with after skipping.

For a) the school used the grade-level ability in writing as a reason not to skip K, for example.

And for b) the child was skipped into a grade where writing convention was assumed and writing stamina as well which would have been mastered in the skipped grade.

I recommended to my friend whose DS sounds HG+ and might try for skipping K if things go sour for him in K in the Fall (he missed the 12/1 cutoff by 5days) to work on his writing this summer.

I was shocked by how much writing was done in 1st grade at our school. DS's K teacher did NOTHING to prepare them for it. I would worriedly look at the other K writing samples in the hall but never saw anything similar from DS's K class.

My question I guess is has the issue of writing come up for you in accelerating your DC?

St. Pauli girl ... I understand what you're saying. Also at our school (K-1), K is when the fun performances are done by the kids, they have parties for holidays and the parents can attend etc. In 1st grade, for many of the teachers, parents aren't allowed in the classroom. They cut the cord. I found attending parties and such allowed conversation w/ the other parents, you got to see the work posted all around the room that kids were doing, you got insight into classroom management etc. A friend whose DS's teacher didn't allow parents in, was actually in the classroom only 2x in the entire year for PT conference. In fact, the school is in lockdown until November, meaning parents are not allowed at school and it is STRONGLY, HIGHLY discouraged to drive your kid to school - they want all kids to ride the bus. So K time is really the only time to get to know other parents that have kids your child's age.

That might actually be an issue for our DS. Writing is something that he does need to practice. When he writes his letters he writes it "his" way and it's difficult to get him to write it the proper way. (I think once a teacher tells him how to do it and not his parent, he'll be more receptive.)

JB

I just wanted to agree with St. Pauli. I wouldn't skip K without visiting both the Kindergarten and 1st grade class in question and taking into account both the child's personality and the teachers. I have a son who just finished 1st grade yestday (hooray!).

Kindergarten actually went fairly well for DS. Things moved quickly day to day, lots of hands on open ended stuff, flexible teacher. 1st has been quite horrible - inflexible, very dry, much sitting still required, and not even close to what we would have liked for this year. It would have served us well to skip 1st (although, for my DS, he is quite happy socially with his peer group, so skipping is a tough call). He'd need more than 1 skip to actually be learning.

JBDad - my DS picked up some bad habits in preK b/c the teacher's didn't correct handwriting and he taught himself. The one thing that worked was that the school gave us a sheet of the alphabet and which way the letters start etc the spring before K started. I showed that to DS and told him that his teacher gave this to us, to make sure he could do his letters the way a Ker is supposed to do them. That solved the problem. Perhaps you can get something similar from your school.

I wish you luck in the meeting - I have been a K teacher for the past 10+ years and I knew pretty soon on that K was going to be a joke for my son - he surpassed all K assessments that the county required and was also past most of the 1st grade ones as well - DS5 - he is 5 years 7 months and is due to start K in the Fall. He is a very tall boy and looks like he is 7 years old - he socializes best with children that are between 7-8 years old. We tried several months ago to meet with several people in our school board office because we knew that K was just not going to do anything for him...He has an IEP and even both of his Speech and OT teachers have all agreed that something needs to be done for him - the county office would not listen at all despite the fact we spoke and met with a variety of people. We wanted to get testing done - but the same issue - they don't test until K NO exceptions and even then they said they don't like to test in K and usually don't test until at least the end of 1st or 2nd....we then talked about either early entrance (going into K this year) or the possibility of a skip to a tk-1 classroom - we were informed that it was supposidly state law that children are not allowed to skip K and there were no exceptions.....so I then asked the question of what in the world were they going to do with a child who is reading and doing math on at least a 2nd grade level and he isn't even supposed to be in K for another few months...they told me that the teacher would do the best they could to try to meet my son's needs. Blah, blah, blah - yeah right - so we have opted out of public school for the time being. Lots of luck to you

To add to Dazed and Confused. In Kindergarten, every morning I could walk in the classroom and talk to the teacher. We weren't even allowed in the classroom in 1st grade. I was lucky I had the ability to volunteer weekly, but I certainly didn't get nearly the one on one time with the teacher I had in kindergarten.

Great idea! He is very motivated right now to please his teachers so that might work.

JB

Dottie, I know your meeting will go well next week.

JB dad,

Good luck with the meeting. I hope they jump on the ball right away and take care of this stuff for you.
If they don't, don't worry. Sometimes you just have to go through the process. It's good that you know what you might have to expect up front.