Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Where to start for preschooler?

The cut off is five by Sep 1, and she is qualify to take the acceleration test for First grade.

My plan is to have her attend a private kindergarten (bite the bullet to spent over $1k per month), which is more academic oriented, next year before she take the test.

As for this year (will turn four by Nov), we will sent her to a Christian preschool which helps her to build values, characters and social skill. Thus, it is more economical. Well, just for two days a week as I want to spent some quality time with her and teach her by exploring zoos, museums, concerts, parks.

Well, we WILL enroll her this week as there was a spot just opened up. That is our plan, but clearly my heart/mind was not 100% settled.

My mind is restless because the school said academic is not their focus; however we were told that we would discuss that will the teacher on orientation.

Will a test give me a better prospective? If the result shows that she is gifted, should I pull her out and enroll her to a more academic school?

oh actually, she will not be in PK this year as the Christian school go by age. She will be in 3 years old class, and I will try to work on her academic on my own. All the schools except the high dollars tag one that we plan to go next year is willing to bend the rule and go by ability instead of age.

Does that make sense to you guys? or should we sent her to that school for PK this year and K for next year? ....I heard a few good things about this school, but I don't have any good experience with it. They did not call back as promised, offered me a very poor school tour. It was one on one, and the lady said only a few words and told me to look up the information on the package. It was more like a facility tour.

DFWkiddo, my DD goes to a 100% play-based nature preschool (although there are older homeschooled children) and she loves her school. I don't think an academic preschool would have worked well for her as she resists all structured, top-down learning.

Each child is different so your DD might thrive in an academic setting at early age. We're looking into sending ours to a private GT school that comes very close to unschooling. If she can get in, I think she'd be pretty happy there and hopefully, we can help her develop good work ethics through extracurricular activities. This way, she has until middle school to become a well-adjusted autodidact.

I don't think one way is better than others; it's really a matter of finding the right fit. When you are at the right school for your child, I think you'd know it.


It's great to have another young musician around here.

Honestly I'd avoid putting her in an academic preschool; it's likely to be frustrating to her if she already knows what they teach or learns it faster than they expect, and it's a waste of time that can be better spent playing with the other children.

Whether to work with her on academics at home is trickier. The argument against is that, again, there's an opportunity cost of spending time that way and you may make school fit worse. The argument for is that if you're sure she needs acceleration, and a small amount of work will make that more obvious to others, it might help.

Definitely don't see need for acceleration as a good thing to be sought! If she can learn other things than what school will teach her, at her own pace and having fun, eg violin, that's probably better.

We found the more academic the school became, the less our DYS liked it because the work was too easy/repetitive.

OP - I don't really have advice but I would love to connect with you because I am looking to find playmates for my advanced daughter. I live in Plano and my daughter will be 4 in January! I have many of the same concerns as you. I have yet to put her in a school, because I feel like she'll be bored in any academic age based program. I work from home so for now it's just me juggling the kiddos all day while I try and work.