Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Learning Environments thoughts on skipping Kindergarten?

Just curious what people think about gifted children skipping Kindergarten. I am sure it is different for each child. We are planning to have DS4 tested in the spring shortly before turning 5. We had him meet with a psychologist the other day. She just talked with me and him, did a little math and reading with him. Then she asked me privately about whether I thought about early entrance for him. He is in pre-k now a couple days a week and is starting to get the structure of it all, which he needs to get at this point. At this point in the year, I can't imagine putting him in K. Then she also mentioned maybe skipping K next year. I am just not sure about it all. He keeps talking about wanting to go to K. I don't know what LOG he is yet, but I am assuming that he is HG. I could be underestimating. Really I don't know where he is at. My guess is he is reading at 5th grade level (with great expression...he corrects me if I read with the wrong intonation). Does math probably at a 2nd grade level I am guessing. Writes maybe at a 2nd grade level. Spelling at least a 3rd grade level. I could be off but those are my best bets, so thinking about K for him in the fall is a little overwhelming. Who knows what other things he will learn in the next 9 months? Anyone had good/bad experiences with this. Just interested in some other thoughts on this.

I think it really depends. We thought long and hard about it and we requested early admissions to first grade (effectively skipping K). It's had its high points and its low points.

We think DS5.5 is doing well academically. It still does not challenge him, and this is something that is frustrating to us (although I think it only bothers DS a little). DS tends to be quiet initially in the school setting until he is fully acclimated and that takes months. He did the same thing in nursery school. The effect is that his teachers aren't seeing his ability, so we still have to do a lot of advocating to get him challenging material. (This issue or rather the perception that DS is over his head is probably holding us back in our case.) I wouldn't call our story a success yet.

All day school has been very tough on the little guy. Very tough. For the first couple of months we had dealing with tantrums most days after he got home from school. Our DS is not a GT kid that doesn't need sleep. Quite the contrary, he sleeps a lot. We're almost over the hump now, and we only do "brain break" (read: 15 minute nap) about once or twice a week.

With the adjustment issues that we've had and the fact that DS is still not being challenged, I will say that there are plenty of days where we're thinking that it would have been better to have DS go to half day K and then get better enrichment at home. That was have solved this year's problem but only defer the longer-term schooling problem.

In our situation I think we would have been okay either way and either way we still have issues to content with. Think about your DS's personality, if he still naps (ours did right up until the summer before school), and understand that if he's at that level he'll still be quite ahead of his peers.

So that's our story. Still evolving...

JB

Hi shellymos - we're pretty much in the same boat as you. Our DS, who will be 5 in january, is in part-time preschool. We are planning on having him start out in kindy next fall. Academically, he will be miles ahead. He would be ahead in 1st grade too. So, my thoughts are that it might be easier to start in kindy, which unfortunately is all-day here, but since it's a transition year I'm thinking it won't be as hard as just starting in 1st. I think there are lots of extras, like art and music, and he really does need to learn how to write. The school seems to be open to working on him getting something else in place of any learning your letters stuff, and hopefully they will let DS take the school's achievement testing (MAP) this spring so they can see where he is in other areas too. I'm also hoping they'll let him go to some of the other grades for some of the classes.

I don't have the highest of hopes, but for now, since our DS4 doesn't like to sit still for very long, cannot write well, and is just starting to show interest in learning how to spell things, kindy seems a good place to start, especially if the promised differentiation really happens. Also, our DS has always been on the short side for his age.

If all else fails, we have our backup plan of partial to full homeschooling too. It's just so hard to predict when they're not yet in school how things will go. Our plan includes lots of advocating.

This has come up (surprisingly) often recently in our household. By DW. (I keep saying let's just see how this year and maybe next year are first...)

JB

I know one of our challenges will be knowing when we should give up on the schools and pull out our child. I am hoping that we won't have to, but realistically, I feel like homeschooling will have to occur at some point. I have heard from others here that many times, 1st through 3rd are the hardest for HG kids. (OK dottie just beat me to it on this one!)

There is the other consideration of winter break. I am putting on my fortune teller's hat and thinking that DS will finally seem to be doing sort of OK, then there will be the winter break. He will return and hate school a hundred-fold. (This is based on what happened with preschool last year, but then i think it was more of not wanting to leave mom than really hating preschool.) I keep reminding myself that it's not necessary to worry about too much quite yet, when he's not even in school.

Thanks for sharing your experience. Our K is a half day K at our public school, at a private school that is close that I have considered (which is fairly affordable at this point), they have half day K for half the year, and then combine both classes for a full day to transition them. DS does not take naps, he did up until this fall, but he is in a pre-k afternoon program 3 days a week so that broke him completely of the naps and he does fine. He requires little sleep, but sleeps well at night. He is also a really big kid, looks bigger (taller and solid) than most Kindergarteners already. I guess we will have to wait and see. He is very outgoing and talkative. He gets into a little trouble at times in his pre-k, but does pretty good. Mostly because the kids are his age or a little younger so he goofs around with them like they are younger. I agree with you though, even going to 1st will not challenge our DS either. And he seems to think K will be fun. Of course he thought pre-k would have history books and was disappointed in that. So many choices. I wish there was an obvious answer at times, I am sure everyone does.

Thanks pauli. I think we are going to visit the schools this spring and see what we think. Also wait and see testing scores, not that that will matter much...but may be helpful for the school at least. Our public school district does screenings in late spring as well. I now am deciding public/private and k/first. I am leaning towards going to K because I can't imagine him in a full day setting quite yet. And both K programs start half day. If he was already used to it that wouldn't be too hard...but he only goes to pre-k 7.5 hours a week. Plus I figure both K and 1st will be under his level. Not sure if that is good reasoning, but if they can help do some things at his level it won't really matter what grade he is actually in. And half a day will probably be easier. His favorite part of pre-school every day is "jumping on the trampoline" They get to play a little in the gym each day and that is what he really loves.

The only positive that I think we're getting is the socialization. Ironically this was the area that the SD was worried about the most. But DS loves recess and we've been told that he gets along with everyone.

JB

Totally off the cuff as my daughter isn't K age and we homeschool, but I had considered school for a while and nixed that idea after her poor experience in pre-school which left her feeling she was some how "wrong" for being her innate self. I digress!

Back to the topic, I have heard on different boards for GT kids that it is better to keep K and skip first grade. The reason is that K is designed (mostly) to let the kids explore - their environment, various ideas, social skills (although I always find the idea of a bunch of 5 years old learning social skills from each other a bit silly), etc., whereas 1st grade is more seatwork and less opportunities to "get the wiggles out". So, especially, if this is going to be a child's first school experience, K is a gentler introduction.

Well that probably wasn't very helpful; I did admit it was off the cuff.
Mizzou

I think you're right shellymos: so much depends upon the child, but also on the K program...and the teacher.

Our K program and teacher were great for DS7, even at age level. It was easier to differentiate for him given the curriculum because it was mostly play-based. K programs are more competitive around here, too, since they're not required by law, so I have a theory that the public school puts some of the better teachers there, since there's more competition. Also, K was only a half-day program, so he wasn't tired or bored for long enough even on his worst days for it to matter too much; he could come home and do something that interested and challenged him.

Skipping him to 1st grade--which is full-day, highly academic and filled with rigid teachers who don't differentiate--would have been a disaster for us. I'm relieved that we didn't even consider it at the time.

But OTOH, I know LOTS of parents who skipped K for their kids, and are thrilled with that choice. It can be the easiest skip a child will ever make, since they slide right into 1st grade just like everyone else and never stand out as unusual. For some kids, K would be intolerable "baby work," and skipping is clearly the best choice.

FWIW, I think if my son looked more like the stereotypical HG+ child--*fast* at everything, rather than slow but deep--then I'd have been more likely to think that early K or skipping K altogether would have been a good choice for him. As it was, he enjoyed K and hated 1st, and I don't think getting him into 1st earlier would have helped. In fact, I think he'd have been less able to cope with the boredom at 5 than he even was at 6.

Both options are totally valid. So much depends...

When is the "learn to read" year where you are, shellymos? K or 1st? In general, I'd recommend skipping that "learn to read" year, regardless of which one it is. 1st was our year, and it was a disaster. My theory (totally unsubstantiated...) is that teachers on the hook for reading get paranoid about gaps and such, and don't want to let kids jump ahead just in case they missed something. Both the years before and after that year seem to be (somewhat) better for early readers.

A friend of mine had a very frustrating argument with a teacher during that reading year who insisted that her HG son spend extra time on phonics, even though the child was reading for comprehension very well *and* was sounding out words like a pro. The gist was that the teacher thought the boy needed more practice on phonics so that he could read, and she ignored the fact that he already WAS reading! <Argh!> The mom couldn't get through the teacher's "You must do X so you can do Y," lockstep train of thought. I had a very similar kind of problem with our teacher, who informed me that there are lots of good quality easy reader books that kids miss if they jump to chapter books too soon. Um, well, as he'd been reading for 3 years by that time, and my mom was a pre-K teacher, I think we'd already hit the biggies!

So anyway, avoiding that sort of mess would be great, if you can figure out how!