Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School what was your child doing in kindergarten?

As I look ahead to things considered end of year skills in kindergarten, it is clear that my DD3 has been doing them for over a year.

I was wondering where your gifted child was / is in kindergarten and what sort of modifications are being made if any. Would you mind being specific and telling me what type of materials he or she could read if he or she were reading, what sort of math things he or she could do, etc. to try to project where we might be in two years.

As I look ahead, I am still confused what we will do down the road, but for now are keeping her in a few hours of preschool a week for socialization and are planning on having her attend kindergarten on time when she is 5 years 4 months old. Her kindergarten is only 2.5 hrs a day. I imagine my DD is going to have grown by leaps and bounds in a little less than two years so if she is beyond kindergarten material now, where will she be then?


Thanks so much.

My son didn�t attend K. AT K age, we definitely recognized that there was a big discrepancy between what we considered signs of advanced ability and the academics of early elementary school. A couple examples that we had actually recorded for proof as to why we believed he needed to start school early are;

At 41/2 he could identify any country on the globe. When he became bored during a recognition ceremony at his pre-school one day, he pointed out and named every (non �labeled) US state as he viewed them from the inverse position on a freestanding and rotating dry erase board /US map.

At 5years2months he was in the habit of singing the lyrics of various traditional Christmas songs and hymns to the melody of various other traditional Christmas song s or hymns. He could easily and flawlessly (not by voice quality) complete the first two or three versus of either his own combinations or when given suggestions from others for lyrics and melody.
At 5years2months he skip counted by twos, fives and tens to almost 5,000 while we drove home from the airport after a family Thanksgiving gathering.

At 5years4months, he attended a very academic pre-school for a period of six months after his pediatrician suggested he needed more intellectual challenge. One of the big challenges for his group was to learn the names of the US presidents in order. He did it easily (most classmates were unable to memorize them) and he still can (as of two years ago when we visited a presidential library) recite them.

Also, since he hated early readers, he exclusively read non-fiction books (DK Eyewonder very briefly) quickly moving on to DK Eyewitness books which are a combination of detailed pictures and 4th grade plus text. It amazed me that he could comprehend so easily about topics that he had much interest in, yet stumble over simple words on boring reading assignments. When he could finally read well enough to enjoy novels that were of actual interest to him, he read constantly for the next six years, often ignoring less interesting schoolwork. His first �real� novel (by his judgment) was Harry Potter-1st at 6 years.

Of course, as I'm sure you know it's impossible to tell for sure, but fwiw:
DS started kindergarten (P1 here) at 4y10m reading some chapter books, e.g. I remember him enjoying the Worst Witch series and Winnie the Pooh before he started school, but mostly preferring shorter stories (he was Thomas the Tank Engine mad, for example, and we had the complete collection). During the course of the year he advanced to being able to read anything he wants to. That is, decoding simply ceased to be an issue, although he was very easily scared by fiction. Things he particularly enjoyed during the year included the Horrid Henry series (which I'm happy to say he grew out of fast :-) Cressida Cowell Dragonese books, everything by Roald Dahl, and various adult science and nature stuff. His teacher, who was great, took the view that there was obviously no need to teach him to read and that what mattered was that he read a wide variety of interesting things, and sent him home with lots of different things, fiction and non-fiction.

His writing was entirely age-appropriate: he started the year able to write his name but not much more, made great strides during the year, but not more than his age peers did, and he remains pretty average for this and other fine-motor-skills tasks, I think. Because of this, most of what happened in the classroom was appropriate for him and he did it with the others. (For the same reason, early entrance would not have been good in his case.)

In maths, he started school not very far ahead - he was doing simple (two digit) addition and subtraction, but he wasn't especially interested and we certainly didn't push it - but then he had a surge of interest shortly after he started. At the end of that school year, at 5y8m, he was doing 4th grade maths in ALEKS (and I should say that it was in no way challenging, i.e. his grade level was limited by how much stuff he'd had time to learn since he started being interested, not by his cognitive level). At school he did a variety of workbooks from higher years and other stuff provided by his teacher (and now, we have a close cooperation and he e.g. does ALEKS worksheets at school).

Try not to worry too much! In a way, it's easier with a DC who is miles ahead when they start school than with one who is super bright but only a little ahead in achievement, because at least you don't have trouble convincing the school *that* your child needs something different.

I feel like I am in the same situation with my DS3. I am really starting to stress about kindergarten being too easy. I am fairly certain he is already past the kindergarten material at this point too.

Obviously, every kid is different, but if you just want to know what is within the realm of possibility, here is our experience:

DS5 started private kindergarten this year at age 4.5. He read easy readers when he was 2 and now reads at at least the 6th grade level. He doesn't have the stamina or interest to read big chapter books on his own, but he follows them perfectly when I read them to him, and he loves to read comic books, graphic novels and magazines on his own. He's also big into Greek and Norse mythology and likes history and science. In class, his teacher uses his language arts time to work on writing responses to questions, where he's probably at about a first grade level. In math, he can count by 2s, 5s, 10s and do addition and subtraction and some simple multiplication. In school, he's working on double digit addition and story problems involving the concepts of multiplication and division, which seems appropriate.

Had I allowed the public school to intimidate me (and they tried), DS wouldn't start kindergarten for another 7 months, and he'd be "learning" the alphabet and how to count once he got there. When I toured the public school, they proudly showed me a class of kindergartners using Starfall to learn the letter sounds. It seemed like a bad fit to me even back when DS was 3, and it is absolutely unthinkable to me now. If DS were to go to public school next year, he'd have to start in at least the 2nd grade.

DS started Kinder at a private school this past fall, he turned 5 at the end of November. He's well beyond the scope of the work they're doing in class right now, but since DD is in 1st grade at the same school, I didn't want to push it. They're using the Abeka curriculum, so he's learning letter and number structure. They're reading in groups, but since he's ahead of his peers, his teacher has been able to get books from the upper classes for him to read during that time. They're doing basic math (matching numbers to items) and things like that, but he'll add the numbers together after he matches them. The curriculum at his school isn't nearly as basic as the public schools here.

Hi Twinkletoes, DD entered kindergarten at 5.5 years before she entered this is what she was doing:

Reading: she had read little Women (2x), A Little Princess, Heidi, Anne of Green Gables ,Jane Eyre , The Secret Garden , yes the theme was classics, I didn't know what else to let her read because of content in older aged books, these versions were the 200 pg ones. She also could read her Bible and look up any verse when asked (she understood how to use table of contents,and the glossary)

Spelling, she has a great memory so if you put spelling words to learn in front of her she would learn it, doesn't matter if it's 1st grade words or 6th grade words.

Math: she entered knowing adding and substracting count to 1000 count by 2's, 3's, 5's, 10's 25's. She begged to learn times and division about 2 months into k , so I showed her how. she is capable for much harder math because she is very quick to understand concepts.

she knew months of the year,days of the week , tell time, count money (all this well before 3)

Writing: this was the only thing that was at grade level

we did end up putting her is 1st grade later that year and now she is 6 and is in 2nd grade,and is still doing things she's known for years, next year we are going to home school.

Hope that helps

DC18 (PG, E2) loved documentaries on television and started reading and spelling more complicated material (many learning disabilities), although he verbally expressed a lot more complicated stories. Counting, days of the week, time, and money were concepts he already knew. He loved learning computer games and board games as well. He asked a lot of questions when he was interested in learning material that was above his reading level, too, and he amassed a lot of knowledge of history and sports. Problems started almost immediately with acceleration needs but age-level writing and slightly above reading levels but a much higher understanding of material presented.

Around the start of kindergarten, I started as my aunt's nanny and began to teach him at his own level when we were at home, as it took several years to fully understand his learning needs. He was very interested in social philosophy/human rights/meaning of life at around 7 years old and enjoyed discussing this with adults and having me explain some of my college coursework in it.

DC16 (MG) was reading and spelling ahead of the curriculum (easy readers/children's books before starting kindergarten) and loved doing some math problems. She was generally happy with school, albeit bored sometimes, as she was ahead of many of the other children (and young for her class). Most of my siblings had experiences like this, too (kindergarten skills around 3.5-4 years old).

DC13 (HG) was quite a bit ahead in math (adding/subtracting/grouping numbers for multiplication) but not in reading or writing (easy readers around the start of kindergarten), and he has needed some harder math opportunities. Reading and writing have been in the upper part of the class but not significantly ahead.

I (PG) was near the end of the kindergarten curriculum around 2 years old (as it seems your DD3 is) and was quite far ahead by the time I entered kindergarten (at 4.5, when my sister was starting, out of convenience). At the end of that year (5.5), I was doing the following:

Reading: Mostly nonfiction science, history, and philosophy/religion at junior high/high school+ level when I read at home. I had some problems with reading older material and becoming scared of what I read sometimes (natural disasters, war...)

Math: Adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing, learning about how to graph equations from older siblings, and playing with a graphing calculator when I was at home

Writing: Early/mid grade school level, easier with a computer than by hand

I hope that this helps