What an appealingly symmetrical notion! In my family, both my parents are gifted (probably HG) but in different ways/domains. My mom is an artist and very verbal, very visual, she has a "perfect" colorsense the way some people have perfect pitch. She claims to have some kind of math disability that makes her unable to understand algebra. My dad is a physicist, a man of few words and sarcastic wit. He's the guy who would say things to us kids like, "Don't put lateral thrust on the coffee table!"

The result: 1 math gifted daughter (who can't fathom not understanding algebra), 1 artistic, verbal, athletic son with sarcastic wit, 1 PG son with multiple gifts--music, math, science, and more.

Well, this is definitely the start of a great adventure! Since posting this, we got a call from DS5's nursery school teacher asking about what DS was trying to tell here at school. (He's loved math and patterns since a very young age and was telling his teacher about a particular number sequence he likes -- Fibonacci numbers). I took it as a positive sign that the teacher contacted us. After a family trip were going to contact the school to see about next steps. We checked the curriculum this weekend and I think DS would be a candidate to skip kindergarten. A guess would be that he's ~ 2 grades ahead of his agemates in most subjects. Most of what he's learned has been though dinner chats about numbers, playing math games, and reading. The math is almost to the point where I'm running out of ideas on what to teach him about!

JB

Gratified wrote: (sorry, don't know how to make those quote boxes)

"Interestingly, I was fortunate enough to discuss our situation with an expert in the field when trying to make some major education decisions. The expert assumed, without any input from us, that the higher scores were underestimates from ceiling issues and the lower scores were probably underestimates from 2E kinds of issues. I have no idea if that's accurate but we were encouraged to pursue a more thorough workup of the "lower" score on the assumption that siblings should be closer to one another. I'm not sure I buy that . . . "

I don't buy it either. (not your case specifically, gratified, just in general) I have three sons - all same mother and father. One is very gifted globally, one is very gifted in the math/science field, and one is bright. They've been tested several times for school admissions and so forth and if you take each of their IQ scores, along with their WIAT scores, and their actual academic performance, they all correlate quite nicely. You see what you would expect to see. There are no 2E issues in my non-gifted son. He is bright and a good student and does well at his chronological grade level, but he is not academically gifted. I think our children inherit our intelligence genes just as they inherit our height genes, eye color genes, etc. You can still end up with some short blue eyed children in the same family as tall brown eyed children. Those genes are just expressed in different ways.

JBDad,

"Skipping kindergarten" might be the topic of a new thread for you. We have no experience with it, but I know there are others here who have, and I know there is some argument to be made for attending kindergarten and then skipping first grade. Maybe others can you give you more insight.

I agree with CFK. DS6 loved preschool and then loved his half-day, mostly play-based K, but was MISERABLE in his all-day, academic, "learn to read" 1st grade class.

Much depends upon the K program and the child, of course, but our K year went swimmingly. OTOH, we yanked him out of 1st grade for "emergency homeschooling," the educational situation was so glaringly problematic. He'd never been a behavior problem in his life, and he acted up BIG TIME, he was so unhappy and felt so disappointed in school. (And BTW, I had always been one of those people who said, "Oh, I could never homeschool...," so this wasn't a philosophical choice for us.)

Half-day, play-based K classes can be really great for GT kids, since it gives them time to play and be social and learn how to stand in line and all that sort of thing, but they still have the time and energy to pursue learning on their own.

A full-day, highly academic K class is probably something to skip, unless the academics will be tailored to your child's specific needs.

I think I saw someone else fork a topic discussion but I'm not sure how they did that...

At any rate, a friend of the family who lives 1 school district away apparently had the opportunity to enroll their GS in a mixed K/1st grade class. I wish that was an option for us, as it sounded like that worked out well. His only complaint was the transition to full day school/missing nap time. Sounds like a common issue.

A week ago we wouldn't have considered remotely thinking about possibly skipping Kindergarten for a lot of the reasons you mention. We're also wondering if it's possible to do something like a half year of K and then move into first... All topics we hope to cover with the school later this month.


JB

My youngest (DSnow 6) skipped kindergarten. He had been to private pre-school where they did most of the things that are done in K the year before. Entering 1st grade just before he turned 5 was perfect. He made lots of friends and really groved on the routine. After half a year he was ready to move on.

For HG kids, single grade skip may not the end-all answer. The pace may be too slow--it'd be great to have compacted grades (half yr 1st, half yr 2nd, half yr 3rd, etc.)

Luckily we have a PEGs class and he went into that for the 2nd half of the year and the rest of elementary school. They can continue to subject accelerate in that setting (4th grade spelling, 7th grade reading, etc.) He can now do long division and manipulate fractions without having to sit through more addition/subtraction.