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My daughter is in a private kindergarten right now and will graduate in June. Right now she is reading and can add and subtract single digit numbers. Socially, she is good. She has a few friends in school and a lot of neighborhood girls she plays with. No behaviorial issues whatsoever. Just glowing reports from the teacher.
We are moving to a state where the age cutoff for first grade is you must be 6 by Sept 1st. My daughter will be 6 in November. The new school district has said that I can either put her in kindergarten again or stick her in private school for 1st grade and transfer her to public school for 2nd grade. There are no age waivers. I called around and none of the private schools in the area will take her as a 1st grader because they adhere to the public schools age cutoffs except a Montessori school. (They don't have grades).
Would you keep your kid in kindergarten another year even though your daughter is good to move up both academically and socially? Or would you try the Montessori school and then transfer her for second grade?
A little more info: her two brothers will be in 3rd grade and 2nd grade and will be going to the public school.
Personally, I would put her in kindergarten again, because she will be significantly younger than her classmates in 1st grade. Its easier to hold a child back in kindergarten than to do it later on.
My daughter is in a private kindergarten right now and will graduate in June. Right now she is reading and can add and subtract single digit numbers. Socially, she is good. She has a few friends in school and a lot of neighborhood girls she plays with. No behaviorial issues whatsoever. Just glowing reports from the teacher.
We are moving to a state where the age cutoff for first grade is you must be 6 by Sept 1st. My daughter will be 6 in November. The new school district has said that I can either put her in kindergarten again or stick her in private school for 1st grade and transfer her to public school for 2nd grade. There are no age waivers. I called around and none of the private schools in the area will take her as a 1st grader because they adhere to the public schools age cutoffs except a Montessori school. (They don't have grades).
Would you keep your kid in kindergarten another year even though your daughter is good to move up both academically and socially? Or would you try the Montessori school and then transfer her for second grade?
A little more info: her two brothers will be in 3rd grade and 2nd grade and will be going to the public school.
Any thoughts?
I can tell you that if she's ready to go, then have her proceed. Keeping her back just based on age isn't a good thing. I started Kindergarten when I was 4 (with 3 others...I was part of a pilot study) and I was actually not 5 until Feb. This means that I couldn't drive until Feb of my junior year (slightly annoying), went to college at 17, and graduated college at 21. I LOVED it! I never saw being young as a disadvantage and am soooo glad that my parents let me proceed!!! BTW, the 3 others had their parents hold them back due to their age....big mistake. Really, if your child is fine socially and is doing well academically, then I would go with your gut and let her go into first grade. There's no need to hold her back because of age and I would actually challenge the school on this. If needed, I can send you psychological articles that back up the point that you shouldn't hold back due to age :-)
I would start her in Kindergarten and let her shine above the crowd with her being ahead of the majority!
I used to be in management in a child care program that had private Kindergarten and we took many students who turned 5 within a couple of months after the cut off. Every single one of them went to public school Kindergarten the next year and thrived greatly. They were top students and better equipped socially to handle being in a public school enviroment than those that came from home or other child care programs not geared towards prepping for Kindergarten.
My third daughter, now a 4th grader, has always been ahead of the pack academically from early on. In Kindergarten they would send her to the 1st grade classrooms for reading curriculum. There simply was nothing the K reading program had to offer her. She also went there to read to their classes.
I expect the same type accomodations for my son who turned 5 in January and is probably capable, academically, of going straight into 2nd grade. We'll see what Kindergarten brings to the table and go from there.
I would start her in Kindergarten and let her shine above the crowd with her being ahead of the majority!
I used to be in management in a child care program that had private Kindergarten and we took many students who turned 5 within a couple of months after the cut off. Every single one of them went to public school Kindergarten the next year and thrived greatly. They were top students and better equipped socially to handle being in a public school enviroment than those that came from home or other child care programs not geared towards prepping for Kindergarten.
My third daughter, now a 4th grader, has always been ahead of the pack academically from early on. In Kindergarten they would send her to the 1st grade classrooms for reading curriculum. There simply was nothing the K reading program had to offer her. She also went there to read to their classes.
I expect the same type accomodations for my son who turned 5 in January and is probably capable, academically, of going straight into 2nd grade. We'll see what Kindergarten brings to the table and go from there.
I missed the cutoff and was BRILLIANT compared to my classmates.
I can tell you that if she's ready to go, then have her proceed. Keeping her back just based on age isn't a good thing. I started Kindergarten when I was 4 (with 3 others...I was part of a pilot study) and I was actually not 5 until Feb. This means that I couldn't drive until Feb of my junior year (slightly annoying), went to college at 17, and graduated college at 21. I LOVED it! I never saw being young as a disadvantage and am soooo glad that my parents let me proceed!!! BTW, the 3 others had their parents hold them back due to their age....big mistake. Really, if your child is fine socially and is doing well academically, then I would go with your gut and let her go into first grade. There's no need to hold her back because of age and I would actually challenge the school on this. If needed, I can send you psychological articles that back up the point that you shouldn't hold back due to age :-)
I think you were very fortunate in your success, as I've seen the opposite occur in several instances, which is a big part of my opinion on this matter.
One example, I have a niece who followed a similar path as you and both her and her mother have now said that if they had it to do over, they would make a different choice. She's highly successful as an ADA straight out of law school at the age of 24, so the academic part held up very well for her.
However, she struggled quite a bit emotionally while in middle school and in early high school. She just wasn't on the same page as most of her classmates....physically, emotionally or socially. Driving was part of it, but so was her timing of puberty compared to theirs, her dating status and so on. Things that are typically of great importance at that age, especially girls. Starting her senior year she was 16 and was in a state where she couldn't even get her driver's license at that age. She didn't turn 17 until April of her senior year.
I think going from a private Kindergarten where you started earlier than a typical age cut off to a completely different school, most likely public school,
can easily be portrayed as going to 'big' school instead of 'repeating' Kindergarten. She won't be with the same group of kids, so no one will think any different of her at the new school, other than she's one smart cookie!
Due to the fact that you're moving and changing your daughter's environment, I'd be inclined to enroll her in Kindergarten again. She will be going through a big change, so you may find it is better for her to be ahead academically when she starts school. To keep her challenged, check with the school and find out what programs they have in Reading and Math for kids who are academically advanced.
What state are you moving to? I've done some searching on petitioning to have my son entered into kindergarten and his birthday is early November. And I've found a good number of states have written policies and explicitly tell you what you need to to do petition to have your child entered early.
I called every school district around me and they all said no...the real buggers said no first grade til he's 6. Needless to say, I won't be moving there... But my friend who is a school psychologist said you need to write a letter and jump through the hoops to try for early admission.
You need to see if there is a policy and follow it. You will probably need to write a letter to the principal and have your child evaluated by a psychologist to determine her IQ and readiness for school. This will cost a few hundred bucks.
But I wouldn't give up and I wouldn't make her repeat a year of stuff she's already learned - chances are she's way ahead due to the private schooling anyway.
And I second jessiegirl's opinion - I have a mid November birthday and never had any issue academically or socially really. If my folks had been a tad smarter they could have explained why I was so much shorter than my peers and didn't have any facial hair - but I guess I wasn't raised to complain, so I never bothered; they would've ignored me anyway...not very progressive, my folks.
With the cutoff date nationwide ranging from September to January, its hard for me to take the school adminstration's party line as anything but that. Show me a detailed, large study that proves "redshirting" kids is better for them, and I'll buy it, but there hasn't been one to date.
I would put her in Kinder. I know that in PA, my child was in a private school because the public ones sucked. When we moved to FL, I put him in public school because they're great where I'm living (and I was teaching at the one he went to anyway). He was actually behind his classmates and had to pull himself up. Now he's ahead because he's smart...but the curriculum wasn't the same.
So I would put her in Kinder. She can be one of hte higher students. Plus, if she is really that advanced, I know in my school they would allow her to read with a different grade level class just for the reading...and if she proves to be too good, they would just transfer her to the next grade. Last year we had two kindergarteners come in who were gifted (not diagnosed yet) and reading at a end of 2nd grade level...and this is them entering Kinder with that. They were brought to my co-workers class of first graders for reading...and then she found out that they caught on so quickly in math and writing that she spoke to admistration and those two kindergarteners just moved into her class...didn't have to do kinder...
Kinder again....who wouldn't want to play for an extra year while she gets the 'lay of the land'?? As another poster pointed out, lots of things are changing for her. Let her take some time to acclimate.
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