ahead in school

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my son is 4 only in pre school, but i'm trying to figure out what to do with him school wise and wondering if you can give me some insites as to what happened to you.
he is reading at an 8yr old level
he is doing multiple number addition and learning times tables.
i'm just wondering how teachers accomidate that in school so he won't be bored.
i'm sure there's stuff he'll learn that he hasn't already and hopefully pick up some more social skills.
thanks

Congratulations to both of you, mum!

My Grade 1 and 2 teacher used to keep extra worksheets, fill-in-the-blanks, problems, puzzles, etc. on a shelf labeled "What Shall I Do Next?" at the side of the classroom. I used to raid it on a regular basis.

As I got older, I would read all the stories and poems, whether assigned or not, in our school's English readers. Like Hermione Granger, I was simply weird that way. Another class had a cupboard full of donated used paperbacks, mostly detective and other genre fiction. I went through a good portion of that as well.

The school library was my favourite "hang" at lunch and recess.

If all else fails, and your boy still finds himself sitting at his desk twiddling his thumbs, I'd have a chat with his teacher, or someone in the school's admin, to arrange for him to be given work more suited to his abilities. And, if at all possible, to accomplish this without separating him from his age cohort.

Best of luck!

I'm not a fan of jumping up a grade for kids. Both of our AS boys seemed very bright in preschool. The oldest was always academically advanced, the younger seemed more advanced at a younger age, but in grade school seemed to fall behind (currently he is getting mostly A's in middle school, though not academically advanced for his age group). What both boys shared was a distinct immaturity, PLUS a birthday in late spring or early summer, while most of the peers have very early fall birthdays or the peers were a full year ahead of them in school.

If we had been able to know then what we know now, we would have held both boys back a year. I feel like both boys would have benefited from being with peers a year or so younger than they were. Academics can always be juggled with to reach the appropriate academic level, but feeling comfortable with peers and their social maturity level is not so easy to deal with.

Kris

In first grade, other first graders asked my aspy son for help in math. He loved it. He has a hard time socializing but this was like socialization on his terms, plus in order to explain math to the other kids, he had to try to figure out how their brains were processing math.

Thank goodness that my son never said anything judgemental, like "I never met a person who is as bad at math as you." Aside from an aspy not understanding that some true statements could hurt feelings, I think teaching other kids is an excellent way to help them look forward to school. Besides, I could always teach him more math. Learning about getting along with other children is what the school can do that parents can't.

I have an extremely bright 4 year old preschooler too. She's not that advanced (wow!) but I understand where you're coming from. I was bored in school myself, and by second grade I stopped bothering with any of the paying attention. I think if they had put me in a gifted program and challenged me a bit, everything would have been great. It didn't work that way. Best advice I can give is to make sure your child has opportunities. If you see the school has a gifted program, push for your child to be in it.

Like OregonBecky mentions, this might be a way to initiate socializing.

What about putting him into a gifted program?

I didn't see where you are located, but I can tell you that it will depend on the teacher and the school system, and the size and backgrounds of the class - if the teacher has 35 kids and a handful of them are discipline problems, your son's not going to get much individual attention at all. I hope that's not the case.

Long story here, but you might find it useful:

My daughter was reading at 3rd grad level at age 4 as well, and when she started kindergarten they made her sit in her chair with her hands on the desk while they taught the other kids their letters, shapes, colors, and numbers. No, really.

I asked if she couldn't be allowed to read a book while that was going on, as she was tested out so far ahead of the other kids and was told no, that it would not be fair to the other kids. So she sat all fripping year long staring at the wall while the other kids learned their ABCs. The teachers started refusing to call on her when they asked a question, as she always put her hand up and had the answer. Eventually she stopped putting her hand up. My kindergartener came home one day and told me that it was not good to be smart. I could have died.

I went and argued that she be allowed to move up to at least first or second grade for reading time, social studies, english, and science, and was told that the lessons were not taught at the same time in all the rooms and that she's miss "the basics" in kindergarten if they did that and so that would not be possible. She'd been in nursery school since she was 10 months old, so she knew how to line up, take turns, etc - the basics. It was ludicrous that they'd keep her there for that, for lessons on how to brush her teeth, what clothes to wear when it was cold, etc.

At my insistence we discussed moving her up to first grade, and I asked them to let me think about it as I was concerned because she was emotionally and socially really not at the level of a first-grader, but we had to do something about the academics. I came to pick her up one day and she was in tears - they'd moved her up to first grade without consulting me further. She could not handwrite well, but was already more advanced in all the other subjects than the kids in the first grade. She's also Aspie and is bad with change - she was horrible with change that she'd not been prepped for at that time in her life. Had I known what was going to happen I could have worked with her beforehand and during. It was a horrific emotional disaster for her.

A large portion of the curriculum in the first grade was based on handwritten responses. She was in over her head - although if they'd given her a keyboard she could have typed them (she'd been word-processing for a few years by that time, writing her own stories.) They moved her back to kindergarten later that week - again without consulting me - saying that she had said that is what she wanted to do. She was familiar with the kindergarten room and other kids by that time, and she didn't do well with change. And she would have agreed with anything an adult asked her at that point And what the heck were they doing asking her and not me!! !!??? Good question.

Fast-forward to fourth grade. Different school system. She had a teacher from England. The kid was still running well ahead of her classmates - she was already into the college level reading materials at that point. The teacher recognized it and tailored a special curriculum for her, as well as having her tested (she came out in the 99.99th percentile on the charts) for the gifted seminar program (the top of the gifted track). There were no seminar classes until 5th grade - they just didn't exist. She asked my daughter if she liked school and my daughter said it was ok but boring. So the teacher asked her to design some lessons that would not be boring. The kid did that, down to the smallest detail. I believe they were on Egyptian dynasties, dinosaurs, neuroanatomy, and plate tectonics (not sure about that last one, it's been a long time). The teacher eventually put her to work tutoring kids from Somalia or somewhere - which gave my daughter a chance to work on her interpersonal skills, which were lagging, and which gave her an opportunity to feel as if she was a success in dealing with others. She brought in her own books from home and would have my daughter read them and discuss them with her over lunch. The woman was a SAINT. Mrs. Robinson, BLESS HER, wherever she is.

Fast forward to high school, same school district, there is no gifted program at that level though she was in the "advanced" sections of classes - My daughter tended to sleep through a lot of her classes, the work was pretty pathetic. They gave her handouts to fill in for classwork - you know the kind where they take a sentence out of the book and leave a word or concept out, so the kids have to open the book and find the sentence to fill in the blank? Her economics teacher used to play tapes of "The Apprentice" as economics lessons, and spent an entire week teaching the class how to use a checkbook (the kid had her own bank account since she was 14 - I made sure of that and that she knew how to use it). In one of her science classes they watched "Journey to the Center of the Earth" because it was about geology. (!?!?!) Her graduation GPA was pretty pedestrian, a solid B (which is embarrassing beyond words - she slacked off so badly it was pathetic). Her college entrance scores were stellar (close to an 800 verbal SAT with a math score in the 600s, ACT scores better than that), yet because her grades were mediocre she lost out on the chance for scholarships to college. The grades were mediocre because the work was meaningless dross, her classmates didn't understand "the big words" she'd use, and she chose to not play the game. They had no other option for her at the high school. They would not release her to take college classes. The rules said she could not drop out and do the GED test until she turned 18 or I would have had her do that when she was 15 and tried to get her into the community college.

I am a single parent and had to work 9 hour shifts with a 2 to 3 hour commute each day. I worked with the kid on the side as much as I could to see that she received a decent education, since the school system here wasn't doing it. It wasn't enough to counteract the mental assault she'd suffered. In the end, she's still got incredible potential but no initiative left, as that was pretty much drilled out of her in school. She went in a bright, eager, precocious learner and came out a burned out kid who doesn't give much of a damn about anything. They taught her to go with the flow, to not make waves, to not stand out.... to, in effect, be mediocre.

If you can home-school your child for at least the early years, I would strongly recommend that you do so. It is one of my most painful regrets that I was not in a position to do that for my child. And be prepared to fight like a tiger for your kid - you may well have to - if he does go to a public school.

I wish they'd had a gifted programme when I was in primary school as I was reading several years ahead of my chronological age and was getting bored but the teachers wouldn't give me any interesting more advanced work to do even though they promised my parents they would.

my daughter is in the gifted program here, and it seems to be balancing out her intense thirst for more knowledge....the social strain, however, has been difficult for her~ new situation, new students, new teachers, more transitioning.......we're still working on getting things more settled for her.
i would not push for your child to skip a grade....you can have the teahcer assign supplemental work that will still keep your child interested. because many of our children are behind socially, IMO you are not doing your child a favor by inadvertantly pushing them to be more socially adept at a younger age.

When my son was put into the talented and gifted program, I was hoping that the program would cater to oddball personalities but it was very NT. It turned out that parents considered it prestigious enough that a lot of NT kids got in because of parent lobbying. My son hated the class and thought that it was boring.

We ran into that in spades, yes! It looks good on their college aps.

I absolutely agree about being careful when thinking of moving kids who are not socially or emotionally ready up to higher grades. Still, something has to be done if the work is so far beneath their level that they're shutting down. One could hope one would be lucky enough for their kids to have teachers who will work with them. In our experience, out of all the teachers my daughter had in elementary school (6 grades), only the one in 4th grade was willing to do ANYTHING for the advanced kids like my daughter. There were special programs for the really slow kids, but nothing for the other end of that spectrum. Most of her teachers did not want to be bothered and had everyone tracked so severely onto a "if it's Tuesday we are doing so many pages and you will NOT work ahead or on anything else" mindset that it was pitiful.

I really hope others have better experiences. Mine was that I had to do the "enrichment" activities on my own, after school and on weekends. Not impossible, but when the kid has been on the road from 5:45 (when the school bus came) until 6:30pm when we'd get home, there wasn't a lot of brainpower left. You have to use it very carefully, the time that's left over in the day.

Good luck to ALL of you with young kids.

i guess our district is lucky, in that, in order to get into the enrichment program you have to be reccommended by teachers. there's no getting in just because mommy and daddy pull strings so you can have something to look good on your college app......the group my daughter's in is filled with all sorts of quirky kids who, by the teacher's admission, all want to be in charge of and run the group.

I was advanced academically, reading at fifth grade level in first grade when, just the year before, I was still learning English. I was always an avid reader and supplemented what I learned in school with my own research and study. I was interested in a lot of things they never taught in school or taught very poorly. Geography was one example. If I didn't have such an intense interest in the world and certain parts of it, I don't think I would ever have learned about them.

My son was tested in kindergarten for the school district's gifted program and came in at the top 99%. Not bragging it's just a fact - the kid is incredibly smart! He was in the gifted program for 3 years and then we pulled him out and he is now homeschooled. Best decision we ever made. I won't go into the gory details -someone (I think Nan) did a great job of it - her post is very similar to our story.

IMHO public school is not a place where Aspie kids can learn best- I know there are exceptions but it truly depends on your school district, the quality of the gifted or enrichment program, the principal in your kids school and how willing they are to "get" your kid and his quirks and needs. My son really did well in school (they called him "MathMan") until 3rd grade when several factors converged to make us want to get him out of there.

If you have any way of homeschooling your child I would highly recommend it. You DO NOT have to worry about their socialization - there are plenty of opportunities for socialization that don't involve sitting in a noisy, chaotic classroom of 30 kids. It has been a lifesaver for my son

Rachel46, you should check out this thread:

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt5702.html

I think your insights on home schooling could be of good use there.