is my kid too advanced for a preschool curriculum?

[Anonymous]

forgive me for wording this post like this!! i just wanted to get people to read it. let me set the scene: our daughter recently turned 2 and we've been doing the hellacious preschool rounds. on our last tour i was kind of surprised by a 3yo classroom. the 3yo kids were just learning to identify the letters of the alphabet, colors, shapes, animals, etc. now i don't think of our kid as crazy smart or at all slow but maybe somewhere in the middle. that being said she knows all her letters, colors, shapes, etc. this is not to say that she's an expert on them and has no room for improvement. my concern is that if she were to get into one of these pgms where they are learning this in the 3's rm that would mean it would be 2 more YEARS till she was working on stuff that she is learning rt now.
any insight?

[Anonymous]

if your concern is academics - do it at home and don't bother with preschool.

If you are interested in social / emotional development, preschool is a great place for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:if your concern is academics - do it at home and don't bother with preschool.

If you are interested in social / emotional development, preschool is a great place for it.

i was kinda looking at preschool for both reasons though. she loves being around other kids and i want her to learn about the social world as well. get your pt though..i think, if i'm nervous about it just continue to expose her to thoughts, ideologies, etc that we think is important for her to learn at that age. good pt.

[Anonymous]

op again - and above, oops - just realized i am NOT in the preschool forum. i'm an idiot. sorry!!

[Anonymous]

a preschool where children sit around being "taught" letters, etc. is a bad preschool. the work of childhood is play--that is what is best for a preschooler's brain-- and good preschools are focused on creating interesting play opportunities and emphasizing socialization.

[Anonymous]

i was kind of surprised by a 3yo classroom. the 3yo kids were just learning to identify the letters of the alphabet, colors, shapes, animals, etc.

I'm surprised by this. You really find it odd that 3-yr olds are still learning the alphabet? The work you describe is not at all unusual for a 3-yr old classroom; it sounds totally age-appropriate to me. Wait until your child gets to kindergarten! I promise you there will be kids there who have barely mastered the alphabet. Not being snarky, but very few 2-yr olds can identify every letter of the alphabet.

Anyway, any decent preschool that is doing its job will engage your child through a wide range of activities during the day. I don't think preschoolers need "academics," but I think it's ok to introduce some of these things. If they're teaching the alphabet in a fun, age-appropriate way, I would think that would engage your child even if it's reinforcing something she already knows. Concerns about whether the child is "bored" by the curriculum or too advanced for it are, IMO, more of an issue in elementary school, when kids start to disengage and/or misbehave if the work isn't stimulating. But in preschool, the kids have short attentions spans, they change activities frequently, they are working on so many different skills (social, fine motor, etc.) that I don't think a good preschool would be boring for an "academically advanced" child. The "material" is only part of the experience; there is a lot of "process" that is beneficial and necessary for children's development. So if they're learning to recognize the letter A, they're also learning how to hold a crayon to color in a big letter A, what words begin with A, the alphabet song, how to sit and participate in circle time while the teacher reads a book about the alphabet, etc.

[Anonymous]

op here - you guys have to forgive me, she's my eldest and it's all new to me. i myself am a person that never did well academically and therefore learned most about life via the social world. i'm sure she'll love preschool. thnx for the advice!

[Anonymous]

I understand OP's concerns. My daughter also had mastered all of the preschool basics before her third birthday, and could even read a couple of words and do a little simple addition. I had to decide to let go and let her just enjoy the socialization of preschool. She's been in preschool for 6 months now and has not learned a single academic thing that she didn't know a year ago. On the other hand, she's making friends, having fun, and learning to love school. I'm hoping that when the time comes for her to learn new things again, she'll excel. And in the end, it doesn't matter whether she starts reading at 3 or 4 or 5 -- as long as she loves learning, she'll do well.

[Anonymous]

The G&T coordinator at our school claims the truly gifted children don't get bored in school when they already know the material because they can always find nuances and take it to the next level.

Besides, both of my kids have thought preschool was a blast. There are all kinds of new thins to play with, art projects, etc.

[Anonymous]

The G&T coordinator at our school claims the truly gifted children don't get bored in school when they already know the material because they can always find nuances and take it to the next level.

Seriously? That's about the craziest thing I've ever heard. They say things like this to justify not being able to offer anything else.

But to the OP, if your child is indeed advanced, then I would NOT put them in an "academic" preschool. I would find one that is play based, with lots of outside time, creative movement, music, art, lots of sensory exploration, etc.

[Anonymous]

OP, I highly doubt your kid is too advanced in all ways for all the things they will do in preschool. Few kids are advanced in everything.

Some of the things that kids learn in preschool are academic, but subtle. All that clay, coloring, sewing, cutting, etc is about reading readiness, and fine motor skills - critical for effective writing. In some ways, the alphabet, the color names... that stuffs the easy part!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The G&T coordinator at our school claims the truly gifted children don't get bored in school when they already know the material because they can always find nuances and take it to the next level.

Seriously? That's about the craziest thing I've ever heard. They say things like this to justify not being able to offer anything else.

But to the OP, if your child is indeed advanced, then I would NOT put them in an "academic" preschool. I would find one that is play based, with lots of outside time, creative movement, music, art, lots of sensory exploration, etc.

I don't think it's "crazy" to say that gifted children don't get bored in school. Some may. And many may get bored at times, but overall many of them are able to take the material to another level or find another aspect that interests them. They can look for deeper patterns. They can imagine and think deep thoughts. Children who are be pushed to take extra classes early in order to get ahead, would be more likely to get "bored" when they are in a class which covers material they've already had. There is a difference.

Preschool really is more about socialization and fun than academics. Even a child who knows the alphabet may still enjoy sculpting a letter 'A' or singing the Alphabet song. Preschool is usually more about learning to be in school than about what subjects the kids are learning. So I'd agree, a play-based preschool would still offer loads.

[Anonymous]

I'm the one who posted about gifted kids not getting bored. I have a gifted child and she has never gotten bored in school. She drives the teachers crazy because she has a million off the wall questions, but she's not bored.

[Anonymous]

But what I took from the quote from the GT coordinator (which is the part that I find the scariest since it really confirms for me that some of these GT coordinators simply do NOT get some of these kids) is that NO gifted child is bored in school. How can anyone even make such a claim? I agree that it is easier to be less bored in a reading group because they can typically read ahead, think about the story in different ways, etc. My 8 year old will happily read anything from a picture book to Harry Potter to text books we have lying around the house. But math is the subject that drove her nuts. The practice and practice and sloooooooooowness of the pace of first and second grade math drove her out of her mind. She complained every.single day about how slow the math was and it was killing her love of math. Now in the GT Center the pace is faster, they are exploring lots of interesting topics and she loves it again.

So while not all gifted kids will be bored, many are in fact bored.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But what I took from the quote from the GT coordinator (which is the part that I find the scariest since it really confirms for me that some of these GT coordinators simply do NOT get some of these kids) is that NO gifted child is bored in school.

Another observer here...

I'm assuming the post in question was paraphrasing the GT coordinator. So I wouldn't assume from this post alone that the GT coordinator is necessarily out of touch.

Even if it is a direct quote, read the whole sentence again. The statement didn't say that NO gifted child ever gets bored in school [period and end of story]. It said that truly gifted children don't get bored in school just because they already know the material. I take that to read that some may get bored, but there are other factors.

I think one of the points the GT coordinator was probably trying to make was that claiming a child is bored to validate a claim of giftedness is null. Just because a child is bored in school doesn't make that child gifted. Kids get bored in school for lots of reasons. Many gifted children can work around these things because they find so many things interesting.