how do you skip grades homeschooling?

[katrina.sneed]

my daughter is five and although we havnt done any formal school she is way beyond kindergarten level. she is self taught with me checking her work. i havnt pushed her she has just wanted to do it. we live in tn and i have been told i have to register her as kindergarten bc kindergarten is manditory in tn. she is way beyond kindergarten level ( i know i used to teach and am still a certified teacher with my masters in reading and literacy). how do i get around the kindergarten mandate and skip her ahead to where she belongs. any thoughts would help. thanks.

 

 

excuse misspelling and no caps typing from the ipad and my husband hates the autocorrect function

[chepyl]

Register her as kindergarten and do work at her level. My son will be 2nd grade officially next year, but he will be doing 3rd&4th grade work.

[Lucy the Valiant]

You can just register her as kindergarten, and let her continue reading and ciphering at her current level, whatever that is. :)

 

It works beautifully.

[Kathy G]

We do exactly the same thing. I had a first grader doing 2nd, 3rd, 4th and even some 5th grade level work depending on the subject.

 

Sometimes I wonder how my kids don't get confused on what grade they are actually in (or listed as). Sometimes, when parents ask me what grades my kids are in, I have to really stop and think about what "age appropriate" grade!

[Dana]

Someone tagged the thread. Look at the bottom of the page and click on grade level. You'll be able to read similar discussions. I'd recommend registering as K and then working at her level. Later you can skip a grade if needed.

 

Welcome to the boards!

[Mélie]

We're in the same place with my 5 year old. I'm calling him a kindergartener this year, even though he'll be working on everything from 1st to 4th grade.

 

I think it would be easier to skip grades later or graduate early than to fight to prove that your 5 year old should be in 2nd grade. I know here there is a strict age limit.

 

Welcome!

[nova147]

:iagree:

 

Her grade level won't matter unless/until you put her in school. Most of us know that if/when our kiddos go to a school system, we'll have to fight to get them appropriate work.

 

I tell people my son is going into 3rd grade, mostly because that keeps him with the group of boys he knows at church for things like VBS and scouts. If he had gone to PS, he would be starting 2nd. He's doing middle school math, 2nd grade writing, reading at a 5th grade level, etc. Let the paperwork say what it needs to say and keep teaching your daughter how she needs to be taught. The beauty of homeschool!

[ChandlerMom]

I agree with the "you don't" -- at least at this point.

 

If your state mandates starting age for K, it's just not a battle worth fighting. As you know as a teacher, kids enter K at a wide range of abilities. Your child is just lucky that her "school" will be 100% customized to her actual abilities. Other things to consider are that *some* kids are precocious more than gifted and you might like to be able to slow things down or take rabbit trails in the future. The other issue you might have (down the line) is that some states make it very difficult for homeschoolers to skip grades because some folks have used this to abuse the system to avoid periodic testing (skip and hold back so their child is never an X-grader and doesn't have to take some standardized test), or there is at least of fear of folks doing so. So some states will say you start based on age, you follow with that unless and until you graduate them (early, most likely). And like others have said, mostly grade only matters for extracurriculars (age grouping) unless you are putting your child back into B&M school, in which case they will likely do placement testing.

[nov05mama]

Register her as kindergarten and do work at her level. My son will be 2nd grade officially next year, but he will be doing 3rd&4th grade work.

 

:iagree: I am not even sure that our state requires you to put a 'grade' when we register (will be registering on July 1st). My DS would technically only be entering 1st grade this fall based on the PS cutoff, but he's doing work all over the board...2nd/3rd/4th grade work this coming year, across the curriculum.

[Tree House Academy]

We are in TN too and go through Family Christian Academy as our umbrella school. You would register her for Kindergarten and let her keep working at her level (even if that is 5th grade). At the end of the year, you give her a standardized test - we use stanford achievement test from BJU (you can register to be a certified tester with them as long as you have a bachelor's degree). Once she takes the test, if her stanine score is 7 or above on the complete battery, she can skip a grade. I would keep doing that each year as needed until you have her where you feel she belongs.

 

However, be aware that sometimes kids who take off fast do slow down a bit as they get older (and some keep going full speed ahead). Just something to think about as you go forward - you may not want her to be 13, in her senior year in hs, and strugging. KWIM?

[blondeviolin]

We just say she's going into first grade, even if she's grades ahead in certain/most areas. It's also the beauty of multi-grade curricula in the content areas.

[Mrs.Gregg]

We enroll at grade level and then work above or below as needed. ;)

[Jen in PA]

I'm really not sure what will work from a legal standpoint in your state. What we did was begin kindergarten at age 4, which is legal here, although you usually only see it in cases where districts have policies to admit gifted kids early (districts set their own admission dates here. state law has limits on what those dates can be). We don't report here until the child turns eight, which means that my summer birthday kiddos first get reported to the district as they start 4th grade.

[zenjenn]

I always talk in terms of my kids being in the grades they would be if they were in public school. Unless you are particularly isolated from school-goers, it's GOING to come up, and IMO it helps the child feel more "normal" if they are able to answer the question "what grade are you in?" without missing a beat. I might have considered labeling my AL as 1 grade ahead of she had a summer or fall birthday, but she has a spring birthday and is already one of the youngest in her "grade".

 

I never even considered calling my accelerated learner as a grade other than that, for two reasons that are kind of equal and opposite:

 

1) So easy for an extra-bright child to get smug and superior if allowed. While in schools you might occasionally find a child 1 grade level ahead of their age, you'll almost never see more than that (even though undoubtedly many children are capable.) Especially at younger ages, if anything you have to fight these kids to bring it down a notch unless they naturally have a really humble personality. Yes, as parents and grandparents we're very proud, but not everyone is going to think academic showing-off is cute, and a 6 yr old claiming to be in 3rd grade or whatever is the epitome of that.

 

2) On the flip side, no matter how bright the child, most of the time you will find they have limits, if not academically than just in terms of maturity & attention span. It is easy for an accelerated child to be working far ahead in a curriculum, and then think something is *wrong* with them if they find an academic task insurmountably daunting or tedious. Example: my 1st grader last year could write pages if she had something specific to write about, but struggled to come up with more than a sentence in the free journal writing time we do daily. Coming up with writing original ideas out of nothing is a concept she was not ready for, even though she had the grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and penmanship to write a great quantity - and that is OK. She was 6. Original ideas are challenging. She was told for 1st grader, a journal entry in which she simply writes one sentence about today is acceptable. (Caveat - important NOT to let an accelerated learner *lean* on this logic and skate and never be challenged. It's hard to balance. I try to create great incentives for my AL to work to her potential, while not remotely penalizing at ALL if she wants/needs to work close to grade level. By the end of 1st grade, the journal entries had expanded to short paragraphs, even though such would not be expected of most 1st graders.)

 

Another example, I present something like long division to my 1st grade and she'll say "This is SO hard. Can I do this when I'm in 2nd grade?" And I'll say "This is absolutely an unusual and challenging thing to learn for a child your age. If you don't feel ready, that's OK. But when you think you can do it, let me know, and we'll work on it - because I don't think it would take you long to learn it once you have the patience to pay attention to the lesson." She will usually back off to something "safer" and then ask about the new topic again when she is ready. It's tough, because with my 3rd grader I would just say "It's time, we need to work on this." but with ALs you have to be always guarded against trying to push developmentally inappropriate work topics. Also, just because an AL is a couple grade levels ahead in pre-school or Kinder, doesn't mean she will ALWAYS be that much ahead in all topics, as these developmental roadblocks arise.

Edited June 25, 2012 by zenjenn

[Dmmetler]

With a 5 yr old, I wouldn't grade skip on paper. I have an on-paper accelerated child (due to her being accelerated in PS), and I regularly bump her back to her age/grade for anything physical because physically and and in some emotional ways she's her age and is happier when she's doing recreational gymnastics or dance with other 6-8 yr olds rather than 8-10 yr olds, which is what putting her at her official grade level does. Academically...well, NONE of the books/materials she uses match the grade level on her report card.

 

If you go through a cover school, I think some of them get nervous if a child is too far out of sync with their age/grade. Mine keeps asking me when I'm going to "Correct" DD's grade. They've got a lot of good reasons for doing so, but as I see it, none of them apply earlier than 4 years before I expect DD to graduate high school, and we're not there yet, so I can keep my head in that particular pile of sand a little longer.

 

I'm also in TN, and K is mandatory. After K, though, there really aren't any mandatory grades until high school credit requirements kick in, so you can skip with impunity providing that you can document performance until 9th grade. Whatever route you take to homeschool will determine what is required (if you go the district route, TCAP scores and probably a GT assessment through the district will be required. If you go through a cover school, probably Terra Nova or SAT-10 scores and maybe evidence of above grade level performance). Once you get to high school, as my cover school keeps reminding me, you can do the same number of credits/courses in less time (or do some dual enrollment), but you still have to complete that number of credits/courses to officially graduate.

Edited June 25, 2012 by dmmetler

[boscopup]

Another vote for don't worry about it now. Grade level on paper doesn't need to match grade level on the books you do at home. My 3rd grader is working above grade level in most subjects and always has. No biggie. I plan to NOT graduate him early. There is always more to learn, especially at high school/college level! I shouldn't have any trouble finding credits for 4 years of math, 4 years of science, 4 years of history, etc, etc. Even if he's working with college texts those 4 years, it's still called "high school". ;)

 

I would not want to decide at age 5 whether my child will graduate early. That's a decision better left for later when you can see how mature your child is and whether she is really going to be better off graduating early. It's easier to skip a child ahead on paper than to hold them back (where they're thinking, "Why am I repeating 8th grade?").

[2smartones]

I scanned through the replies, so perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see this point brought up... you should "officially" report the grade that matches the age, because at some point, your child may decide to enter a competition. You'll want that child to be the best among peers, not the average among kids who are older. Not only that, but some competitions (like Scripp's, for example), have rules in place to prevent accelerated homeschoolers from competing. They think it's unfair that homeschoolers have more time to study subjects of interest. I don't... but whatever. ;)

[KAR120C]

I scanned through the replies, so perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see this point brought up... you should "officially" report the grade that matches the age, because at some point, your child may decide to enter a competition. You'll want that child to be the best among peers, not the average among kids who are older.

Unless the kid is the best among older kids. Then you really REALLY don't want to keep them at age-grade because they stick out so badly and because if there are judges involved they may be sorely unprepared to discuss a project at a higher level than they signed on for.

 

Not only that, but some competitions (like Scripp's, for example), have rules in place to prevent accelerated homeschoolers from competing. They think it's unfair that homeschoolers have more time to study subjects of interest. I don't... but whatever. ;)

Just to clarify... Scripps eligibility rules aren't only based on stated grade levels, but also on high school coursework. If you claim to be a 4th grader but you've enrolled in more than six classes at a high school level, that's sufficient to disqualify you. http://www.spellingbee.com/contest-rules#eligibility

 

Stated grade level is important for competitions -- Mathcounts eligibility, for instance, is entirely based on when you're in 6th grade (no early entry unless you've skipped, and a three-year limit on eligibility), but not skipping grades isn't always the right answer.

[tarahillmom]

I wouldn't skip on paper until at least middle school. As you get to high school level courses is when it starts to matter. If your child can be in grade 5, but working on 8th grade materials they will test off the charts. If your child is 10, but listed in 8th grade then they may test as average. I only had my son skip when we hit high school level courses in 5th grade. We moved him to 6th grade and it makes more sense to have Algebra I and high school sciences listed on his transcripts. Just remember for every grade skipped that is one less year of social maturing before college. I hope this helps.

[katrina.sneed]

again on the ipad so excuse the mispellings. i think my main concern is that all her friends have summer birthdays and are already turning 6 and all attended kindergarten last year. she wont be six until february and wasnt registered as kindergarten last year because i was caught up in finishing my masters so i wasnt at the top of my to do list at the time. im kicking myself now because she is a year behind all her friends.

 

i think i will check with our umbrella school and see what they suggest. im thinking that we will probably say she is in kindergaten and possibly skip her next year after i see how she does. i also plan to get her tested at the end of the year to know exactly at what level we are looking at. right now i dont want to push her too hard.

 

i think its more a mommas pride thing as i have to watch her friends in first grade and her still in kindergaten when she is more advanced than they are. i probably just need to take a :chillpill: :001_smile: thanks for all the thoughts and replies.

[YourFidgetyFriend]

We live in your area and I don't think it would even be worth the time and energy to make it official as a homeschooler. My daughter attended PS pre-K and K and her testing and all (started in pre-k) took 8 months to complete and after that they were willing to do an official skip over 1st after approx. another 6 mos more of proven acceleration throughout the rest of K working with 1st-3rd graders.

 

I'm pulling her out this year just because she can be her regular grade level on paper and still work whatever level ahead without the headache. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with the whole grade skipping thing anymore and she can just be a 1st grader (while we do what we want!)

[katrina.sneed]

That's good to know. We would both probably be sick of all the testing if we had to go through all of that. I don't blame you for pulling her out and homeschooling. thanks for the heads up

[Seasider]

I have just been thinking this through for our daughter and I am asking myself, to whom does it matter? Where does declaring a grade make a difference?

 

The state doesn't care what I put, but I suppose it's possible my letter of intent would get undue attention if the age and stated grade level didn't match up.

 

I don't want to tell my child she's "skipping," that would get straight back to others who would give me a hard time about it.

 

I don't have to provide a grade level to purchase the curriculum I want.

 

I would like to enroll her at the proper age level in scouts, Sunday school class, that kind of thing. Seems like it will be so much easier to give an age-appropriate grade than to give a higher grade then explain it away without sounding overly pretentious.

 

We plan to home school a few years, let her go at her own pace, and reevaluate. If she goes back to a traditional school later, we will choose one that will place her by ability, not merely by age. We already know of a couple of options for this in our area.

Edited June 28, 2012 by Seasider

[labst60]

My 2cents - having been somewhat in your position - don't make my mistake - just allow her to be in "K" on paper...

 

When my DD was 5 I enrolled her in a cyber school - they tested her as gifted and put her in 1st (skipped K). GREAT! (I thought!) Turns out it was a big mistake. For one, there was just some stuff that shouldn't have been skipped b/c DD was entirely self taught up until that point. Silly, mechanical stuff- but it made jumping into a full 1st grade cirriculum challengning. We would have been better off just moving through it at our own speed.

 

Second was that, despite that fact that she was mature, 1st grade was a lot more work than K - and emotionally, she wasn't ready for the workload. Sure, she loved to do schoolwork - on HER terms and learn about what SHE wanted. Now that it was more on Mommy (or the cyber school's terms), the maturity and attention span just wasn't there to deal with stuff that didn't suit her fancy that day.

 

Third, I realized that she would "graduate" at just turned 17. I decided that was **NOT** okay with me. Especially now with all the dual-enrollment options - why push her out of the nest so early?

 

I have also heard a lot about early advanced kids "leveling off" a little around third grade - not sure if that is true or not, but even my "gifted" daughter has subjects she is weaker in - and it wasn't fair to expect her to be a year ahead in those too.

 

Our situation ended up okay b/c we moved out of state and I re-enrolled her in 1st for this past school year. Tough decision, but I was so happy with it. Yes, she ended the year with a 99%- but school was much more "ENJOYABLE", she truly mastered the information, is in her "age appropriate" grade.

 

Plus, as she prepares for college, I'd rather her have an extra year of knowledge when taking SATS, admissions etc. It was the choice btw her being an "advanced" second grader or an average" third grader this year - and I think being an "advanced" second grader works so much better despite my desire to be so proud of her that they were "skipping her ahead".

 

If she was in PS, I would say, you probably need to skip her ahead to not bore her, but as HS, I would keep her as K this year and adjust later if you really do want her to "graduate" earlier.

[SkateLeft]

My 2cents - having been somewhat in your position - don't make my mistake - just allow her to be in "K" on paper...

 

Honestly, this just really depends on the kid. I tend to stay out of these discussions, because I don't believe that anyone can really offer advice on whether or not to grade skip. We can only offer our personal experiences, but each person knows their own child best. While it's a great solution for some kids, it's definitely not a good idea for others, and the decision should be made with an eye to all the potential consequences.

 

My oldest dd was grade skipped 30 days after she started kindergarten in a public CA charter school. She has a summer birthday, and will be 16 at the end of July.

 

In our case, there were advantages to grade skipping at the time. She was attending the home-study division of a site-based CA charter school, and the grade skip allowed her access to some on-campus classes and resources that she would not have had otherwise. When we switched to homeschooling, we retained that grade skip, and we've never regretted it. She had no issues with testing at her grade level rather than age level, or participating in talent searches.

 

It was the BEST decision we ever made. I cannot, for the life of me, see her being a high school freshman or sophomore at this point. Last year, as a mature, self-disciplined, intrinsically motivated, organized, hard-working 15 year old, she attended college full-time through our state dual enrollment program. She's a high stat kid. She spent the last couple of weeks participating in an engineering scholarship program at one of her first choice schools, and has been living on campus there and loving it. She'll be applying to engineering schools in the fall.

 

While some kids certainly plateau and some are not ready for college at 16 or 17, it's really not a safe assumption to make about all children. If there's no advantage to a formal skip, then (as the PP pointed out) there's really no reason for a homeschool parent to do it unless they decide their child is ready to graduate early. But, I believe it's a very personal decision.

[kroe1]

Jumping ahead from a legal standpoint might mess you up when it comes to high school and dual enrollment. I would estimate when you want her to graduate from high school legally and then count backwards.

 

My own DD will "graduate" from her A Beka material at age 15. But I don't want her to graduate for real then. I want her to take advantage of free dual enrollment in Florida. So for legal purposes, I've always kept her at her age grade even though she works several grade levels ahead in her curriculum.

 

:)