Those "holding their kids back" for Kindergarten......

CMM05

What is your "plan" for pre-school/Pre-K???

 DS1 has an Oct. 13th b-day. The cut-off here in Michigan is December 1st. We are 99% sure that we are "holding him back," (so he will almost be 6 when he starts Kinder.....).

BUT.....I am having difficulty with the "plan" before. He has been in school since he was 23 months. He is at a private school where they start them at 2 for "nursery school" (no, it is not a daycare and there is an actual curriculum). This year he is in preschool 3 days a week. He will go to pre-K at the same school next year.

I don't know what to do the year after. Send him to Pre-K at our public school? The program is amazing and it is the school where he will go to Kinder. Or, look for a "young 5's/junior Kinder" program?

Anyone have experience with this.......or what are your plans?

I realize some people keep their child at home an extra year and then send to preschool a year late, but we are beyond that, so I need to look forward

TIA!

 

Halo79RN

ds's bday is 2 wks before the cutoff (for where we're moving to).  he has prek next year.  then next winter/spring we'll decide if we should hold him back or not.  he's a much younger 3 than his sister was.  socially,he'll be fine.  I'm not sure he will be able to do the academic stuff his sister is doing already in her prek 4 class, much less kindie with homework.  But we'll see what he's doing in a year.  Never know?  If we hold him back a year, he'll just repeat the prek year.  

all of this will be determined by the schools though.  here, the cut off is dec 31st... but I'd still consider holding him back a bit b/c they do a lot of academic work and homework in kindie here.  not sure how the kindie is in Va.  Here, my dd is bringing home homework in prek4 and reading. But she's ready.  He is not... yet.  

PhilsWife07

DS will also be in the young 5s camp (September 4 bday). So will DS2 for that matter. Cut off is Sept 30. We are planning on two years of preschool starting this fall. If we decide to put him in kindergarten at 6 instead of 5, we will probably do a year of junior kindergarten. Kindergartens here are full day.

Mrs.Hizzo

We aren't intending to hold him at this point, but if we did, his preschool offers a transition program for kids who have completed two years of preschool but still aren't quite ready for kindergarten. My nephew did it and it was wonderful for him.

neverblushed

My son's bday is just days before the cutoff.  We did decide to keep him in preschool an additional year.  He started K this year just after his 6th birthday.

He had been enrolled in their Pre-K class when he was 4 because the school felt he'd do best with that particular teacher.  So, he'd already taken the class that is normally the option for kids with fall birthdays, or kids with late birthdays whose parents wait until age 6 to start them in K, if that makes sense.

The school suggested two possibilities for my son for his 5 y/o year:

1. stay at their school and do pre-k again, this time as one of the older kids, not as the youngest.

2.  enroll in a private school that has 1/2 day K, then do full-day K in public school the following year.

I opted for #1, and it was absolutely fine.  He had the same teacher, he did many of the same activities, the holiday programs were similar, etc.  He barely noticed or cared that he was truly repeating the same curriculum.  He was like a different kid, and that made things effectively a "new" year for him. 

In your shoes, I would visit the public school's pre-k and check it out, weigh it against the private school's pre-k class, and see which I thought would be better for my child at the time.  I wouldn't sweat it too much.  Sounds like you have a lot of good possibilities. 

skittles_123

I don't know what I am going to do yet. The cutoff here is Oct 1 and my ds has an April b-day, so kinda halfway in between. But, he also has autism, so he is developmentally delayed. DS has twin cousins, just a few months younger than him, who live 6 hrs away and they are going to hold them back a year. They are typical and their mom is a teacher who is a sahm until they start school. She keeps trying to encourage me to hold ds back too. Sighhh.

The thing is, since he has autism, the public school system must serve him until he is 21, so the sooner he gets started in school, the more time he will have potentially in the last years of school, when he may need it.

Where he is at right now is a mainstream pre-school program, with typical kids, all around his same age. He seems to be doing fine. I don't think I want him in that setting again next year though. I want him to be challenged, hence why he was in the regular program versus a special ed classroom to begin with.

The private primary school we are looking at putting ds in, does have a pre-school program. He is on the wait-list for kindergarten in the fall. He has been on that list for 1 1/2 years. They asked me today when we took him in for an assessment asked if we were open to the possibility of him going through their pre-school program one more year, if they didn't have a spot in kindergarten. It kind of took me off guard, and I said we would consider it. Hopefully we won't have to cross that bridge. But, this may be one of the only ways we can get him into the school. Should we risk that, I don't know. It is a lot to think about.

No my dd has a few more years before school, and she has an April b-day as well, and there is no doubt in my mind that we will be keeping her on schedule to start kindergarten when she is supposed to.

jlw2505

I would try and do the PreK program at the school where he will go if that meets what you are looking for.  My kids have been in daycare since they were infants and did the daycare preschool and then I moved my older DD over to the public schools amazing FT Pre-K program this year with the intent that she would start Kindergarten in the fall when she is 5.  We realized that she would do better with another year of PreK under her belt and she is going to repeat the PreK program again.  Her teachers are amazing, they typically have a child or 2 repeat the program and one of the other kids in her class will be there again next year as well.  My DD has a sever speech delay and has been in therapy for a little over a year now and its through the school district for 3 hours a week (2x a week for 90 mins each).  The speech therapists are part of the school district and the elementary speech coordinator sits in on her IEP sessions so they know how she is doing and what services she may need once she starts K and beyond.  My DD is a June b-day with a Sept 1 cut off and is not where she needs to be socially (a lot of this is related to the speech issues) and mature wise.  One thing that her current program does great is they work on the social skills.  They have a program called Second Step where they work on a different emotion or feeling each week throughout the year.  They talk about how to reconginze when someone is mad, sad, anger, etc and how to deal with it.  This is huge.  IN Feb, they have an outside group coming in and working with the kids on this and on bullying.  The program is amazing.

triplea1819

i guess it would depend on why you are keeping him back.  I have heard from multiple teacher that the only reason you should hold him back is for social/emotional reasons.  Is that the reason, or are you doing it for other reasons? 

 If that is the reason, I would push more for a 2 year kindergarten.  Private for 1 year, and then public.  This way he stays with his own age longer, and learns how to mature.  

CMM05

triplea1819:

i guess it would depend on why you are keeping him back.  I have heard from multiple teacher that the only reason you should hold him back is for social/emotional reasons.  Is that the reason, or are you doing it for other reasons? 

 If that is the reason, I would push more for a 2 year kindergarten.  Private for 1 year, and then public.  This way he stays with his own age longer, and learns how to mature.  

Will most likely be holding him back just for age/maturity. He is completely fine and actually does better in preschool than some of his "older" peers, but I'm a teacher and know the research. The differences don't always show up in the early years, but more in the upper elementary/middle school years. I don't want to be in a situation where we have to make him repeat a year later in elementary

 

alchris

I have rather strong feelings that a child "should" be 5 by the first day of K.  K isn't what it used to be -- expectations are high.  Birthdate is a HUGE factor from the teacher's and school's standpoint.  To be honest, I can't imagine having a December cutoff -- that's a lot of 4 year olds in K, and it affects many years beyond K too. 

And yikes, it means DD1 would be starting K in 1.5 years rather than 2.5 -- no way, LOL!  And DD2 would be just 8 days away from starting in 4.5 years?  Yikes.

Again, I have strong feelings on this topic though.  I'm a former elementary school counselor, FWIW.

(I'd be happy to talk to you more about this...typing one-handed right now. )