When Lucy was born in September 2013, I looked up the kindergarten cut-off date to see when she would start kindergarten. When I was growing up in Missouri, the cut-off was in October. In Wisconsin it was September 1. I learned the Kentucky cut-off was October 1, so it seemed Lucy would start kindergarten in 2018, before her 5th birthday. I couldn't have known at that time if Lucy would be kindergarten-ready in August 2018, but I assumed so.
And I was right. Lucy can already read phonetically and knows about 70 sight words. She can add, subtract, and count by 2s, 5s, and 10s. She has flirted with multiplication. She can recognize and name the major organs of the human body and some of what they do (Livers do everything!). She knows the eight planets of the solar system and the four dwarf planets (we'll never forget you, Pluto!). Her verbal skills have finally caught up with her terrific physical talents. She just turned 4-and-a-half. She's a smart cookie.
What I didn't know when I googled the Kentucky kindergarten date back then was that the legislature had already voted to change the cut-off from October 1 to August 1, effective for the 2017-2018 school year. Because of her September birthday, Lucy got bumped back a year. She would be nearly six when she started kindergarten.
I discovered that she got bumped when I started looking into preschool. I think that if I had never expected her to start kindergarten in 2018 there would have been no quest to get her into kindergarten this year. I would have accepted state law as normal. But when I didn't get what I expected and she was obviously ready, I felt I had to try to get her into kindergarten "early."
Being bumped by a year has already affected her. Under the old rules, she could have attended 3-year-old preschool last year. Instead, she's spent this year in a class that taught colors, shapes, and numbers to 10. She knew all of that before her first day of preschool, so she has learned almost nothing academic this year. Fortunately, we knew that going into the 2017-18 school year and only expected her to gain social skills, scissor skills, and experience in a school setting. And in that way it delivered exactly what we hoped. However, when we enrolled her at this private Christian preschool, I had also hoped that they would see that she was academically advanced and allow us to enroll her in their half-day kindergarten the next year. Unfortunately, they don't recognize academic advancement (and I don't just say that because they didn't let Lucy move up); they only recognize birthdates and make no exceptions. With that grand plan foiled, I looked into getting Lucy into public kindergarten.
To be accepted into public kindergarten, Lucy has to score at or above the 90th percentile on the kindergarten-readiness assessment, and then they have to have space for her. She is scheduled to take the assessment next Wednesday, and they will tell us right away if she scored high enough. But we have to wait until June to find out if they have an open seat for her.
If she doesn't get into public kindergarten, we have a couple of options. First, we can put her in pre-K at the private school she's currently at. We've paid the non-refundable fee to get her a seat just in case. She already knows everything they're going to study, but at least she'd still be in school and probably with a few classmates she already knows. Her current teacher said that Lucy could be place with the pre-K teacher who reads with advanced kids so that she could be challenged more. That's something, I guess. It's possible that we could fill out paperwork and claim to be homeschooling her at the same time so that she could enter first grade when we thought she would. We would be supplementing at a kindergarten or higher level at home anyway because that's what we're already doing. Second, we could put her in public preschool. We've seen the classrooms, and Lucy and Maggie both had a blast playing there for a little while. I'm not sure we could get away with claiming to homeschool her while she's at public preschool (even though we still would be doing it).
So far I've mostly talked about my expectations and Lucy's academic abilities. I know that there's more to the question of whether or not starting kindergarten is in Lucy's best interest. In some ways I'd love to just keep her with me forever. If I homeschooled her even for one more year, I know she'd receive adequate attention and encounter varied and challenging curriculum. I could limit negative influences and take more time to shape her character. She'd be able to continue swimming regularly and could follow other interests. Now that Maggie is bigger, we could go on field trips that we'd be unlikely to take if Saturdays were our only days to travel. That sounds really great. On the other hand, Lucy doesn't always learn as well from me as she does from others. It's pretty hit or miss whether she'll listen to me or believe me when I tell her things. And she doesn't have a strong network of friends with whom to develop her social skills outside of school.
I am a bit concerned about maturity. Is she able to sit still, follow directions, listen, and answer questions well enough for kindergarten? Is her stamina up to a 7-hour school day for five days every week? Her current preschool is two hours long for two days every week. I'm certain she won't be the least mature in her class. And I've seen tremendous growth in her in the last few months. By August, she may be 100% ready.
I'm not really worried about her getting along with the other kids. She's still learning how to play with others in some ways, but she's charismatic and a natural leader. Other people want to be with her and do what she's doing. Today at the playground, she wanted to run up a slide like a couple of middle school boys were doing, but her legs were too short. So instead she started climbing a ladder backwards and said, "Hey guys, see how I climb up backwards." Next thing I knew, the middle school boys were climbing the ladder backwards, too. This is not exactly uncommon for her.
She already has friends who will be in kindergarten in 2018 and one friend (who is a week older than Lucy) who is also trying to get into kindergarten early. So although she won't remain with her current classmates, she still knows some people.
I have talked to Lucy's preschool teacher about whether she thinks that we should try to get Lucy into kindergarten this year, and she's not for it. She hasn't given me any specific reason why Lucy is not kindergarten-ready. Her opinion is based on her experiences with other kids' starting kindergarten early. She suggested that it would be better for Lucy to be older and better at everything than everyone else because then school would be really easy for her. I don't want school to be a struggle for Lucy, but having things be super-easy is not good either. Life is full of challenges, and I'd like for Lucy to learn to meet challenges earlier rather than later. I didn't find her teacher's input terribly helpful.
At this point, I feel like we're keeping options open. If she tests as kindergarten-ready and gets in, we could still decide not to send her if we don't think she's emotionally or socially mature enough. And we still have a choice of preschools as back-ups.
I feel a certain amount of pressure to get this decision right. I don't want to hold her back intellectually, but I don't want to push her out of childhood too fast. I don't know what being a little younger will mean for her when everyone else is getting driver's licenses or when she graduates at 17. And yet we have to make this decision now, and Lucy will have to live with the consequences.
I'm certainly praying for direction, and I'd appreciate it if you'd pray with us, too.
(Also, I don't want to even think about what we'll need to do with Maggie. She's already counting to ten, naming all the numerals, and saying and naming the entire alphabet, and she turns two next month. I am certainly blessed with bright, sweet girls.)
