What to request for engaging an advanced 1st grader?
My 1st grade DD is incredibly bored with school right now. She routinely asks me "why do I have to go to school when I already know everything they teach us?" I feel like she started kindergarten last year in the middle of the road -- she knew all her letters and letter sounds but wasn't reading yet, she could do uuuuuper basic addition but it took her a long time of counting on fingers, etc. However, part way through Kindergarten she just shot ahead. We worried a bit last year about her being bored, but there was still so much "play" in Kindergarten that she was always happy and loved what she was doing -- she loved their free center time, group work, etc.
This year, in first grade, she's pretty unhappy and very bored. I think the difference this year is that there is less "play" in the day, so she doesn't get those breaks from the stuff she already knows, like happened last year. She's not wildly advanced, but she's reading at a mid-2nd grade level, is very strong on math, routinely sits down and writes me full notebook pages full of stories/thoughts/ideas/messages. She's already finished 100% of the 1st grade sight words and gotten 100% on every spelling pre-test (aka before the students have a chance to study the words), or, for that matter, any evaluation she's taken this year.
I had a phone conversation with her teacher in late September about this. The teacher was aware and in full agreement that DD knew all the stuff they were doing in class at that point, but hadn't realized that DD was unhappy -- she said DD is happy-go-lucky, rule-following, and cheerful in school. She was very glad I'd contacted her, and took the time to pull my DD aside that day and talk with her, including explaining what she was going to do to help DD do more interesting work. At that time, she told me that she had only just started differentiating, because the first month of school is needed to assess everyone, set up general class rules/routines/expectations, etc. Moving forward, the things she told me she'd be doing were: 1)early finisher packs - extra worksheets that students who finish their work early can do. Said these were seasonal, logic puzzle, game-like type challenging worksheets that most students loved doing and were excited to do. 2)Workshop groups - starting in October, they'd have daily workshop time where kids worked in small groups that were differentiated based on abilities. My DD would be in a group with other more advanced kids and they would get more challenging/engaging work and assignments.
Fast forward a month, and DD still routinely expresses boredom with school. She seems to be happy enough when they do workshop, but that's a teeny segment of their entire day, and they don't even do it every day. She is definitely doing the early finisher packets, and sometimes has fun with them, but the reality is that she's a kid who hates worksheets (though she's a rule-follower at school and so she'll do them without complaint in the classroom), so being given additional worksheets isn't a particular reward or something to look forward to.
I want to contact the teacher again to check in and figure out what else we can do, but that will be most effective if I can provide some ideas about what might work/what I'm looking for. What would you ask for in this situation?
A few potentially relevant facts - this is a public school. They have a gifted program, which we are requesting they test DD for this year, but that testing would lead to inclusion next year -- there's no way to test in for the same year. Additionally, at the first grade level they don't offer anything for the children in the gifted program other than classroom differentiation (whereas starting in 2nd grade, those kids get pulled for a few hours a week with the gifted teacher). DD's teacher is an experienced, well-respected teacher at the school. She is the most-desired teacher by most parents and I routinely hear from parents of older children that she's been one of the best teachers for their child -- so it's not a situation of dealing with a weaker or ill-prepared teacher.