Kindergarten vs. "Young 5's"

Hi! I'm the proud mom of a 10 y.o. biological da. and a 4&1/2 y.o. adopted da. We have been home 19 months with Natasha. She was 3 y. 3 m. when we left Ukraine in 2003. Spent the first year focusing on becoming a family of 4, teaching Natasha English, bonding, the long road to cuddles and trust and identity (you're MY mother?). She is a beautiful healthy bright little girl who has made a wonderful adaptation. She is a joy to our entire large, extended family, friends, community and sister's school. She goes everywhere and does nearly everything with us as a way to increase her awareness, social skills, education, vocabulary and experience of life. We also shared morning playdates with the son of a friend (same age) 2x/wk. This last fall she started 4 y.o. preschool 3x/wk) at a fabulous preschool where our older da. also attended at that age. Natasha had a quiet first semester, followed rules, but did not iniate much in classwhile she learned the territory. This second semester she has felt quite sefe there and has started showing them more of her true spirit :o) Which can be very determined, spirited and downright pushy at times. She is often jealous of others getting to do what she wants to do so she will push them out of the way, hit others and shove them while standing in line. On occassion when she is very excited and unable to contain herself. She will grin with a face-breaking grin and reach out to anyone near-by and pinch them just to share her joy I guess. When given time outs (every day in Jan & Feb) she often argues all the way across the room with the teacher about her being right. At times she teases the other kids and makes jokes that are usually above their heads and the kids will complain to the teachers about Natasha laughing at them. Well, it's time to start making some all important decisions about going on to kindergarten with her age group (will be 5 in May) or going to "young 5's" for a year first. Her pre-school teachers are strongly recommending another year of pre-school or young 5's as they say "she needs more time to play before the pressure of academics". Her eval. show about 80-85% of age appropriate skills for a 4 y.o. academically but their area of concern is the social behavior. She has difficulty transitioning between activities and they often have to go get her to lead her by the hand--she's the same at home---if doing something she enjoys she never wants to stop and move on to anything else like meals or bedtime or errands etc. She requires a lot of external behavioral controls and the teachers would like to see her exhibit more self-control with the hitting and touching others before kindergarten. I could also add thay we had her eval. for PPI (pre-primary impaired) programs in our district last sprinhg and they said she was way too advanced to qualify for their services. Almost everyone who knows her is shocked to think that she wouldn't go into kindergarten with her age group, but most of them see her in small group settings. However, she handles going to the busy children's museum with another family very well, can sit through entire musical concerts and plays, in fact is enthralled by them and often comes home singing the songs her sister has just sung in rehearsal. Just wondering if any of you have made the decision one way or the other to hold back in the beginning or to go ahead with age group and what your hindsight reveals. We still have another eval in our school to go to in May where she will be seen by the teachers from our school and the young 5's classes and they recommend what they think the children are ready for. I am not going to share her pre-school eval with them until after this visitation day so as not to bias them one way or another. We are active in the school and the teachers have witnessed her incredible growth over the past year and a half with joy. They all anticipate seeing her in the fall. Sorry this is so much background, but we wanted you to get some picture of Natasha and give us the benefit of your experience. We have dear friends who adopted 2 girls from Russia and both girls started school immeadiately but then were held back to repeat in grades 4 and this yr one will repeat grade 8 rather than move on to high school. But both these wonderful girls were older when they came here--nearly 5 and 8 &1/2. We don't want to start Natasha too early if she isn't ready and have her labled as a troublemaker or the lowest achiever in her class, but we also see the giant strides she makes each month and don't want to find her bored and way older in young fives. If we go that road she would turn 7 in kindergarten! Help please! Looking to do what's best for Natasha!