how to challenge a 5 year old

Having been a TA for 30 years, I have always found the very bright ones didn't have much comment sense.
Think it's something that parents and grandparents should teach it's just as important as being bright and clever and funny too.

Luckygirl
"Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Edison are usually at the top of the list of famous dyslexics. According to LD lore Einstein failed to talk until the age of four, the result of a language disability. It is also claimed that Einstein could not read until the age of nine." so the brains could have come from his mum.

Yes music is supposed to be very good, apparently it uses the same part of the brain as you use for maths.

I think my 5 year old DGD is extremely bright though I know I am biased. She did receive the 'Student of the Year' award from school this year in Reception Class however so I am not the only one!

She is an all rounder and is good academically and at art and craft. What she can do independently with cardboard boxes, felt tips and sellotape is amazing. She great at sports and PE as well, can dance and do the splits (which I never could!) She knows all the songs I have rehearsed in her hearing for my choir and many many more, and seems to remember any facts she is told. She has a great sense of humour and knows how to make people laugh. She cannot yet tell the time but I have one of those clocks with 12, 3, 6 and 9 only and dots in between and when asked what time it was she giggled, 'It's dot o'clock!' She arranged all her plastic and wooden cakes into a circle and announced it was 'Cakehenge'!

Not only that but she makes friends easily and is invited to lots of parties. This weekend I watched her holding hands and encouraging another tentative child she did not know to bounce at the Trampoline park.

No she's not perfect. She gets frustrated when things don't go her way, "The worst day ever!!" She can be sulky and stubborn (especially when she is hungry) and is fussy about what she wears sometimes, especially socks and tights that have bobbles and are uncomfortable!!

I just hope she eventually achieves her dream of being an artist or an architect!

At primary age my grandson was very good at maths - at home we played numbers games and he loved it, he was faster than me at multiplying long numbers in his head which I used to be very good at. He was top of the class, getting through tests so quickly he was allowed to leave the classroom and do something else, but then he got bored and then careless with it. Now at secondary school, his only interest is sport. He, along with the whole class, did go in for a Nationwide maths competition and he won a bronze medal - but when I looked into it this only means that he scored about 60% which was a grade C in my day. Thanks to computer games he does not have an enquiring mind which I think is the greatest gift of all.

Just to say - children do get very tired when they first start school and especially towards the end of the summer term, so attempts at 'challenging' or 'hothousing' during the summer holidays could be counter-productive.
Lots of fresh air and exercise is good!

The first few school reports are usually very positive, so lots of parents think they are rearing a child genius!
I think it's sad to hear of "academically gifted" 5 year olds. Just let them be children and explore the world around them.

starbird just thinking about your post. My DGD's two siblings were very similar at her age but then their Mum bought them i pads and phones. Their enthusiasm for school has all but disappeared. They used to be avid readers and were always doing something, making things, writing stories, plays etc etc. Guess what is their only interest now? On the other hand if we can break through the moans and drag them out they love it eventually when we take them to the local woods, rivers, lake or somewhere, not that they like to admit it!! I would love to ban all technology but sadly I don't have the power. Their parents are not a great example.

Rather than giving a child challenges devised by an adult I'd like to see them investigating the world around them, exploring and setting their own challenges. So many children are dependent on adults finding them things to do and then doing them with them that they have no initiative of their own. Adult dependent. Then they are lost in the classroom or even later at university when they have to motivate and organise themselves.
At school I once suggested to a six year old that he should fill in 5 minutes before lunch by looking at a book. "I can't" he said. "I haven't got my grownup."
Sorry about the lecture. I am a bit passionate about adults taking over childhood!

Talk, talk, talk! Introduce new words. And encourage her to investigate anything she is interested in. GS1 often surprises me when he remembers things we talked about years ago

It isn't about 'challenging" it is about using every opportunity to extend and develop knowledge and to realise that all play and every outing is a learning opportunity for a child. So you hold conversations about things and follow where the child leads. You can then extend that by providing things that support what the child was interested in. So child playing in garden notices birds or flowers, both can lead on to identifying different ones, looking them up in books, counting how many on different days, feeding birds, planting seeds, and so on. Introduce art and creative activities and make it even more interesting. Keep diaries, write stories. Children are like sponges the more you present them with the more they soak up. And none of it needs to be formal.

sluttygran, you'll be delighted to learn that Child Genius is back - it seems to be on Channel 4 nearly every night next week. I agree that it's terrible...but I'll be sitting in front of every episode, with a face like this. There was one boy in the last series who'd put himself forward. He was a joy, and his parents were average parents who were just shell-shocked by the cuckoo in their nest!

I'm a great believer in boredom as a spur to expanding those fine minds. Leave them to their own devices for an afternoon and they'll develop a bit of creativity and find their own way to occupy themselves. In my opinion it does them a lot more good than having an adult hovering round thrusting endless activities at them.

Some very good comments here. But I just wanted to add that we should give all children the chance to develop their interests and aptitudes. They've all got them, very bright or not. What about late developers?
As some people have touched on.

Hey - managed to drag 3 DGC to local Nature Reserve today (yesterday!), under the pretext of going to the excellent adventure play area. Tricked them into a walk round the lodge, and up to the weir and was rewarded by their excitement when we spotted the local kingfisher. I discovered that the aforementioned 5 year old DGD had previously thought that a kingfisher was a fish and was looking for it under the water. When she saw it fly across the water she said in amazement, "A fish with wings!!" I don't think she'll ever forget that moment when she realised it was a bird. Neither will I!

We also watched the two swans with 6 'teenage' cygnets and identified moorhen, coots and mallards on the lake and 2 grey wagtails on the rocks on the river. They chatted with the camera carrying 'Twitchers' who were out in force and thoroughly enjoyed themselves before spending another hour 'exercising' in the play area. A great afternoon with the right kind of 'challenges' IMO!