I’m not the poster you are addressing here, but these are my thoughts.
My daughter is similar to yours - bright and an only child. She is coming to the end of primary, so we are part-way through the journey of her childhood.
The other learning that school provides is in navigating difficulties. We always think about social learning as developing skills for sharing and compromise in early years, but the challenges that they may encounter at school help develop the ‘soft skills’ that are actually much more important to success and happiness in adult life than academic brilliance.
My daughter has had a couple of periods of bullying. This is not something that any parent would want for their child, but, now that she has come through them, she is very much stronger and more resilient. She has learned that not all comments need to be taken to heart. She is secure in her self worth as she learned that, whilst some people were treating her appallingly, she had a strong group of friends within and outside school who very much valued and supported her. She has learned to be able to recognise her own emotions and to deal with them. She has always been a sympathetic soul, but it has also built her empathy in a different way. She learned to reflect on what underlying factors might cause people to behave so awfully to another human being, and to understand that usually bullies are not evil, but that it is an expression of difficulty that they are experiencing. Happy, secure people do not tend to bully others.
Just this week, she had a frustrating afternoon where none of the boys she was working with would listen to her solution for a task, and she had to wait until all their ideas had failed before they would listen to her. I think a lot of us would recognise the situation of being the invisible woman in a meeting. You would hope that things have changed for her generation. People should expect for their voice to be heard and their opinion to be appropriately weighed. However, this difficulty is helping her build her ability to assert herself appropriately and to influence the room, which is vital for all of us in adulthood.
In terms of a more conventional answer to ‘other learning’ - broaden rather than accelerate her learning. I do not believe in an ideal set of extra-curricular activities to develop a child. There is no recipe for success. Foster her interests, and give her opportunities to try lots of different things to see what she enjoys. Anything she wants to do will have some learning involved, but the aim of the game isn’t to see hobbies as educational opportunities, but instead chances to find things that she can be passionate about, maybe even for the rest of her life.
For my daughter, this is a musical instrument, dance, a team sport and running. All of these have helped her develop grit and discipline. I hope they are helping to build a growth mindset - she can look back on how she has improved over a period of time and see that effort pays off. They help build resilience and help prevent a fear of failure. So you didn’t get the result you wanted in the last game or competition? Why was that? If it was something that you could learn from, brilliant. If it was out of your control, don’t worry. The world hasn’t ended, nothing terrible has happened. It’s OK. They build team working - committing to a joint goal, supporting your friends and learning to trust and rely on others.
The most important thing about all these activities though is the sheer enjoyment I see on her face when she is running down the wing, or soaring across the stage. I hope that something will stick as a lifelong joy. Something she can turn to to sustain her when life gets tough.
In terms of your worries about the choice of school…
I am not saying this to undermine your assessment of your child’s intelligence, but ability at the start of school doesn’t always indicate their ability later in their schooling or as an adult. Learning isn’t linear. In this respect, single children may have an ‘advantage’ early on. They are more used to having to interact with adults, so you would expect their conversational skills to be better, and possibly also the vocabulary they use. They don’t have siblings to compete with, so our time can be poured into them. Resources don’t have to be shared and there is perhaps more opportunity for them to access enriching experiences. I come from a large family, and the breadth of my daughter’s cultural experiences are very different from what my parents could possibly have provided for me.
Obviously, this does not mean that all early bloomers also wither quickly. Your daughter may stay high achieving right through post-graduate studies. I did. However, through my own career and through my work supervising junior colleagues, I firmly believe that, given a certain level of intellectual ability (which honestly isn’t that stellar), the ‘soft skills’ that I describe above are much more important than academic brilliance.
So be kind to yourself too! Don’t stress about the choice of school. It sounds like it’s a good environment for her. I’ve said this before, but across my four siblings: one went to an academic private school; the next went to the worst school in the borough; the youngest two went to a super-selective grammar. As we are all approaching the latter part of our careers, I can honestly say that we have all been equally successful, with no discernible difference based on school. The home environment is probably more important. Looking back, our home was full of love. We all ate together as a family and talked. As one of the younger members of the household, I was included in conversations and not talked down to. My parents were interested in education and had high expectations, but they were not pushy. The house was full of music and books. Back in those days, we could roam the woods and get into little situations that we would have to solve. A lot of these things are trumpeted as things that lead to success. I don’t know how true this is.
I think the most important thing is the basis of love and security. Firm planting and patient nurturing rather than anxious hot-housing.