What can you do to ease the exam preparation nightmare?

Once your child has reached the decision about their 11+ exam, you can help him in many ways.

• If you decide to use a tutor, enquire around and found one via recommendations (if it was my child, I would also arrange to go and visit the person, to see if your child would accept the tutor and would get on with him. Perhaps, there is also a chance of having a free half an hour tuition to see if this is the person your child gets on with. If he doesn't, then search further. It's a good idea to enquire about private tuition well in advance.)

• If you are in the same situation as me (teaching for 11+ at home), start early, don't wait till Year 5 to start any preparation, as your child will be getting stressed he would not have enough time to cover the whole range of modules. From my experience, I find it is more difficult to convince boys to sit and study, though it's not the rule. I used to encourage my son to start doing some math books when he was at the beginning of Year 4. It didn't work very well, but I was moaning about it all the time, especially that I knew his maths wasn't up to standard. I mean "my standard". If you rely on "primary school standards", you are in for a big shock. And it's due to the fact that the Curriculum  set up by the officials, does not teach children any basic maths. And it is being taught in a strange way, according to me. There is too much talking about how math should be taught, not enough of doing examples. Maths needs to be practised on a daily basis, not once in a blue moon.

•  My daughter is in Year 2 and we have already started preparation for her exam, though without stressing about anything, as she still has lots of time to acquire all necessary knowledge. I started by doing:
• Bond Papers 6-7 (Maths, English and Verbal Reasoning) - I have never bought Bond Papers 5-6, as I thoght they were too childish for her. Bear in mind, that she has always been a keen learner and she did not need skills supplied in these books. As a hint: buy your 3-4 year old any colourful activity book ( a bit of writing, some basic addition etc.)

What I noticed: Maths paper on this level (6-7) is too dificult for children - you have to help them all along, until they get through this tough part. Then they will sail with confidence. Both mine did.

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   At the moment my daughter is doing Bond Papers 7-8 (Maths, English and Verbal Reasoning). She finds Maths and Verbal Reasooning easy, English is sometimes problematic, as she is still not confident about writing about somebody's feelings (e.g. why do you think she was happy/sad...)
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  She started doing Schofield & Sims -Mental Arithmetic, Book 1; my son is on Book 5 at the moment