Advice for starting gently coaching our 7 yr old son.....

[__calvin__]

Hi, I am newly registered and from a quick look I couldn't see this had been asked already (or at least recently) but apologies if so, or if the wrong place to post.

I would really welcome a few pointers on how and whether to begin gently coaching/steering our son, who has just turned 7, in preparation for the 11+. We are in Kent and whilst not obsessed with getting him into a GS, we feel he is naturally pretty bright and if he is going to give it a shot we want to give him the best possible chance.

The kinds of things we are looking for is maybe a good book that describes some gentle techniques (on car journeys, mealtimes etc) to maybe increase his vocabulary (being a typical boy his maths is stronger than his english) and to introduce him to logical reasoning puzzles. He is naturally curious and inquisitive and the more we can make it into 'games' the better. The last thing we want to do is put him under pressure or hothouse him. Perhaps recommendations for a good series of reading books that will both hold is interest and boost his word power.

Many thanks for any advice anybody might be able to offer! I hope we are not thinking about this all too early; it's difficult to know when to start.....

Thanks
Calvin

[sherry_d]

I think at 7 years just have fun and enjoy it with your child. Its too precious to miss and start worrying about 11+.

In Kent we are also very lucky that even for the superselectives, the scores arent particularly high as other regions. I would probably start thinking about 11+ in y4 at the earliest. If there are areas you feel he needs help, you can just work with his teacher and perhaps help him in those specific arears and encourage reading too.

[tiredmum]

i agree with sherry - enjoy the time and start thinking again in year 4.

One thing i would say is read with him - every day if you can - they love the individual attention they are getting from you and can learn so much from it - you can start with books he can read a page and you can then read 4. I still read everyday with my 11 year old and her vocab is very good in writing and speech. As to what to read, well whatever he is interested in

[pheasantchick]

Welcome to the forum, Calvin.

As well as reading, make sure over the next year or so that his tables are okay. And no, its not too early to think about it all. Most people don't do any regular coaching (whether home or paid tutor) until year 5 but doing basics before then is a good idea.

[Minesatea]

What about board games - scrabble (reverse of junior board may be best at first), boggle ect. Boggle also has a quick card game version called boggle slam.
For mental maths anything that requires one player to act as "banker" is good.
Age appropriate crossword puzzle books.
Schofield and Sims do KS2 books called word puzzles and number puzzles that my DD has enjoyed - might be a bit hard at seven though as they start easy but progress quite quickly.

I agree you don't want to do anything at this age that seems like work!

[Chilled]

I'm trying to remember what my son liked reading age seven and think it was stuff like Horrid Henry and Captain Underpants although he may have been slightly younger. He loved the Giggler Treatment and Rover saves Christmas by Roddy Doyle and from about age 9 was really into the Jiggy McCue books which are very funny.

Before we even had any inkling that he might have to take secondary selection exams we used to play word games as we walked to school. One of us would think of two rhyming words and describe them and the other would have to work out what they were, e.g. something you travel in rhymes with something that makes you wet - train and rain. We also used to name words that sounded the same but had different meanings and explain the meanings, e.g. plain, plane. Telling stories as we walk along is an activity that my DS still enjoys.

As other people have said, just have fun.

[yoyo123]

board games like scrabble and upwords are really good as are the "brain training" games and things like professor layton series .which have loads of puzzles to solve. spot the difference and jigsaws build up skills for NVR.

a good knowledge of tables etc will not only be useful for 11= but help with mths generally. There are loads of games on the internet if you search around . i particularly like this site,

http://www.arcademicskillbuilders.com/


meteor multiplication is briliiant!

[__calvin__]

Thanks all, really useful advice. I am sure I am going to be back here in the months and years to come!