The Fruits of the Vine

Summer is drawing to an end. Autumn is growing closer. The grapes on our vine at home in Kent are growing sweeter and blacker. All this means that the Eleven Plus examinations are growing closer for another year. In Bexley the children will be writing in early November.

This is the time of year that parents are most likely to show concern about what their most loved one knows and does not know. Every single question is analysed and worried over. Children bring little lists of three or four questions to their tutors to go over. Most parents, however, are hot stuff on questions like:

How many grapes make a bottle of wine?

As adults we all know that while it varies, it usually takes between 600 to 800 grapes per bottle. This could be around ten bunches of grapes.



Please make sure that you do not try to fill your child with too much trivia with a month to go. Think of your poor child. Why not concentrate on trying to help him or her to do as well as possible on the topics already covered at school and in any extra lessons or work at home. The very hard questions on practice papers are there to stretch and stimulate the very bright.

It is much more important to know how to find ten per cent of a number or how many degrees there are in a triangle than spend precious time on some rather obscure question that may or may not come up.