How Arts and Crafts can Improve Your Child’s NNAT Scores

It may seem counterintuitive to have arts and crafts help improve your child’s NNAT scores, but its true! Especially in toddlers, arts and crafts teach invaluable skills that will benefit your child in not only the NNAT but also in life! There are several skills that arts and crafts help improve, Fine Motor Skills, Pattern Identification, Following Directions, Listening Skills, and Visual-Spatial Reasoning, which are all a part of the NNAT. I will explain what kinds of activities will encourage these skills in your child and how they will benefit your child’s NNAT study!

• Fine Motor Skills: Any activity that requires your child to use their hands, painting, drawing, cutting, pasting, uses fine motor skills. While this skill in not directly tested on the NNAT, proctors will look out for it!
• Pattern Identification: Activities that include beads or decoupage or origami includes the skill of pattern identification. Ask your child to gather together all of the blue beads or pictures with birds in them. There are pattern identification questions on the NNAT, so these activities can definitely help.
• Following Directions: Your child will need to be able to follow directions in order to complete the NNAT as the proctor will give them instructions on how to complete questions. Choose arts and crafts activities with multiple steps and tell your child the directions. Then have them repeat them back to you to see how well they listened!
• Listening skills: This is very closely related to the skill listed above! Your child will need to have good listening skills for the NNAT, because proctors are not allowed to repeat questions! When you tell your child something, have them repeat it back to you to ensure they know how to actively listen!
• Visual-Spatial reasoning: This skill is specifically tested on the NNAT. Your child working with the arts and crafts materials help them to learn visual-spatial reasoning skills. Origami especially helps prepare for this skill, so find some child friendly origami texts and after the folding your child gets a pretty figurine!

You can find more ways to encourage arts and crafts in your child in this blog post. Good luck on the NNAT!

Halloween Night Safety Tips for your NNAT Kid!

Halloween is one of the most fun nights of the year for children, especially ones who have been cooped up with NNAT prep! They get to dress up in a fun costume and they get to go around with their friends and get candy. Then in the days or week after, depending on how fast they eat it, they get to have candy at their disposal, making even NNAT test prep fun! However, Halloween can be a very scary night for adults. Children running around at night, with people in masks giving out candy; all of this spells disaster. Here are ways to ensure that your child stays safe on Halloween:

• Make a Route: Before you go out Trick or Treating, make a route that you are going to trick or treat along. This keeps the confusion out of the way for the evening, and the bickering if there are multiple children in your trick or treating group. Making the route with your child can even be NNAT prep!
• Have a safe zone: On your route make sure to mark one place, perhaps the house of a neighborhood friend or a NNAT study buddy, for a safe zone. Children can get too excited and run away from the group or just lost in the jumble of trick or treaters. If that happens, you have the safe zone! They know where to go to get collected by a parent.
• Incorporate light reflecting tape: One of the best ways to keep your NNAT child safe in the dark is having light reflectors on their costume! There are ways to incorporate that into their costumes and keep them on track. Then you will have peace of mind that a distracted driver won’t hit them.

Once you are done with a successful Halloween you can get back to NNAT study! Check out this site here for NNAT test prep materials! Good luck on the NNAT.

 

Fall Foods for your NNAT Child

There is more to the world and to a child than NNAT prep. Your child may not enjoy studying for the NNAT, but it is important that they do prepare for the NNAT so they can get into the right classroom. You may be so heavily focused on the NNAT that you don’t realize that there are a lot of different ways to prepare for the NNAT. Those things can also be activities that help bond families together. One of my favorite ways to bond with my family is through cooking. There are so many different fall treats that you can make with your family that will bond them together and also teach little ones NNAT skills. Here are some inspirations for fall food:

• Pumpkin spice pancakes: This is a great one for the mornings! Your children will enjoy a new take on an old breakfast classic and you can enjoy pumpkins in the morning in more than just your latte! You child can help by measuring the ingredients out, a good way to foster fine motor skills needed for the NNAT.
• Pumpkin Granola: Perfect food to make on a weekend at home with the kids that they can enjoy all week! It is a great snack in yogurt or blended into a smoothie for a little crunch! You child can test their creativity by adding whatever extra ingredients they want to the granola, another great skill for the NNAT.
• Candy Apples: This is a great desert to make with your children with the apples you went and picked earlier! Dipping the apples in the candy or covering them in caramel will help them improve their visual-spatial reasoning, which in turn helps with the NNAT! You get your child to prepare for the NNAT without them realizing and you both get candy apples, it’s the perfect win-win situation!

You can check out more recipes and NNAT prep on this Pinterest page here. Good luck on the NNAT.

 

Fall Activities to Inspire Your NNAT child

The NNAT can be prepared for in different ways. During fall there are tons of activities that you can do with your children to prepare for the NNAT. There are many different skills that can be practiced with fall activities, memory, fine-motor skills, visual-spatial reasoning, listening, and following directions. These are skills that can be practiced during fall activities and will help prepare for the NNAT. The best way to prepare for the NNAT is to do it during fun activities. Here are a list of fun activities that will help prepare your child for the NNAT and will also keep them entertained:

• Apple Picking: Apple picking is a great fall activity and a great way to prepare your child for the NNAT! You can teach your child to look for patterns in the sizes of the apples. Tell them to pick out first just bright red apples, then only apples bigger than their fist. This helps them develop pattern recognition skills, necessary for the NNAT. This also helps them with their memory skills and their following directions skills, which will be tested on the NNAT.
• Plant bulbs for next spring: This is an activity that will allow your children to understand long-term projects. Have them help you dig holes and make a map of where you put down the bulbs. Then in the spring have them start looking for the bulbs to grow! This project helps with memory and following directions, great for the NNAT.
• Make a pinecone bird feeder: This activity is great because it helps with both fine-motor skills but also visual-spatial reasoning! Your child will need to make sure the peanut butter doesn’t get too far into the pinecone or else no birds will be able to get to it. This activity is fun for weeks too! You will have fun sitting with your little one and watching the birds and squirrels get a treat.

Want more fall activities to do with your kids? Check out this pinterest board here. Good luck with the NNAT!

 

Halloween Costumes for Your NNAT Kid to Make

You may not realize that your child helping to make their costume can be NNAT prep! But while your child helps you with their costume, they will be able to practice their memory, their fine motor skills, their visual-spatial reasoning as well as their verbal reasoning skills, all tested on the NNAT! You don’t want all NNAT test prep to be practice questions and lessons on skills, you need to diversity NNAT study in order to keep your child engaged. One of the best ways is to include NNAT prep in fun activities, like making their Halloween costume! Here are several easily do it yourself Halloween costumes:

• Superhero: Every child looks up to a superhero, whether its Superman or one that they made up. So for Halloween let them be a Superhero! You can have them help you by tracing letters on fabric for you to cut out for the front of their costume, or by coloring in their headband! They will practice fine motor skills and visual-spatial reasoning, great for the NNAT!
• Owl: This is a great costume for youngsters to help you make. You just need an outfit in 1 color for them to wear and a pair of brown frames that fit your child. You child can then pick out what feathers they want, and have them glue or tape them to the frames! You can have them make a beak from orange construction paper and have them glue that on too! This is a fun activity for NNAT prep!
• Hula Girl: This one is great because you just need to buy a grass skirt! Your daughters can get involved by making the paper flowers on the lei. Find a paper flower tutorial online that is at the right skill level for your children and let them at it! This is a great costume for building memory skills for the NNAT.

Another good way to prepare your child is to play on various educational websites! You can check out a whole listing of educational websites to support the NNAT here. Good luck on the NNAT!

 

Halloween Tips to Keep your NNAT Child Safe!

Its that time of year again, not just NNAT tests but Halloween! Everyone wants to make sure that their child has as much as possible on Halloween. But it can also be a scary night, full of danger for children. There are a lot of different ways that you can keep your child safe during the Halloween season, and make sure they are safe for their NNAT tests! Halloween activities can be a great distraction from NNAT test prep. Use the following tips to keep your child safe during Halloween.

• Pumpkin Carving: For toddlers and very young children, consider letting them paint their pumpkins instead of carving them. For older children let them design the pumpkin and scoop out the insides, but do the carving yourself. You can even make this into NNAT prep by counting the pumpkin seeds!
• Make sure your child can be seen: This is important, as your children will be trick or treating after dark. Incorporate reflective tape or stickers into your child’s costume. That way they will be visible after dark and won’t get hit! You can also give your child a flashlight or a glow stick to increase visibility. These can be gifts from NNAT prep.
• Keep your child away from Monsters: There are not just spooky creatures that can scare your child but there are bad people lurking out there. Make sure you or the person going around with your child trick or treating doesn’t let your child go into a strangers’ house or ring a strangers’ doorbell!
• Develop a trick or treat route before you go out: Set a path with your children before you start trick or treating. Make a safe spot for if anyone gets lost. There is nothing scarier, even on Halloween, than a lost child. This will ensure that everyone stays safe and sane!

If you want some treats that will help prepare your child for the NNAT, check out this game on this site. Good luck on the NNAT!

 

What is the NNAT Test?

The world of standardized testing has expanded at an amazing rate in recent years, leaving many students, parents and teachers feeling a bit confused. One of the tests in questions is the NNAT. Here, we’ll review the basics of the NNAT test and what it may mean for your child.

The NNAT and Your Child

The NNAT can be administered to children at any grade level, from kindergarten through high school. However, it is most commonly used to determine entrance into gifted, talented, advanced-placement and specialty schools.

A high score on the NNAT is not a guarantee, but it can significantly increase your child’s chances of acceptance. A low score, on the other hand, should be investigated. It’s possible to score inaccurately low due to testing anxiety. If a low score is found to be accurate, a child is likely to remain in a traditional school setting.

What Does the NNAT Assess?

Parenting a school-age child these days can seem like an endless string of standardized tests. It’s natural to feel a bit confused, especially when it comes to helping your child prepare. Thankfully, there are plenty of resources to help you.

Why Prep Works

Preparing for what is, essentially, a test of native intelligence may seem pointless at first. After all, if cognitive skills can’t be taught, how can a child practice? These are valid and accurate concerns. Prepping for the NNAT does not involve traditional studying. Instead, if focuses on familiarizing your child with the format of the test itself.

For many children, facing an unfamiliar testing format can trigger testing anxiety. This often crippling phenomenon can cause inaccurately low scores by ‘paralyzing’ a child’s mind. Children who are already slightly anxious or who are prone to nervousness are more likely to experience testing anxiety, but even a supremely confident child can become anxious when faced with a testing format they’ve never seen before.

In order to combat this phenomenon and help ensure that your child’s NNAT score is accurate, choose a prep package which fully familiarizes him with the format of the NNAT. There are excellent packages available in online, software and print formats, as well as a wealth of free practice questions.

Check out this blog post for tips on NNAT prep!

Rewards and Punishments for NNAT Kids

Most parents struggle with how to reward and punish their children, especially during the NNAT prep season. They want to reinforce good behavior and discourage bad behavior, but also do not want to traumatize their children with punishments or overly reward them, especially for the NNAT test. This responsibility sits heavily on parents, because children need to be well behaved before they enter Kindergarten.

But what kind of reward and punishment system will effectively teach your child not only to do what they are told, but to eventually become good people who are able to make positive choices? To help mold your child into a good decision maker, you need to start in the home as early as possible, with NNAT test prep. There are many opportunities while you spend time with your child, either helping with pre-school or NNAT test prep, to teach them to make the right decisions. Your child will need to learn to make good decisions instead of just being able to follow rules if they are to truly succeed in life.

One way to introduce good decision-making skills in your child is to emphasize natural consequences, especially in NNAT prep. You can easily show your child the consequences of their actions; you just need to break down the logic for them. There can be the rule that once you are done with playtime you need to put away your toys. If your child does not put away their toys right away, then they will need to put them away later. Putting away their toys later will supersede a trip to the park or play time with their neighborhood friends. Connect them breaking a rule, not putting away toys when they are done with them, with the natural consequence, not having time to go to the park. Then the next time they play, they will know to put away their toys so they can have time for fun later on. You as their parent need to show your child the consequences of their actions, then your child can make informed decisions, like spending time on NNAT prep.

The only way that this system of rewards and punishments work is if you as a parent have clear explanations. Saying “Because I Said So” or “Mommy says so” destroys your credibility in your child’s eyes. You are not respecting your child’s ability to understand you, so give them clear explanations in order to effectively communicate. When you set a rule in place for your child, explain it, like why you do NNAT prep. Saying “No climbing on the furniture, because you can get hurt” is much more compelling to children than simply “no climbing on the furniture”.

Introducing explanations into your rewards and punishments structure can produce a child who can think critically and make good decisions. These are skills that are not only going to benefit your child in the NNAT and Kindergarten but for the rest of their lives. Be as active in the explanations of the rewards and punishments as you are in the rules and you child will be on their way to a successful life and high NNAT scores!

For more tips on test prep, check out this site. Good luck on the NNAT!

Board Games as NNAT Practice!

One of the best ways to prepare your child for the NNAT is to make NNAT prep fun! An easy way to do that is to play board games with your child. Your child will already know a lot of these board games, and so its just about you talking to your child about what they are doing. You can make connections between skills they will need on the NNAT and the board games they are playing without them even knowing it. NNAT prep that your child does not know is NNAT prep is the best way to help them study. Play these games with your children for subtle NNAT prep.

• Candy Land: This is a great game for preschoolers going to take the NNAT! Kids draw colored cards and they move along the board. You can teach your child colors through this game, and you can teach them counting in this game. Those are skills your preschooler will need for the NNAT.
• Connect Four: This is vertical tic-tac-toe and is great for NNAT study. Payers take turns dropping their colored checker down rows to try and get 4 in a row. This will help develop your child’s fine motor skills and their critical thinking. They will learn how to think in a multi-step process, which is critical on the NNAT.
• Memory: This is a great game to get in your child’s favorite theme; whether its farm animals or batman you will be able to find or create a memory game for them. You have 72 picture cards and you put them in rows and have your child make matches. For younger children around 2 years old have them play this game face up. You can flip them over at 3 years old, but only use about half the deck so they don’t get overwhelmed. This game is great for memory skills that will be tested on the NNAT.

Here is a great board game for building NNAT skills. Good luck on the NNAT!

 

Tips to Help your NNAT Child Listen

There is a large emphasis on good listening skills on the NNAT! Your child will be scrutinized on their ability to listen to directions and follow them for the NNAT. This is also a skill that is good to have in Kindergarten, what your child is taking the NNAT to get into. There are a myriad of different ways to improve your child’s listening and response skills, which will help on the NNAT. Here are a few tips to help improve your child’s listening skills.

• Sing or whisper: If you do not think your child is listening to you anymore then tell them to come over to you and whisper a secret message in their ear. Or if you want you can sing your directions to them, to the theme of London Bridge! Tell them that they need to start working on their listening skills, as they will come in handy on the NNAT!
• Have a physical touch: When you want your child to listen very closely, crouch down to their level, take their hands in yours and have them look you in the eyes. Then you know you have their full attention and can talk with them. Tell them they need to start listening on their own, because no one will hold their hand during the NNAT!
• Listening ears: This is a very handy tool to teach your child, as they will probably be told this in Kindergarten, and might be told this on the NNAT. Even if the proctor does not say it during the NNAT you can tell your child right before the test to get better listening results. Simple tell your child to turn their listening ears on before you tell them something important, and they should pay attention.

Use these NNAT questions to practice listening skills! Good luck on the NNAT!