Best NNAT Summer Activities

It may seem like spring only just sprung but summer is fast approaching and you dont want your NNAT child to be left in the dust! There are a lot of different programs that you can have your child participate in to help prepare them for their NNAT in the fall. You do not want your child to sucuumb to the summer slump and here are some activities that your NNAT child can participate in to help improve their NNAT score in the fall!

• Sleep away camp- This is a good activity for older children who will cherish the independence this experience gives them. Independence in younger children can help boost their confidence, which in turn helps boost their NNAT scores!
• Zoo Camp- This is a great activity for children who are very interested in animals or who are too young to go to sleep away camp. Your young one will not only learn about animals and biology, but will also be able to practice their categorization skills that are needed in the NNAT.
• Scouting camp- This camp is great for a child already in a scouting organization or who wants to get involved in scouting. Scouting is a great way to help your child gain confidence in their own abilities and teach them something the classroom will not. Real world experiences do help on the NNAT!
• Workbooks- This option may be the most obvious on the list, but do not forget about doing workbooks, not just for the NNAT but for all school subjects, during the summer. The summer slump, where children can lose 30% of what they learned the year before, is real and workbooks are a great way to prevent that!
• online programs- This is a great treat for children, that will help them learn and improve their NNAT skills. When you want your child outside and actively playing as much as possible during the summer, time spent on the computer or iPad can be treats, even if those activities are educational.

Good luck looking into summer programs! You can find some great resources for online programs from this site. Good luck on the NNAT!

 

More NNAT Apps for your Child

The post earlier this week on apps for to help prepare your child for the NNAT was so popular I have a second part. Educational apps can be a great diversion from more serious practice question preparation for the NNAT. You can use these apps below for child to help prepare for the NNAT or for general school enrichment. Your children will be having so much fun that they will forget that they are learning.

• Phrasal Verb Machine: This is a great app for children who have English as their second language. Phrasal verbs can be difficult for non-native speakers and this app teaches children how to use those action phrasal verbs. They are represented through visuals so that your child can see the phrasal verb instead of just giving them a list of action phrases to memorize.
• SkyORB: If your child is constantly asking you about the planets or the stars or what constellations are in the sky at this time of year, this is the app for you! This app has a 3-D real time representation of the stars and the positions of the planets in the sky. It uses your GPS location to show you the planets and the constellations that are above you directly at that moment.
• Duolingo: This is a great app for children who want to learn another language in a fun and free environment. I use it myself on my iphone to learn French and the combination of writing, reading, listening and speaking helps solidify the new language in your mind. Also the app is used to help translate various pages of texts on the web, so you are benefiting everyone by using the app!

You can find more resources for the NNAT on this site. Good luck on the NNAT!

Best Educational Apps for NNAT Kids

It can be confusing in this modern day exactly how much screen time you should give you child while studying for the NNAT. You read articles about how to limit screen time with your child because of how too much screen time can delay your child’s cognitive abilities. But you can also use tablets to help prepare your child for their NNAT test! I have compiled a list below of apps that you can use to help your child prepare for the NNAT!

• Google Maps: This may seem like a surprising entry but you can travel all around the world with your child on google maps! You can prepare for the NNAT by having your child look at the various countries and ask what they have in common, practicing categorization.
• Pocket Body: This is a great app for your child if they are interested in the human body! Not only will they get to see nine layers of musculoskeletal, neurovascular, and internal organ they will also learn so many new vocabulary words!
• Video Science: This is a great resource for a budding scientist in your life. This app is chock full of videos of experiments your children can complete themselves.
• Sight Words for Learning: This app is great for the young budding reader in your life. This app shows children various sight words that are the most popular in children’s books. Great for NNAT test prep.
• Earthviewer: You this app for children who are interested in the history of the world. You can see what the world looked like 150 million years ago! You can go back 4.5 billion years of the earth’s history and show your child what the world looked like when dinosaurs roamed the earth!

You can also find additional NNAT resources on this site. Good luck on the NNAT.

More Tools to Prepare Your Child for the NNAT

The last blog post, about tools to prepare your child for the NNAT, was so popular that I decided to write a second blog post about it. There are a variety of different ways that you can prepare your child for the NNAT, and today’s post will focus on more general tools to prepare your child for the NNAT. Just reading to your child and having them complete puzzles or starting to play the piano can inadvertently prepare them for the NNAT.

• Make a Memory Mosaic: Print out a bunch of pictures from fun activities from 2013 and then have your child choose which ones they like! Have them paste the pictures on a foam core board for you to post in their bedroom or in the family room. Provide markers and colored construction paper for them to make this mosaic their own. This is a great subtle preparation for the NNAT!
• Make a family tree: This is a great activity to help bond parents and children together. This idea work a lot like the memory mosaic. Print out pictures of all of the family members that you can, and then have your child paste them onto a board. While they are pasting and decorating, you can tell them stories about their family members and explain to them what life was like when your parents were alive, or your grandparents! This gives your children a fun break from the NNAT and also gets them interested in your family history!
• School enrichment: This may seem like a very general tool, but just doing extra math practice sheets or 20 minutes of extra reading a night can help prepare your child for the NNAT!

You can find more resources for the NNAT on this site. Good luck on the NNAT!

 

Keep Your NNAT Kids Healthy This Spring Season

It can be difficult to keep your NNAT child healthy during the spring allergy season. They are either catching the tail end of flu season or they are allergic to the pollen around your house. Here are some tips on how to keep your NNAT child healthy this spring:

• Keep Your Child Fueled: The best way to keep your child healthy during the spring, and able to focus on the NNAT, is to make sure they are fed good hearty foods. There is a reason stew is a spring dish, filled with meat and hearty vegetables and warm, it will keep your child full while they work on the NNAT!
• Wrap Up: This may seem like common sense but the best way to fight a cold is to keep as little of the body exposed to the elements as possible. That way there is less of a chance of catching cold, and getting distracted from NNAT study!
• Instant hand sanitizer- This is something very easy to implement with your child! Attach the instant hand sanitizer to their backpacks and put a mark on it before they go to school this week. Whenever they come back and their instant hand sanitizer is lower than when they left, they get a prize, such as 5 minutes less of NNAT prep.
• Carry Tissues- Carrying tissues around to blow your nose with is an important lesson to teach children. They need to know that you do not blow your nose on your sleeve and spread their germs that way! Keep your child healthy by buying them a tissue pack for their backpack to keep them healthy for NNAT prep!
• Proper Cough Etiquette- Just like you are teaching your child the NNAT, teach your child how to properly cough and sneeze so they do not spread their germs. Encourage your child’s teacher to show kids how to sneeze and cough properly to keep from spreading their germs from child to child and getting the whole class sick!

You can find more information on the NNAT on this site. Good luck on the NNAT!

Start Preparing for the NNAT with these Tools

It can be hard to figure out the best way to prepare your child for the NNAT! For many parents, they received their child’s scores in the mail and found out that they did not pass. That means their child will try to get into the Gifted and Talented program the next year, and have to take the NNAT again. I have collected some tools below to help prepare your child for the NNAT:

• Private Tutors: This is the most expensive and hands-off way to prepare your child for the NNAT. You hire a tutor to meet with your child and they take your child through the NNAT process. However, this way is the most direct for NNAT test prep and less strong on general enrichment for your child.
• Workbooks: This is one of the best ways to prepare your child for the NNAT if you want to work with them yourself, and just want to prepare for the NNAT. You will be able to buy a book for the grade level that your child will be entering into and the NNAT test. You will have a section that explains the NNAT to you, their parent, and then practice questions for the NNAT for your child to answer. The only down side to NNAT workbooks is that you can only use the book once and if the test is updated, the book is no longer useful for NNAT prep.
• Websites: There is a site called Testing Mom that has NNAT test prep on the site. The advantage of this site, and other sites like it, is that you get instant access to the NNAT materials. The site is constantly updated with the newest information available about the NNAT and there are often several different ways to prepare your child. There can be interactive online games, materials that can be printed out, or activities you can do in regular life to prepare your child for the NNAT.

You can find more resources for the NNAT on this site. Good luck on the NNAT!

 

 

 

How to Prepare Yourself for NNAT Test Prep

In today’s blog post, I will focus more on how you should go about preparing your child for the NNAT test itself. You should start preparing your child about 3 to 4 months in advance so you do not stress them out. You should focus on 15 to 20 minutes of solid NNAT test prep a day, in order to not overwhelm them.

• Choose your resources: You want to make sure that your have a variety of resources to choose from to prepare your child for the NNAT. You want to have a combination of physical NNAT practice tests for your child to take, that will allow them to experience what the test will be like while in the safety and comfort of their own home. If your child is gifted but also has some disabilities, you may want to seek out a specialized tutor that you can meet with 3 or 4 times. That tutor can identify exactly how your child learns and can give you good tips and lessons on how to prepare your unique child. You also want to find instructions on fun games or outdoor activities that help prepare a child for the NNAT. Children learn best through play, so try and incorporate as many fun puzzles and games as possible into the NNAT test prep routine!
• Print out materials: You want to make sure that before you start doing NNAT test prep with your child that you have all of the materials that you need. This might mean printing everything out before you even start NNAT test prep with your child, or it might mean printing out the materials needed for that week on Sunday. However you stay organized works for you, but make sure that when you sit your child down for NNAT test prep, they have all of the materials they need in front of them.
• Create a schedule: This is the best way to help your child organize their lives, and learn to organize a study schedule. By doing test prep at the same time everyday, or the same times every week, you help them by staying consistent.

You can find more resources on the NNAT here. Good luck on the NNAT!

 

How to Start Getting Ready for the NNAT

There is a lot of pressure that parents feel when preparing their children for the NNAT exam. They know that their children are relying on them to help them prepare properly for the NNAT. They also know that they cannot put too much pressure on their children, or else they can be affected with test anxiety for the rest of their lives. With so much on the line, a lot of parents do not know how to properly prepare their children for the NNAT. I have compiled a list of steps below to help guide parents on the journey of preparing for the NNAT:

• Gather information on your child’s Gifted and Talented program: This can either be the easiest or the most difficult task on this list. Some gifted and talented programs, like the one in New York, explain directly on their website the tests administered to the children and when those children will be tested to get into the program. This is the best-case scenario because then you know exactly when your child will be tested on the NNAT and exactly what they will be tested on. However, if your school district does not provide very much information on the gifted and talented admissions program, try talking to parents of older children in the program. They can give you good insight on how their child was admitted into the program and what you may expect.
• Read all of the books you can: Sometimes school district websites will provide parents with a gifted and talented handbook, or handbooks on the NNAT, that lays out how gifted students are selected for the program and exactly what you will be expecting in that program. If your school district does not provide that, find other books and resources on gifted programs and how to foster your gifted child’s intelligence! There are even books on the NNAT test and how to best teach your child NNAT skills in real life.

This is just the beginning for how you can start getting ready for the NNAT test! I will finish the list in my next blog post! In the meantime, check out this book for NNAT test prep. Good luck on the NNAT!