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OLSAT® and Otis-Lennon School Ability Test® are registered trademarks of NCS Pearson. The recommendations made here are those of thinktonight and are not endorsed by NCS Pearson.
Making recommendations for Pre K children is difficult. Your Pre K child may be a three year old with no formal learning exposure or a four year old in a formal Pre K program studying a K curriculum or somewhere in between.
For the OLSAT you want to expose your children to verbal and non-verbal reasoning activities. The Building Thinking Skills series is a great place to start. Read the product descriptions and table of contents and try out the sample activities with your children to see if you’d be best to start in First Steps (for the typical 3-4 year old), Building Thinking Skills Beginning (also for the typical 3-4 year old but less comprehensive and a book rather than a kit with manipulatives) or Building Thinking Skills Primary (for the typical child in Gr K-1). Ignore the writing activies in Building Thinking Skills Primary. Your child can just tell you the answers. Your gifted child may even be ready for Level 1 of Building Thinking Skills (for the typical child in Gr 2-3). As with the Primary level don't expect written answers at this stage. Scribe for them, allow them to just tell you the answer or choose the software. Finally if your child needs more practice with non-verbal reasoning Hands on Thinking Skills contains additional activities in this area.
Can You Find Me? is a great choice to use for listening practice. For testing it will be important that your child stays focused and listens to the instructions, questions and answer options. You have a choice of levels. If in doubt I recommend beginning with Can You Find Me? Pre K.
While there is no math per se in the OLSAT questions on arithmetic reasoning are included at this level. As an illustration a question might ask the child to identify the picture of flower with two more flowers than the first picture. The Mathematical Reasoning series has more math that you'll need but it develops this type of reasoning skill. Your child may need to start with Mathematical Reasoning Beginning or may be ready for Level A in this series. Again I recommend looking at the sample pages and trying the activites with your child.
Until the OLSAT was adopted by the New York School District I hadn’t been asked for recommendations for children this young. If you are in New York your child will be taking the Bracken School Readiness Assessment (BSRA) in addition to the OLSAT. Mathematical Reasoning A , Can You Find Me? K-1 and Rocket Phonics are great choices for this. Rocket Phonics will take your child to a higher reading level than necessary for testing but it teaches reading in conjunction with thinking skills so many of the reading exercises also work as thinking skills activities (with the parent reading) with a younger child.
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