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Until the Otis-Lennon School Ability Test® was adopted by the New York School District I hadn’t often been asked for recommendations for children this young. If your child has a 2003 birthday and is being tested for kindergarten placement they will be taking the OLSAT® Level A in a small group. It is a multiple-choice test. The children indicate their answers by shading a bubble underneath the picture they choose on the question paper (they don't fill in the scantron form). There is no reading. The test proctor reads the instructions, questions and answers once only. Listening is very important.
Making recommendations for Pre K children isn't clear cut. Your Pre K child may have had no formal learning exposure or be a four year old in a formal Pre K program studying a K curriculum or somewhere in between. While your child will take the same test as all the other children born in 2003 their performance will be compared with that of children in a three month band. A child born in January 2003 will have the opportunity to answer questions of the same difficulty as those presented to a child born in December 2003 but won't have to get as many right to get the percentile ranking required to be identified as gifted. To restate while every child born in 2003 takes the same test and has the potential to benefit from the most difficult of the titles I recommend here your young child may find them too hard. Start at your child's level and don't push them past the point where it's fun and they're learning. Scroll down to see all my recommendations. Click on "more info" at the end of each brief product description and viw the sample activities. If they look really easy get the next level in the series. If they look difficult considering starting with a simpler level.
For the OLSAT® you want to expose your children to verbal, aural, arithmetic, pictorial and figural reasoning activities. The Building Thinking Skills series is a great place to start for verbal and figural reasoning. Add to that Can You Find Me? for pictorial and aural reasoning and Mathematical Reasoning for arithmetic reasoning and you've got it covered.
Building Thinking Skills Primary was designed for the typical child in Gr K-1. If you've got a gifted 4 year old this is a good place to start. Ignore the writing activies in Building Thinking Skills Primary. Your child can just tell you the answers. The book is designed to be used with manipulative blocks which are sold separately. Without blocks you won't be able to do about 1/4 of the exercises. You could trace the attribute block shapes out of cardboard instead of purchasing the plastic blocks I sell. You could do the same for the interlocking cubes but I strongly recommend that you purchase these. The interlocking cubes easily lead themselves to extension activities in developing more complex sequences (in addition to color each block has a geometric shape cut out which can add another dimension to sequencing) and understanding orientation and constancy of area and volume. Young children learn through play so even though actual blocks won't be used in testing playing with them is an important way for many children to learn some of the skills needed.
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 and reasoning. 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. This is one series where it doesn't hurt to begin easy. Having the patience to listen carefully to what appear to be easy questions and thereby avoid making a silly mistake is an important skill for young children to develop before testing.
If you want just one book I can't offer anything that covers the entire skill set tested for in the OLSAT® but recommend that you choose between Building Thinking Skills Primary and Can You Find Me? K-1 The best one for you will depend on your child and what they do and don't know already.
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 gifted child is probably ready for Level A in this series. Again I recommend looking at the sample pages and trying the activites with your child. If they look too difficult then start with Mathematical Reasoning Beginning.
The final title in the list of recommendations below is the Spectrum Test Prep book for Gr 1-2. This series was designed to prepare children for conventional standardized tests of reading and math. Despite the difference in focus from the OLSAT® there are a number of questions in this book that are similar in content and format to those on the OLSAT®. In addition practice listening and shading bubbles is very important for some children. There will be problems in this book that will be difficult even for a bright Pre K child but I'm not aware of anything like this designed for younger children. Remember as you use this book that your child will not see any words when they take the test. If your 4 year old is reading it will be important for you to cover the words and only let them see the pictures as they listen to your instructions so that they can practice focused listening.
OLSAT® and Otis-Lennon School Ability Test® are registered trademarks of NCS Pearson (previously Harcourt Assessment Services). The recommendations made here are those of Think Tonight and are not endorsed by NCS Pearson.
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