St Patrick’s Day Activities for Classroom use and home fun! Feel free to print, share, and have lots of fun solving these riddles and jokes on St Patrick’s Day!
Are your kids getting excited for St Patrick’s Day? Are you looking for some fun St Patrick’s Day activities for them? Then check out the free St Patrick’s Day worksheets and puzzles below. They make a really fun and easy way for your kids to celebrate the holiday!
While you are here, check out our blog and start practicing logic reasoning skills with kids before the school administered IQ tests!
St Patrick’s Day WorksheetSt Patrick Day Coloring Page
(If you enjoyed this post, as if we just had a nice chat over a cup of coffee, please consider donating via PayPal for a cup of coffee for my next blog post. Otherwise, do something nice today to pass on the good vibes! )
This post is based on a true story. One of our staffs’ children took the CogAT test a month ago. The 5th grader took the test, and was generally happy about the test process, but admitted that she left a bunch of answers blank – to the dismay of her mom!
Test taking tip #1:
Even the brightest kids do poorly on standardized tests. Get familiar with the test format. This can make or break your child’s performance on the standardized test! Do your research, grab a workbook from our collection of workbooks. get our Smarty Buddy App.
The CogAT test results came back. An lo and behold, the 5th grader got 91-94 on all sections except the section that she left blank…. 67!
Test taking tip #2:
Ok, do this several times with your child! Talk about the importance of answering every question! If your child answers the question as an educated guess, there is a 25% chance the answer will be correct (1 out of 4 answer choices). But if the child skips the questions that seem hard, there is no chance of getting points for those questions.
Even the brightest kids do poorly on standardized tests. Get familiar with the test format. This can make or break your child’s performance on the standardized test!
Test taking tip #3
Talk about managing time on the test. Answer every question, and mark any questions that are hard and need extra time for review. (on paper test circle the question. On the computer test, use the scrap paper to mark the question numbers) If time allows, come back to the questions as needed and double check your work.
Test taking tip #4
Some school systems are administering the CogAT test on computers. This is also a true story – one child’s computer died in the middle of the test. The child did not perform as well as she could. She started getting nervous and ultimately got a low score. As a parent, you should be able to appeal the test score to the school system for a retest or reconsideration for the gifted program based on the hardware malfunction during test time.
Good luck with your test prep and as always leave us review and comments to help us build our community!
Just in time for CoGAT and SCAT testing season, we’ve discount our new Math Analogies Workbook on Amazon!
If you are just starting out learning about the gifted and talented test process, our math analogies workbook is a fun resource to start honing your child’s cognitive skills.
All children are gifted and talented. Not all kids fit into the standards that school systems and educational institutions deem as the cutoff for gifted and talented designation. Every child deserves to be offered the most challenging material in school to progress in his or her understanding of the world.
After going through different learning programs and test preparation books, we decided to assemble the materials that helped our own kids succeed. We hope that our apps and test preparation books help every child feel confident on test day and every parent feel content that they offered the best learning resources to their kid(s).
Smarty Buddy App
The Smarty Buddy App was designed based on the types of questions a child might encounter on the CogAT®, InView™, SCAT®, and similar gifted placement tests.
Smarty Buddy App features 3 grade difficulty levels:
pre-K-K
1-2 grade
3-5 grade
Smarty Buddy App features 5 types of test topics similar in format to the questions asked on the leading gifted and talented placement tests:
Number Sequences
Picture Sequences
Picture Analogies
Quantitative
Number Puzzles
Within each topic Smarty Buddy App features 3 levels of difficulty.
Smarty Buddy App Topics
With over 670 questions to play, this fun game can complement or replace any worksheet test preparation. Grab the game to squeeze in test practice on the road or on the plane.
Check out our App Demo for some of the questions in the Sequences Test:
Valentine’s Day Activities for Classroom use and home fun! Feel free to print, share, and have lots of fun solving these riddles and jokes on Valentine’s Day!
Are your kids getting excited for Valentine’s Day? Are you looking for some fun Valentine activities for them? Then check out the free Valentine coloring pages and puzzles below. They make a really fun and easy way for your kids to celebrate the holiday!
Supplement school curriculum with in-home worksheets and puzzles! – Ok, the U.S. early education system needs your help. Don’t wade through the system. Be your child’s advocate. If junior is struggling with multiplication – work on multiplication worksheets, games, apps. If analogies are hard – work on analogies with your child. All the time you put into your child’s education is a great reward in itself! Your child’s success is even a greater reward!
Check out the resources that the Smarty Buddy Team has put together:
Analogies are a central part of any standardized test or above-grade-level gifted and talented placement test. An analogy is simply a puzzle of relationships between pairs of words, pictures, or math symbols. We all remember verbal analogies from the SAT test:
Cat : kitten :: Dog : puppy
Analogies are often written in this notation, which should be read as:
Cat is to kitten as dog is to puppy
¨ The single colon (:) compares two items in a pair of words.
¨ The double colon (::) extends the relationship of the first pair to the second pair of words.
An analogy question will usually appear as a multiple choice question:
Cat : kitten :: Dog : _______
puppy
kennel
ball
pet
Invite your child to read out loud. Cat is to kitten as dog is to what? Then read aloud each answer choice and your child will hear the answer: puppy! Ask how are the words related?
Yes, these are pets and their babies. Kitten is a baby cat as puppy is a baby dog!
Math analogies are a fun way to practice answering analogy type questions. Understanding, reasoning, and solving analogies are essential problem-solving skills. Math analogies are a great way to start practicing analogies in a non-verbal format. This type of question will pop up in school assessment tests because it is a simple way to measure cognitive abilities in non-English speaking students as well as native English speaking students.
two : 2 :: four : ?
Read this expression with your child: Two is to 2 as four is to …? Yes, the number 4.
1, 2, 3 : 4 :: 6, 7, 8 : ?
Read this expression with your child: 1, 2, 3 is to 4 as 6, 7, 8 is to …? Yes, …9. Here, we are looking at sequences of numbers. In the first pair of expressions look at the sequence on the left (1, 2, 3) and the next number in the sequence is 4.
Now the next sequence 6, 7, 8 is followed by what? Nine! So the correct answer is the number 9.
(If you enjoyed this post, as if we just had a nice chat over a cup of coffee, please consider donating via PayPal for a cup of coffee for my next blog post. Otherwise, do something nice today to pass on the good vibes! )
A 3-D shape consists of six color cubes (two blue, two red and two yellow ones) and the cubes touch each other only with their edges and corners but not sides. There are 12 possible 2D views of the shape – diagrams A-L. Which of the views are correct and which are not?
Cubic Triangle Views Puzzle
This type of puzzle is essential for training cognitive abilities by imagining 3-D objects and manipulating them in your mind. Try this out yourself, and then do the puzzle with your child! Great brainteaser to supplement your gifted and talented test preparation (CogAT, Inview, SCAT, etc.) at home.
Brain Boosting Resources
The Smarty Buddy App was designed based on the types of questions a child might encounter on the CogAT, Inview, SCAT, and similar gifted placement tests. Smarty Buddy App The full version game features 3 grade levels, 5 test topics, and 3 levels of difficulty. With over 670 questions to play, this fun game can complement or replace any worksheet test preparation. Now on all App Stores!
Test Topics: Number Sequences, Picture Sequences, Picture Analogies, Quantitative and Number Puzzles
Features: Positive reinforcement through game badges; progress reports for parents.
The Smarty Buddy workbooks were designed to give any child the opportunity to get familiar with gifted and talented test format. For a hands on approach of testing at home with mom and dad – try practicing with our workbooks and apps. Your child will feel more confident on test day, and you will feel assured that you provided the best educational resource for your child to get ahead!
How Accurate Are Punxsutawney Phil’s Groundhog Day Forecasts? … As we all know, if Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow on Feb. 2, we are in for six more weeks of winter weather; no shadow indicates an early spring.
Of course if you think about it, um, does this forecast apply to Pennsylvania, Hawaii and Alaska alike? Even if we only trust this “forecast” in the Northeast U.S. how accurate is it?
Well, as of 2018, Punxsutawney Phil has made 131 predictions, with an early spring (no shadow) predicted 18 times (13.85%). According to Stormfax, as of 2018 the predictions have proven correct 39% of the time.
In comparison, flipping a coin will give you 50% correct answer.
And if you use the persistence forecasts where you “predict” the future weather will be the same as the current weather. you’ll be correct more than half of the time!
So Happy Ground Hog Day – but still read the weather reports!
