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Valentine’s Day Fun Math Puzzle and Riddles

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February is here! Valentine’s Day crafts and worksheets are a fun way to fill family time (instead of watching TV!)

Printable Puzzle

For younger kids, print out this puzzle.  Get your scissors and glue sticks out!

  1. Let your child practice cutting the puzzle.  Don’t worry if cutting is not done neatly.  We are practicing fine motor skills and learning to cut!
  2. Shuffle the cut up pieces!
  3. Glue the individual pieces on another sheet of paper.
  4. The end product will probably be not as neat as the original puzzle.  But the point is for your child to practice his or her skills individually without your help!
Valentine's Day Penguins Puzzle
Valentine’s Day Penguins Puzzle

Math Riddle

For Older kids, try out this math riddle!  Seasonal math worksheets are a favorite among kids.  They feel excited about the upcoming Valentine’s parties at school, but still practicing math!

Valentine's Day Riddle from Smarty Buddy
Valentine’s Day Riddle from Smarty Buddy
Valentine's Day Jokes - Smarty Buddy
Valentine’s Day Jokes – Smarty Buddy

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:

Elementary school aged kids:

  1. Smarty Buddy Inview Practice – Level 1 
  2. Smarty Buddy Inview Practice – Level 2
  3. Smarty Buddy CoGAT Practice
  4. Smarty Buddy SCAT  Practice
  5. Smarty Buddy Gifted and Talented Test  Practice
  6. Smarty Buddy App on Ios, Kindle, Android
  7. Smarty Buddy Multiplication App on IOS, Kindle, Android
  8. Smarty Buddy Division App on IOS, Kindle, Android
  9. Smarty Buddy Grade 1 Math App on IOS, Kindle, Android

Pre-school aged kids:

  1. Smarty Buddy My First Analogies

(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! )

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Visual Puzzle

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Did we mention that we love puzzles?!  Today’s visual puzzle is “Unfolding a Cube”:

Imagine that the cube is made out of paper or cardboard. Look at the cube and the designs on each side.  Now imagine what the unfolded cube would look like:

Smarty Buddy Unfolding a Cube Puzzle
Smarty Buddy Unfolding a Cube Puzzle

Visual puzzles like this are excellent brain teasers for kids and adults alike , because they force us to think conceptually, not in a way we usually think in everyday life.

These types of visual puzzles are perfect IQ test questions!

They are not taught in school! So practice to get a head start!

Oh, the answer is….  well comment, Tweet or Pin  once you get it!

 

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Missing Part Puzzle

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Missing Part Puzzles are a great way to train your brain to conceptually move a piece of puzzle into place.  Practice with your child and see how fast junior can solve this puzzle!

Our little app testers love these worksheets!  Try out our new workbook on Amazon:

Smarty Buddy MIssing Part Puzzle
Smarty Buddy Missing Part Puzzle

 

Love Puzzles? Check out Smarty Buddy App!

The Smarty Buddy App was designed based on the types of questions a child might encounter on the CogAT and similar gifted placement tests.

Smarty Buddy App
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 CogAT Practice Book is a workbook designed to give any child the opportunity to get familiar with CogAT question 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!

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What’s the CogAT Test?

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COGAT Practice Workbook for Homeschool

The Cognitive Abilities Test (CogAT) is a group-administered K–12 assessment intended to estimate students’ learned reasoning and problem solving abilities through a battery of verbal, quantitative, and nonverbal test items. The test purports to assess students’ acquired reasoning abilities while also predicting achievement scores when administered with the co-normed Iowa Tests. The author of the test is David F. Lohman, professor emeritus at the University of Iowa. *

The CogAT is one of several tests used in the United States to help school systems make student placement decisions for gifted education programs.*

The most recent (seventh) edition of the CogAT was designed to be appropriate for non-native English speakers, and independent reviews indicate that the test’s creators have been mostly successful in this. *

The Batteries or Test sections are as follows:

Battery Subtests
Verbal Picture/Verbal Analogies
Sentence Completion
Picture/Verbal Classification
Quantitative Number Analogies
Number Series
Number Puzzles
Nonverbal Figure Matrices
Figure Classification
Paper Folding

 

Here’s a nice summary of the types of questions a child in elementary school might encounter on test day:  (CogAT Test Levels 5 – 8)

COGAT Test Types of Questions

The Smarty Buddy App was designed based on the types of questions a child might encounter on the CogAT and similar gifted placement tests.

Smarty Buddy App
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 CogAT Practice Book is a workbook designed to give any child the opportunity to get familiar with CogAT question 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!

*(Source: Wikipedia)  

(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! )

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We love visual puzzles!

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Can you count the squares in this puzzle?

This type of puzzle will appear in your child’s  standardized tests and geometry tests down the road!   So why not train the brain now, and learn the trick behind this type of puzzle early on?

Try to do the puzzle and then peek at the technique to answer it…

If your mind has turned to mush already, we can help you out. The trick is to find multiple smaller squares in order to make larger ones. Just remember this fundamental rule: All squares have four equal sides.

Keeping that in mind, start by counting the smallest squares in the center and all four corners, since those are the easiest to spot. Then, work your way out to the medium-sized squares that start on each corner, as well as the center one. And don’t forget the biggest square that surrounds them all!

You should count 22  squares by the time you finish!

 

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We love LEGO!

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Did you know that building blocks are essential for cognitive development?Any kind of activity that includes fine-motor skills sends millions of impulses into the brain – building new synapses – thus expanding cognitive horizons of your little one ( this actually applies to humans of all ages!)

LEGOs are a must have educational toy for kids.  Boys and girls will love making these LEGO hearts!

 

So let your kids build – and rest assured that their brains are only getting smarter! 

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Why gifted and talented testing?

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So, many parents go about their daily routines raising their wonderful and smart children – until one fine day they find out that junior will need to take a placement test to get into a) pre-school,  b) private school, c) accelerated math in school or d)  all of the above!

What placement test?   Well, this really depends  on your school system or private school.  The major cognitive tests are CoGAT, NNAT, OLSAT,  Inview, SCAT … ok, there are many more.  And I’ll get into all of them in later blog posts.  The good thing is that there are plenty of online resources for parents and on Amazon to help with the placement testing process.

Here’re the marching orders:

  1. Be proactive!  – Find out from the school what tests are given to your child and when!
  2. Do a few practice tests with your child!  – This is a no brainer. Practice makes perfect.  Even the brightest kids do poorly on standardized tests!  Being familiar with test format, and question types is a life saver!
  3. Pep talk!   – Ok, I learned this the hard way with my eldest child.  Go through the test taking instructions with your kid.  If anything, talk about answering all the questions!  Do not leave any of the questions blank!  If running out of time,  just guess at the end.
  4. 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:

Elementary school aged kids:

  1. Smarty Buddy Inview Practice – Level 1 
  2. Smarty Buddy Inview Practice – Level 2
  3. Smarty Buddy CoGAT Practice
  4. Smarty Buddy SCAT  Practice
  5. Smarty Buddy Gifted and Talented Test  Practice
  6. Smarty Buddy App on Ios, Kindle, Android
  7. Smarty Buddy Multiplication App on IOS, Kindle, Android
  8. Smarty Buddy Division App on IOS, Kindle, Android
  9. Smarty Buddy Grade 1 Math App on IOS, Kindle, Android

Pre-school aged kids:

  1. Smarty Buddy My First Analogies

 

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Welcome to the Smarty Buddy Blog!

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Hey there!  You might have come across this blog and thought – oh,  just another blog…  Hopefully, our blog and discussions will help you in your journey to raising happy and successful kids!

The Smarty Buddy App team has been working very hard to create our product line, such that we completely put the “blogging” part on the back burner.  Not any more!

In this blog, we hope to discuss all the important aspects of parenting -education,  arts,  travel,  finance, and everything that helps us to grow as parents – and will hopefully benefit you and your family.

We have to disclose that we are the creators of Smarty Buddy App and authors of Smarty Buddy Books.  So our products will appear throughout our blog.

Happy reading!

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