IQ FUN PARK™ – TEST PREP THAT FEELS LIKE A GAME!

SHHHH! IT’S SERIOUS PREPARATION FOR IQ TESTING, BUT KIDS THINK IT’S PLAY.

* Over 1,500 practice items based on the WPPSI-III (ERB), Stanford-Binet 5, OLSAT and BBCS tests. Ask questions from 1 test or all 4!

* 3 levels of difficulty for kids ages 3 – 6 (pre-K to 1st grade).

* Pattern tiles, secret password cards, finger puppets, stickers and temporary tattoos make the “game” extra fun.

* Prepare your child without pressure, expensive tutors or workbooks.

* Tested by experts and kids. Mosts common response from toddler-testers – “Let’s play it again!”

TO PURCHASE IQ FUN PARK, CLICK HERE!

BELOW: Watch 5-year-old Sophie Chau demonstrate how to play IQ Fun Park™!

“I wrote a while back asking for advice for looming tests (I had read your book and my mom sent us the IQ Fun Park game), and you responded so quickly with reassurance we were on the right track. So I wanted to let you know our son was offered a spot at Hunter next year and I do believe you should truly share in the congratulations. Without your book, lovely game and accessibility I don’t know that I would have been able to relax into this whole process and let him do his thing. Thank you for letting me breathe and have fun with my child through this crazy New York City process.” –SD, NYC Mom

“My daughter increased her IQ score by 17 points! My 5-year-old daughter was tested in October 2010 and scored below the 130 requirement for the gifted program in the public school system. My husband and I felt that her true IQ was higher, and that we had not prepared her well for the test. It seemed to us that she missed some questions because she did not understand what the questioner meant. We purchased the IQ Fun Park game and played it with her a few times a week. Playing the game was a special treat for her; she loved the focused attention and the challenge of the game. She was tested again in February 2011 (this time with a different test since she was now 6 years old). After just 4 months her score had increased by 17 points! Before IQ Fun Park she was in the 92nd percentile, after using IQ Fun Park she tested in the 99th percentile! Her tested IQ now surpasses the 130 requirement. We are so pleased that we purchased IQ Fun Park. I highly recommend it to anyone considering having their child tested for school placement.” –Melinda W., Port Orange, Florida

“We have LOVED the IQ game! More importantly my 6-year-old son, who is not easily entertained asks to play every day!! We are so in awe over this and so thankful we got the game! I had never done many of these types of questions with him before. At first they took him off guard but now he is answering like a pro!” –Melissa, NYC Mom

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE PARENT COMMENTS!

Dear parent,

Do you sometimes worry that your child won’t get into the school you most want him to attend? Have you wondered how he would do on the tests kids have to take for private school admission or gifted program qualification? Does it bother you that 4-year-olds are tested in the first place? Is doing pre-academic work with your child the last thing you want to do after a long, hard day?

FOCUSED TIME WITH YOUR CHILD MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE. SAM’S IQ WENT FROM 37% TO 94%.

When my son, Sam (left), was 3, he was given the WPPSI, the same IQ test he would have to take to qualify for private kindergarten at 4. Because of a hearing problem, his scores were abysmal – 37th percentile. “Your child will never be able to function in a regular classroom,” I was told. Luckily, my mother has her PhD in Early Childhood Education. She helped me understand the abilities he needed to develop to do well on an IQ test and, more importantly, in kindergarten. Every night for about a year I worked with him for a half-hour or so. At age 4, he was tested again – this time (tada!) he scored in the 94th percentile!* Sam was accepted into a top private school in NYC.

*[I'm sure laws require me to tell you that this was an unusual result and I can't promise this will happen with your child. What I can promise is that a little work every day can makes an enormous difference in a child's test performance.]

WHAT WAS MY SECRET?

Did I do expensive workbooks with him? No.
Did we work with flashcards? No.
Did I drill him on the basics? No.
Did I hire tutors to work with him? No.
Did I send him to a kindergarten test prep boot camp? No.
Did I play subliminal education tapes while he slept? Kidding!

SHHH! DON’T TELL ANYONE. WE JUST PLAYED!

That’s right. Whether we were “working” on language, memory, math, knowledge, thinking, visual-spatial or fine-motor skills, I made it super fun for him. We played games, sang songs, read stories, painted pictures, laughed and giggled our way through these very important lessons. This turned out to be a great lesson for me – if you want to help your child to really, truly learn; make it like play! Years later, when I started a business helping families get their children into the best private schools and gifted and talented programs, I taught hundreds of parents how to get their own kids ready for testing. The secret ingredient has always been to make test preparation fun.

IF YOU’RE LIKE MOST PARENTS, YOU WANT TO GIVE YOUR CHILD THE BEST EDUCATION YOU CAN. IN MOST CITIES, GIFTED & TALENTED OR PRIVATE SCHOOLS TOP THE LIST!

Lately, every time you open the paper, you hear about public school budget cuts, teacher layoffs, and larger resulting class sizes. With regular classrooms more crowded than ever, gifted programs and private schools are usually the best option for the highest quality education. The majority of these schools and programs require an intelligence test to qualify.

GETTING INTO GIFTED PROGRAMS IS MORE COMPETITIVE THAN EVER!

It’s tough to get application stats on the most in-demand schools across the country, but a Chicago Tribune article reported 6,800 applicants applied for 1,600 gifted and talented slots in 2008. Last year, 1,832 4-year-olds vied for 50 kindergarten seats at the highly acclaimed Hunter College Elementary School in NYC. In-demand private schools often report 7-10 children applying for every spot. To get into a gifted program, high scores are often the single criteria for admission. For entry to private schools, high scores alone won’t get your little one in, but poor scores will most certainly keep him out.

WITH PLACEMENT DECISIONS DEPENDING HEAVILY ON TEST SCORES, HOW CAN YOU MAKE SURE YOUR CHILD HAS THE SKILLS SHE NEEDS TO TEST WELL?

If you’ve read Testing For Kindergarten, you know there are 7-abilities every child MUST HAVE to ace an intelligence test – language, knowledge, memory, math, visual-spatial, thinking, and fine-motor skills. These are the same abilities she will need to do well in kindergarten and for her entire school career. If your child will be tested within a year or so, “playing” IQ Fun Park game will jump start your child’s readiness for testing and fast-track her to a place where she instinctively knows what to do and how to answer the types of questions she’ll be asked during a real test.

WHY IS IQ FUN PARK™ SO EFFECTIVE?

A TEST-PREP KIT THAT PLAYS LIKE A GAME

Though kids think IQ Fun Park is just a game, it really is a complete test-prep kit that allows your child to answer questions, write, draw, work with manipulatives, pattern squares – mimicking the same types of activities she will be asked to do during an actual test.

Even though you and I know you are working with a test-prep kit, to children, IQ Fun Park IS a game. And really, it IS a game. Children love playing IQ Fun Park and beg to play it over and over again! They have no idea how much they are learning.

HERE IS JUST A SMALL SAMPLING OF TEST ITEMS YOUR CHILD WILL MASTER WHILE PLAYING IQ FUN PARK:

* How to listen carefully to the question being asked so he can give the correct answer;
* How to respond to questions with varied and rich vocabulary versus single word answers, giving him more points when he’s tested;
* How to count (by rolling the dice and moving the space baby, by using the colored circles);
• How to listen to a “silly” password statement and repeat it exactly when crossing a bridge and then how to explain why it the statement is silly (similar to task on the Stanford-Binet);
* Information that is on standard IQ tests and that children should know by the time they start kindergarten – lower and upper case letters, numbers, colors, fruits, vegetables, shapes, farm animals, zoo animals, and much more;
* Using colored circles, how to extend patterns and recreate patterns from memory;
* How to answer simple “word” math problems that require addition and subtraction;
* How to draw shapes and symbols;
* How to put words and visual images into categories;
* How to recognize similarities and differences in language and visual images;
* All about relativity using visual images and manipulatives – above, below, next to, more, less, taller, shorter, lighter, heavier, bigger, smaller, inside, outside, higher, lower, and much more;
* How to talk about vocabulary words and what they mean;
* How to articulate why things belong together and why they don’t;• How to recreate designs using triangle, rectangle and square pattern tiles;
• How to match complex visual images;
• How to use deductive reasoning skills answering “word” problems;
* How to demonstrate through language a basic comprehension of the world that a young child should have;
* How to articulate a story with a beginning, middle and end;
* How to handle “matrix” analogy questions, which are found on most intelligence tests;
* How to recognize what is missing from and what is wrong with a visual image;
* And much, much more (I would go on, but you get the picture – we cover lots of ground, but we do it in fun ways for your child)!

DON’T WORRY IF YOUR CHILD DOESN’T KNOW THESE THINGS NOW! HE CAN BUILD UP TO IT.

The cards and activities your child will work with using IQ Fun Park come in 3 levels. Yellow-bordered cards (like the one on the left) are the easiest and for the youngest children; green-bordered cards are a bit harder and the red-bordered cards are the hardest. The first time you play, start with the yellow-bordered cards. If these are too easy, try green the next time. You will probably find that your child will use a mixture of levels – he may be able to handle red-bordered vocabulary-type questions but will need to work with green-bordered math questions. You’ll get a feel for the “right’ level as you play the game a few times. The point is, your child can work his way from easy, no-brainer questions to the hardest ones.

THE MATERIALS ARE SUPER FLEXIBLE

With cards offering three levels of difficulty, kids between the ages of 3 – 6 can play (pre-K to 1st grade). Use 2 medium-sized dice for older kids (who can add the dots) or one medium-sized die for younger kids. Once you learn what to do with the colored circles and pattern tiles, you won’t need the question cards to guide you. Create your own designs that your child can copy and your own patterns your child can extend or reproduce! If you are traveling, just take the question cards with you for the road.

BUT WAIT, MY PRESCHOOL DIRECTOR TOLD US NOT TO PREP – THAT THE TESTER WOULD KNOW AND OUR CHILD WOULD BE ELIMINATED!

IQ Fun Park looks and feels like many educational games a parent might play with her child. The materials used in the kit are different in look and feel from anything an actual tester might use. In designing the game, we made sure to vary the questions and materials enough from real tests that a child wouldn’t think, “I’ve done this before.” Instead, they will have learned the underlying ability needed to handle question or task when faced with it on a real test, but it will be different enough that the child will be engaged and interested.

FOR BUSY PARENTS: SHOW YOUR CAREGIVER HOW TO PLAY THE GAME WITH YOUR CHILD!

While each card includes one or more questions, we do not provide scripted “right” answers. In the directions, we’ve given examples of the “quality” of answers you want to elicit from your child for each of the different types of questions. Just go for that – a fun, relaxing, learning experience. Other adults, besides a parent, should easily be able to “play” this with your child. Just guide them in the few places where we offer direction to you in the instructions. The point of IQ Fun Park is for your child 1) to build the underlying abilities needed for intelligence testing and kindergarten, and 2) to have practiced the types of questions she’ll get when tested so they don’t come as a surprise to her. You’re looking for a sense of familiarity in the material that will give her confidence in herself and her ability to answer the questions when she’s later tested.

NOW LET’S PLAY IQ FUN PARK!

Start by telling your child the story behind the game.

Big news! Space babies have traveled across the galaxies to visit our planet and study life on earth. They are very excited about their trip and have so many questions about earth children – What do they know? What do they do for fun? Will they teach me about life on earth? Guess what? You have been specially selected to go on a play date with a space baby. So pick a space baby to be your new friend and place her on the start of the rainbow path at your favorite Fun Park. Now you can show her all the things you and other earth children love to do like go to the playground, the zoo, the farm, the beach, the circus, the candy castle, the toy and pet stores and more. As you wind your way down the path, your space baby friend will ask you about all kinds of things. Show him just how just how much earth children know by answering all his questions. Have a fun day with your space baby, but be sure to get him back to his rocket ship in time to go back to his planet for dinner.

HOW THE GAME IS ORGANIZED

Questions/activities modeled after most common IQ tests

Everything in the game is designed to strengthen one of the 7-Abilities needed for any IQ test and for kindergarten success – language, knowledge/comprehension, memory, math, visual-spatial, cognitive, and fine-motor skills.

Questions on each card are modeled after questions on 4 of the most common IQ tests children take:

All About The Cards

Test Codes. On the top left side of each card, there is a code telling you which test the question or activity will prepare your child for. If you know your child will take one test such as the WPPSI-III (for example), you can pull out all the cards with a “W” code and just ask those questions. When playing, you can ask questions from one test or all four.

Ability Codes. Cards are also coded so you can see the abilities it is assessing. Images across the top right side of the card indicate which of the 7-abilities is needed to answer the question. Usually, it takes more than one ability to handle a question. If you play this game with your child several times, you will immediately see where he is weak and where he is strong. After a few games (for example), you might discover that your child’s language abilities are off the charts but he needs work on counting or fine-motor skills. You can always refer to Testing For Kindergarten for fun activities you can do together to strengthen any of the 7-abilities requiring extra support.

How to play

Unfold the game board and place it on a flat surface. 1 – 4 players can play the game. 2 players are ideal so children don’t have to wait too long for their turn. When there is more than one player, the youngest goes first. With one player, the object of the game is to get her space baby to the spaceship at the end of the rainbow path so he can get home in time for dinner. With multiple players, the object of the game is to be the first to get her space baby to the spaceship so he can get home in time for dinner.

Your child chooses a space baby to use to play the game. Then, he rolls the dice and moves that number of spaces (building math and fine-motor skills). He pulls a Question Card. From it, you will ask a question or instruct him to do an activity. If he gets it right, he moves ahead one space. If he gets it wrong, he stays put.

If your child lands on a yellow square with a space baby’s picture on it, he can move ahead one space. Kids love landing on these squares!

When your child comes to a bridge, he must stop and get a silly password message. To cross the bridge, he must repeat the message exactly as you say it and then describe what is silly about it. This activity is based on Memory for Sentences and Verbal Absurdities tasks on the Stanford-Binet test. This is an example of what we do throughout the game – present test-like questions in fun ways so children don’t know they are learning or practicing for a test.


In this video, 3-year old Josh tackles a silly password message!

GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE IQ TEST PREP KIT

Make it fun for your child

When your child is answering a particular type of question or doing an activity for the first time, it may be difficult for her. If you want to reword a question or ask a different, easier question, go ahead. Offer clues, help her think – do whatever you feel she needs to correctly respond to the question or accomplish the activity. Praise her for trying and working hard. Tell her you don’t expect her to know the answer to everything right away, that she’s doing great!

How to handle mistakes your child makes

Let’s say the question is, “If you had three cookies and ate one, how many would you have left?” If your child says “four,” here’s what not to say:

  • Are you sure?
  • Is that really what you think?
  • No, that’s wrong. Try again.

A child usually give his best answer the first time out. If he misses, you should offer a bit of help. Say something like…

  • No, that’s not it. Why don’t you show me 3 fingers and we’ll count it out…
  • That’s close, but let’s make it better. I’m going to run to the kitchen and get 3 cookies. You can eat one and we’ll figure out how many are left.
  • (Assuming you’re playing with another child) “Brooke seems to know the answer. Brooke why don’t you give Michael a hint?” When little children are playing, they love to give each other hints when one has the answer and the other doesn’t. In the video above, another child called out the right answer. If that happens, that’s fine, too, since the point here is to have fun and learn.

You can also use the “fill in the blank technique.” Let’s say the question is, “What does a cow say.” If your child answers “quack,” you might say, “That’s close, but we can do better. A duck says ‘quack quack’ but a cow says ‘moo.’ Let’s try again. A cow says what?”

Or, just offer a hint. “No, that’s not it. What a cow says rhymes with ‘Boo.’ What do you think a cow says that rhymes with ‘Boo?’”

Or, start the answer and let your child finish it. “No, that’s not it. A cow says, ‘Mmm.’ What does a cow say?” If you watch the video with Sophie (top of page), that’s how her mother helps her remember the word “astronaut.”

Note from Karen Quinn: “When I play this with kids, I always help them until they come up with the right answer. The goal of playing this is for your child to learn and have fun and feel like a winner. As long as he has practiced and learned to how to respond to the types of questions he’ll get when tested, he will do his very best when it matters.”

A Review of IQ Fun Park From Executivemoms.com

FROM ABC’S TO SAT’S

We thought it had to be an “only in New York” kind of thing: this absurd pressure to get your child into the right nursery school and kindergarten (including public kindergarten), and then bolster their success from there on, to ensure future schooling. While it is indeed particularly intense in the Big Apple, this phenomenon is becoming increasingly commonplace across the country – concentrated in metropolitan areas, where demand simply exceeds the good supply. Savvy parents have learned to work the system, which in turn has spawned burgeoning cottage industries around test-prep, testing, and tutoring – starting at an age when diapers may not be that distant of a memory.

For those wishing to do the right thing – without going off the deep end – here is a brand new resource that might help:

For Parents Prepping For Elementary School Admittance:

We love this new board game that is actually a comprehensive test prep kit in disguise. Created by Karen Quinn, author of “Testing for Kindergarten,” The IQ Fun Park was cleverly conceived to incorporate the kinds of questions found on the most common tests used to assess children for early elementary school, including the Stanford-Binet, the OLSAT and The Bracken Basic Concept Scale. However, it is to a child’s eye a board game, in which little space babies in the form of finger puppet game pieces need to work their way up the rainbow path across the Fun Park, learning about earth things along the way. In the process, players get to answer questions from the game cards, as well as use colored blocks, pattern tiles and secret password cards – and earn reward stickers at the end.

We’ve been “playing” this with our four-year-old over the past two weeks, and to our delight, there is not a whiff of this being anything other than a fun game (one that she is interested in continuing to play – a feat for ANY game), thereby taking away all of the stress and pressure that can accompany more obvious preparation routes like workbooks or tutoring. Be forewarned, however, that you will know this is more than just a board game from the price; IQ Fun Park (in its first limited production run) sells for just under $300. Not a bargain compared to Candyland – but a great value relative to almost all other forms of formal test prep or supplementary learning in the marketplace. We will raise our hand to say we are impressed. (Now all we need is the answer key for why an understanding of nuanced analogies might be expected of anyone who can still count their age on one hand)…

A Review of IQ Fun Park from NYC Gifted and Talented Program and Testing Site

OLSAT, ERB, WPSII – IQ FUN PARK GAME BY KAREN QUINN – OLSAT TEST, ERB, WPPSI, BRACKEN AND MORE
August 15, 2010, 9:22 am

Testing Mom, Karen Quinn, recently sent me a preview of her new game called IQ Fun Park! All I can say is that it is simply amazing and our daughter absolutely loved playing the game. It really beats the OLSAT test prep workbooks that are on the market for hundreds of dollars and are a chore to complete for both child and parent!

This test-prep game allowed us to interact with our daughter and ask the questions as they related to the game. This is BY FAR the best product I’ve seen on the market today that covers ALL the major tests – ERB, WPSI, OLSAT, Bracken, Standford-Binet 5. The cards are colored coded for difficulty level and also give indications of which test the questions are geared toward.

Buying workbooks and manuals for the ERB test, WPSI test, OLSAT test , Bracken test and Standford-Binet 5 test would cost you well over $1,000! All I can say is that it will be worth every penny. Your child will be BEGGING to play to practice for a test! No more arm twisting and bribing to get your child ready for testing!

To Purchase IQ Fun Park, Click the Link at the Bottom of the Page!

IQ Fun Park is available now for $297 plus shipping and handling. As a parent, I know the price is high. The reason for that is simple. It is very costly to produce. Even at $297, I think you’ll find it is an investment worth making for your child. Parents who used the game with their kids last year gave it rave reviews. Though it looks and feels like a game to children, it is in fact a complete test-prep kit that gives children experience with questions modeled from four of the most commonly given intelligence tests. By covering such a wide cross-section of tests, you can feel secure that your child will be prepared no matter what instrument is used to evaluate him. The questions in IQ Fun Park get to all the underlying abilities needed for any intelligence test. At the same time, if your child is taking only one of the tests we modeled our questions after, you can focus entirely on that test when you play the game.

In my reviews of the more costly test prep workbooks offered by other companies (click here to see them), I suggest that you might want to split the purchase with another family and share the materials. With IQ Fun Park, you may want to do the same. It’s definitely more fun if your child can play it with a friend!

Note: The concepts and activities in the IQ Fun Park practice questions are based upon public knowledge of what is on these tests and are in now way identical to questions and activities on the actual tests. The publishers were not involved in the creation, production, and do not endorse or sponsor IQ Fun Park.

“We really enjoyed hearing you speak and continue to have great success playing IQ Fun Park with our daughter — the difference in 3 sessions is remarkable! We cancelled a private tutoring assessment because of your service, so thanks!” – Nikki, NYC Mom

BELOW: Grandmother, Kathleen Smith, talks about her granddaughter Carly’s reaction to IQ Fun Park:


TO PURCHASE IQ FUN PARK, CLICK HERE!