By the age of 5, almost every child in America will have been given some kind of IQ test. Whether a parent plans to send their child to a private school, a competitive (and free) gifted program, or a public kindergarten, the score their child receives determines where they get in and affects their academic future for years to come. But for decades, information about these tests has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in education. Until now.

While most professionals argue that you can't study for these tests, author and mother of two, Karen Quinn discovered through experience that it is possible to teach your child the skills necessary to score well, and that in the end, the parent is a child's most important teacher. When a doctor proclaimed that her son Sam would spend his elementary years in special education after he barely made the 34th percentile on an IQ test, Quinn turned herself into an expert on testing, worked with her son, and brought his score up to the 94th percentile within a year. Later, she co-founded Smart City Kids, where she taught hundreds of parents how to prepare their own kids for the rigorous kindergarten admissions tests.

In Testing For Kindergarten - Simple Strategies to Help Your Child Ace Tests For: Public School Placement, Private School Admissions, and Gifted Program Qualification, Karen Quinn cracks the kindergarten testing code, sharing proven techniques she used to help her son and other children earn admission to top kindergarten programs across the country.

In this first ever manual on preparing 2 - 5 year old children for kindergarten testing, Quinn breaks through the secrecy surrounding intelligence tests and outlines the types of tests your child might encounter, the abilities these tests measure, what it's like for your child to be tested, and the types of questions on each of the most popular tests. Quinn believes that a child prepared for testing is a child prepared to thrive in kindergarten and beyond, and any parent can improve their child's score without turning into those Mom- and Dad-zillas that neighbors and friends make fun of behind their backs.

Testing For Kindergarten provides parents with an understanding of:

• The 7 abilities every intelligence test measures: Language, memory, mathematics, knowledge, visual-spatial, cognitive, and fine-motor skills, and how to improve them.

• The milestones your child must achieve by ages 3, 4, and 5 to succeed at school.

• What the test scores really mean and they they do and don't define your child.

• Insider secrets on improving the odds of getting your child accepted into gifted programs, private schools, and competitive charter or magnet programs.

• How public schools use the results of intelligence tests in ways that can affect your child's entire academic future - and what you can do about it.

• How to get free support services for kids with learning disabilities.

• Forget testing success! The 5 must-have skills every child must learn when they're still young to succeed in life.

In the past, information on kindergarten testing has only been available to wealthy parents who paid hundreds of dollars per hour for consultants and tutors. In this book, Karen Quinn levels the paying field and makes it possible for all parents to give their child an equal chance to qualify for the best schools and to perform at the highest level.