The WISC is a very different type of test from what most parents are used to. If you are not familiar with how the WISC is given we have further information available About the WISC and on Subtests and Suggestions
The list of products below is a starting point. If you've got time we recommend moving on to more difficult material as your child is able and adding games and puzzles. You can't study for everything that will be on the WISC (like you can with the SATs or GMAT or spelling or math tests) but you can keep your child's brain engaged in learning how to solve new puzzles and respond to new situations.
Grade levels provided with the titles below are from the publishers. Gifted children are by definition 2-3 years age of their age peers in cognitive skills. That's why many of the products in the suggestions below are identified for use are publisher identified as being for older children.
Our suggestions in order of importance are
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Look!, Listen!, Think! is full of exercises to build visual and auditory memory. Visual memory helps coding, matrix reasoning and picture completion. Auditory memory helps with letter-number sequencing.
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Color Cubes are a classic toy requiring color blocks to be rearranged to make patterns. This is exactly what the block design subtest of the WISC-IV requires. If your child needs more help in this area we have other suggestions.
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The Advanced Dot-to-Dot books are fun (there are four at the super challenge level) and include things like following compass co-ordinates and matching symbols. It helps build the skills needed for coding and symbol search.
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Math Word Problems contain basic arithmetic problems. Ideally you'd read these aloud to your child and don't allow them to use scratch paper to answer them.
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Red Herring Mysteries - because each subtest gets more difficult until a child gets questions wrong it can be important to get children comfortable with guessing and with not knowing the answer. This is an excellent book for this. It can also build vocabulary and general knowledge depending on how you use it.
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Self- Scoring IQ TestsDoes your child do puzzles for recreation? The WISC is in part intended to see how children respond when they’re given questions of a type they haven’t seen before. Doing puzzles and developing persistence and different strategies is a useful thing to do. This title focuses on attribute and pattern puzzles. Academic children tend to be less exposed to the non-verbal skills tested for in the WISC so this title serves double duty in that it also builds skills in this area.
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Vocabulary - there are many ways that you can work on vocabulary. We carry the Word Roots series with books, software and flashcards to teach Latin and Greek prefixes and suffixes. We also carry the Vocabulary Cartoon series which uses mnenomics and humor.
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Orbiting with Logic and any of our other deductive logic puzzles help children to use the information provided to deduce the answer. Deduction is an important skill for any testing situation.
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Analogies are included as the last chapter of Building Thinking Skills but many children benefit from doing more. Working with analogies will build vocabulary and the ability to identify similarities.
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