There are two ways to get this wrong. One is to do nothing, on the theory that a reasoning test cannot be prepared for — which is half true, and the wrong half. The other is to buy a 300-page workbook, set a timer, and turn October into a small, joyless boot camp for a person who still needs help with zippers.
The middle path is short, cheap, and mostly happens at the breakfast table. Here is the principle behind it, five rules, and a game for each of the three batteries.
The one thing to understand
The CogAT measures reasoning: how well a child sees relationships, patterns, and rules. You cannot teach that in three weeks, and you do not need to — your child already reasons all day long. What you can change is two things that decide whether the reasoning shows up on the page:
- Familiarity. A child who has never seen a picture analogy spends the first few items working out what is being asked. A child who has seen twenty spends them answering. The format is the barrier, not the thinking.
- Attention. At kindergarten level the teacher reads every question aloud and the class moves together. The child who scores well is the one who heard the whole instruction, looked at all four choices, and stayed with it through item twelve. That is a habit, and habits are built in ten-minute doses.
Everything below serves those two things and nothing else.
Five rules
1. Read everything aloud
That is the format of the real test — the teacher reads, the child looks and points. So practise the same way. Never hand a five-year-old a page and say "do these." Sit beside them, read the question, and let them answer. If they cannot read yet, that is fine; on the CogAT, nobody can.
2. Ten minutes, then stop
Stop while they still want more. Attention is the scarce resource, and you are training it, not exhausting it. A child who associates puzzles with "a little bit, then something fun" will hold their focus on test day. A child who associates them with "until Dad says we're done" will not.
3. One "why" a day
Pick one puzzle and ask your child to explain the answer to you. Not whether it is right — why. "The sock goes on the foot, so the hat goes on the… head!" That sentence is the entire skill the test measures. If they cannot explain it, explain it to them, once, plainly, and move on. Do not linger.
4. Cover all nine, not the fun ones
Children gravitate to what they are already good at, and so do parents. A child who loves the number puzzles will happily do number puzzles for a month and walk in cold to paper folding. Rotate through all three batteries and all nine kinds of question, and give a little extra time to whichever one gets the blank look.
5. No timers, no tallies, no speech
No clock: the real test is teacher-paced and a clock only teaches panic. No running tally: "that one was tricky" is the whole review, and a five-year-old does not need to hear how this week compares with last. And no speech about how important this is. Anxiety costs a kindergartener far more points than any drill gains, and the single most useful thing you can say the week of the test is "you'll do some puzzles with your teacher, like the ones we do."
A kitchen-table game for each battery
Verbal: breakfast analogies and the odd one out
- Analogies. "Spoon is to soup as fork is to…?" "Bird is to nest as bee is to…?" Take turns; let them make one up for you. Wrong-but-funny answers are fine and worth a laugh — "fork is to… dinosaur!" — then ask what really goes with a fork.
- Odd one out. Put four things on the table — apple, banana, grape, cup — and ask which does not belong and why. Then make it harder: apple, banana, carrot, grape (the carrot is a vegetable). This is Picture Classification, exactly.
- Finish the sentence. With any picture book: "The dog is wet because it…" and let them finish. That is Sentence Completion.
Quantitative: blocks, piles, and "how many more?"
- Number series. Stack blocks in towers of 1, 2, 3, and ask what comes next. Then 2, 4, 6. Then 5, 4, 3. The pattern is the point, not the counting.
- Make them the same. Two piles of raisins, five and three. "How many more does this one need to be the same?" That is a Number Puzzle — an equation without the symbols.
- Same change. Show a plate with two crackers, then three ("one more"). Now a plate with four crackers — "if we do the same thing, how many?" That is a Number Analogy.
Nonverbal: real paper, a real hole punch
- Paper folding. This is the single best home activity for the whole test, and it costs nothing. Fold a sheet in half, punch a hole, and ask your child to guess how many holes there will be before you unfold it. Then fold it twice. Then fold a corner. The physical memory of the paper opening up is exactly what the Paper Folding subtest asks them to imagine.
- Figure matrices. Lay out a two-by-two pattern with objects — big spoon, small spoon; big cup, ___ — and ask what goes in the gap. Coloured blocks work well: red circle, red square; blue circle, ___.
- Shape families. Three triangles and a circle. Which does not belong? Then three big shapes and a small one. The rule can be shape, size, colour, or number of sides — mixing the rule is what makes it a reasoning task.
Ten minutes of one of these, read aloud, with one "why" — that is a full day's preparation.
What to avoid
- Workbooks for first to third grade. They assume the child can read the question. Yours cannot, and does not need to.
- Anything with a timer or a leaderboard. Speed is not measured at this level; anxiety is expensive.
- Apps built around rewards loops and ads. If your child is tapping to make the coins jingle, they are not reasoning.
- Telling them it decides anything. It decides less than you think, and they do not need the weight.
The week of the test
- Normal bedtimes. Tired is the biggest single risk.
- Breakfast on test days, and a quiet morning if you can manage it.
- One sentence, the night before: "Tomorrow you'll do some puzzles with your teacher, like the ones we've been doing." Then change the subject.
- If anything unusual is going on — a cold, a new sibling, a bad week — tell the teacher. Schools can and do reschedule.
Then let it go. You have done the part that helps.
Ten minutes a day, read aloud, all nine subtests
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Logic Cubs is an independent study aid made by Hetu Works LLC. CogAT is a registered trademark of Riverside Assessments, LLC; OLSAT and NNAT are registered trademarks of NCS Pearson, Inc. We are not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any test publisher. Our puzzles are written in the style of these tests to practise the same reasoning — they are not past papers.