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10 Best Ways for Parents to Prepare their Young Kids for Olympiads

Update on: 14 Mar 2025, 10:00 AM

How should my child prepare to get a merit position in the Olympiad exam? This question dwells in every parentโ€™s mind as the SOF Olympiad season begins. Parenting can be a real pain-in-neck when it comes to making your child sit for studies. And to add on this, you want your child to study for the Olympiads, who has some Olympiad myths impression on her/him about Olympiad, it can be really tough.ย  Donโ€™t be scared! There is a way, and the right way will help your child not just get benefitted from the Olympiads but also hold a merit position. Here we have created a checklist to help parents resolve the biggest question of the season, an ultimate parent guide for Olympiad preparation. Read on!


Make Them Aware of Exam Pattern/Syllabus

This is the first thing that you need to do before you even think of preparing your child for the Olympiad exams. The pattern of SOF Olympiads is different from school exams. It is an objective-type test of 60 minutes in which 35 multiple choice questions are asked for Classes 1 to 4 and 50 objective-type questions for classes 5 to 12 (details available on SOF Olympiad Exam Pattern and Marking Scheme.)

Must Read:ย 7 Must Know Benefits of Olympiads


Help Them in Managing Time

Time management is the biggest problem faced by students during their Olympiad exam preparation. With so many things to juggle during the day, from school, homework, exams, and extra-curricular activities, working without a structure ends up making their preparation chaotic and unplanned.

As a parent, you need to help the child to build a useful schedule for their days and weeks to help them efficiently utilize their time. A study plan must be made in which the syllabus of school and Olympiads can be studied simultaneously. Apart from school studies, invest some time, say half an hour or an hour every day for Olympiad exam preparation. Preparing for both school and Olympiad exams together in this way will be more time-saving and efficient.

Do You Know Studies for Both School and Olympiads Can Go Hand-in-Hand? Hereโ€™s How:


Make Their Conceptual Foundation Strong

Since Olympiad exam questions are framed to test the conceptual understanding to make a strong foundation for the future. Students must develop an in-depth understanding of each concept. As the questions of Olympiads are trickier, you need to help your child with MTGโ€™s Foundation Course. The course helps to strengthen the understanding of fundamental concepts for long-lasting and deep-rooted learning. Also, you can get extra help through an Olympiad expert who can guide your child in this journey. MTGโ€™s live Olympiad Online Classes can be your saving grace as these Olympiad experts who know all ins and outs of these exams can help your kids in understanding, learning, and excelling in SOF Olympiads. If you canโ€™t keep up with the batch timings then you can also use Olympiad Recorded Lectures which are just recoding of Olympiad online classes. With these, you can study at your own time, pace, and convenience.


Help Them Polish Their Skills

Donโ€™t force your child to take the Olympiad exam without preparation, it is like forcing them into the pool without teaching them how to swim. Activate their skills like observation, identification, classification, comparing, analysing, interpreting, etc. Olympiad Skill Development Programme (OSDS) helps to do it so. It is a downloadable test series of 8 papers and OMR sheet similar to the actual Olympiads. OSDS simulates the actual SOF Olympiad exam, except with different questions. Every child has her own set of skills, you just have to identify them and make them your childโ€™s strength.ย  To boost your childโ€™s Olympiad skills, explore more about OSDS.


Help Them with The Right Choice of Books

Selection of the right study material is the key to excelling in Olympiad exams. With the right guidance and direction led by relevant Olympiad books, your ward will not just prepare well but they will also prepare smartly as the right books save a lot of time. So, no matter how dedicatedly your child prepares for the exam, the smart work will give you the desired result in no time. There are many study materials available online and offline in the market for the preparation of Olympiads, but be careful!ย  The only Official Content Partner of SOF is MTG publication. Olympiad study resources of MTG are specially aligned to help students hone the skills that are required to crack the SOF Olympiads.


Make Them Learn with Positive Environment

Your child will perform better if you will set realistic tasks for their entire preparation process and reward them every time, they achieve their task. Do celebrate his achievement with his favorite activity, like taking him out for a play date at her/his favorite place. But be cautious to be strict in following this rewarding game, you donโ€™t need to bribe your child to perform well. You need to keep in mind the ways in which your child feels most encouraged to do a task, even as small thing as you being with her/him while she/he studies. Such a petty thing makes a lot of difference. You need to be supportive for their emotional intelligence.

Want to know the math shortcuts to make smart calculations that can save time? You May Like to Read: 10 Vedic Maths Tricks for Rapid Calculations


Encourage Healthy Food and Lifestyle Habits

This is something that need not be told to the parents. But during the preparations, students tend to give less importance to everything other than their studies. And in this line of negligence, food habits affect the most. Unfortunately, its effect isnโ€™t very apparent. The last thing the parents would want is for their kid to fall sick. So, this is something parents have to look after because probably their child isnโ€™t heeding.

In the end, it is advisable to take it easy. Complete the above-discussed checklist and celebrate your childโ€™s every milestone. Each child is unique, with her/his own talent. Having said that, every child can be whatever they aspire to be. As a parent, your role is to channel, the right guidance and right resources and wait for the right time. All the best to you and your child!


 

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