Parents’ Guide For Olympiad Preparation – How My Child Can Get Merit Position?

How should my child prepare to get merit position in Olympiad exam? This question dwells in every parent’s mind as the SOF Olympiad season begins. Parenting can be a real pain-in-neck, when it comes to make 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.  Don’t be scared! There is a way, and the right way will help your child to not just get benefitted of Olympiads but also to 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!

If you are appearing for the first time or are regulars at Olympiads, complete preparation guide is a must. Read step-by-step Olympiad preparation guide for SOF Olympiad exams.

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 Olympiad exams. The pattern of SOF Olympiads are different from school exams. It is an objective type test of 60 minutes in which 35 multiple choice questions are asked for Class 1 to 4 and 50 objective-type questions for classes 5 to 12 (details available on http://www.sofworld.org/pattern-questions-and-marking-scheme).

Must Read: Top 9 questions Olympiad aspirants and their parents often ask

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 a day, from school, homework and exams and extra-curricular activities, working without a structure ends up making their preparation chaotic and unplanned.

As a parent, you need to help 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? Here’s how:

• NSO Study Plan,
• IGKO Study Plan,
• IEO Study Plan

Make Their Conceptual Foundation Strong

Since Olympiad exam questions are framed to test the conceptual understanding to make a strong foundation for future. Students must develop in-depth understanding of each concept. As the questions of Olympiads are trickier, you need to help your child with MTG’s Foundation Course. The course help to strengthens the understanding of fundamental concepts for long-lasting and deep-rooted learning.

Help Them Polish Their Skills

Don’t force your child to take the Olympiad exam without preparation, it is like forcing them into pool without teaching them how to swim. Activate their skills like observation, identification, classification, comparing, analyzing, interpreting, etc. Olympiad Online Test Package and Skill Development Summer Programme of Math, Science & English will help to identify it. The online test package is a Digital & Downloadable product available for IMO, NSO, IEO, NCO, IGKO, and ISSO with a chapter-wise test bank of MCQs, previous years’ papers, mock tests and customised tests. Every child has her own set of skills, you just have to identify them and make them your child’s strength.

Help Them With The Right Choice Of Books

Selection of right study material is the key to excel in Olympiad exams. With the right guidance and direction lead by relevant Olympiad books, your ward will not just prepare-well but she/he will also prepare smartly as 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 desire result in no time.

There are many study materials available online and offline in the market for the preparation of Olympiads, but be careful!  The only content partner of SOF is MTG publication. Olympiad study resources of MTG are specially aligned to help students hone their skills that are required to crack the SOF Olympiads. Here we are providing a list of best books/study material for Olympiads to serve you the best preparation guidance:

Workbooks by MTG	• It contains chapter-wise multiple-choice question bank. • These books also contain latest previous year’s paper of respective Olympiad of corresponding class. • It gives complete question practice and quick recap with self-analysis for great performance in the Olympiads.
Olympiad Online Classes	This classroom course is specially designed for students who are aspiring to appear in SOF Olympiad. It will consist of Instructor led 30 live online classes based on the syllabus with 3 dedicated doubt-solving. However, doubt clearance will be handled during the class as well. It also includes after class assignments to check the understanding, PDF Worksheet for practice, Weekly online tests to assess your progress, Interactive chapter module for the after-class study, access to the forum for solving queries, recordings of all the classes and Access to mobile app for studying anytime anywhere.
Olympiad Prep-Guide	• The Olympiad Prep Guide for Science eloquently covers all that you need to study for levels 1 & 2 SOF- Science Olympiad. • The book has detailed theory, multiple exercises, HOTS and self tests.
MTG’s Olympiad Level 1 & Level 2 Past Year Papers	• Practice previous year papers are available for both Level1 & Level 2. • Practicing from Previous Years Papers is very important, as it will give you a fair idea about the pattern of exam, time limit and the type of questions asked. Now Level 2 questions are also available, so get the best use of this opportunity.
Online Test Package	• It contains 5 Previous Year papers and 3 Mock Test Papers • 3 Model Test Papers based on the Olympiad exam pattern and question distribution.

Make Them Learn With Positive Reinforcement

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 favourite activity, like taking him out for a play date at her/his favorite place. But be cautious to be strict in following this reward game, you don’t need to bribe your child to perform good. 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 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 isn’t very apparent. The last thing the parents would want is their kid to fall sick. So, this is something parents have to look after, because probably their child isn’t heeding.

At the end, it is advisable to take it easy. Complete the above discussed checklist and celebrate your child’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, you role is to channelize, the right guidance and right resources and wait for the right time.

ALL THE BEST!