I HEARD YOU LIKE TIME SKIPS HEHEHEH

{Naruto age 9}

Naruto taking his mother's advice would practice hard, and wouldn't get depressed about failing the two academy jutsus. He decided to visit the library, and got kicked out again. It wasn't a fruitless endeavor however, as he managed to steal a basic fuinjutsu book and a book detailing basic chakra natures. Yet no matter how much he tried he couldn't do the transformation jutsu or the basic clone jutsu. They learned the substitution jutsu and he got that one after a couple months, but after a year he decided to spend his time better. He spent most of his time learning fuinjutsu and watching some ninjas in the training grounds.

{Naruto age 10}

Naruto was walking home from the academy when he saw a one eyed ninja doing some sort of test with three of the academy graduates from this year. And looking closer, the one eyed ninja made a cross with his hands and a clone poofed up and there was a clone of himself. Yet those weren't the signs for the normal clone, and the clone was able to hit the kids without dispelling. The clone still dispelled after a clean hit, but it was tangible, the normal bunshin(clone) wasn't able to touch anything without dispelling. So when Naruto got home, he tried this new clone technique, and nothing happened. After trying again, he made 100 clones in his room which couldn't fit more than 10 people. He was going to be practicing this jutsu outside from now on....

As months pass, Naruto was trying to make as little as possible, since he always had too much chakra, he had to use as little as possible making as little as 10 clones. Yet, the better he was able to limit his chakra, the better he was getting at the transformation jutsu. Naruto pretty much gave up on the regular clone, focusing on the substitution and the transformation techniques.

{Naruto age 12}

Naruto was able to limit his clones to 5, but his transformation would always be pale and would always keep a resemblance to Naruto. During the final graduation exam, Iruka told everyone to use the basic clone. Naruto not wanting to antagonize the only teacher that didn't glare at him wouldn't ask to use his new clone, staying dead last despite his top 5 ranking in shurikenjutsu and written exams. Along with top 2 in taijutsu, only below Sasuke and his Uchiha style taijutsu. Despite being dead last, Naruto Uzumaki passed the exam, becoming a probationary genin, and would be placed on team 7 with Sasuke Uchiha and Sakura Haruno.