Critical thinking activities for children outlines methods for developing critical thinking skills in children. These include encouraging children to ask questions, ensuring they understand asking questions is normal, and preparing to answer their questions. Promoting open-ended questions and hypothetical questions, as well as exposing children to challenging activities like puzzles and games, can also help develop critical thinking. The goal is to teach children how to think by applying knowledge, making decisions, clearing doubts, and listening carefully.
2. Children are often told what to think but they
remain ignorant about how to think. In education
system proper time is devoted to make the child
think about various issues but no efforts are made on
developing the critical thinking of children. Many
children do not have the proper mental skills to
critically think on an issue and hence arrived at a
conclusion which is not worth it. It becomes
necessary for parents to teach their children the
advantage of critical thinking.
3. Follow the slides to learn few methods by which you
can develop critical thinking skills in your child.
4. Encouraging children to ask questions:
Make your child learn how to ask questions to improve
his critical thinking. Encourage him to ask questions,
compare different situations, think forward and apply
various combinations of ideas to understand a
particular situation.
5. Ensuring children that asking questions is
a normal exercise:
It must be made clear in the kid's mind that asking
questions is normal and it will deepen their
knowledge on a particular subject. There are no
questions which does not have any answer.
6. Self preparation to answer the questions:
Whenever you are dealing with kids you should make
yourself prepared to answer all their questions. These
question answer sessions will make them confident
that they know how to ask questions and how to
think critical.
7. Promoting open ended questions:
Always promote child to ask open ended questions
instead of asking yes or no questions. This open
ended discussion will help the kid to develop
critical thinking.
8. Encouraging their imagination:
Imaginations are always larger than reality and
give the child the required derive to move
forward. Ask your child to draw a picture or write
a story as per their imagination. This activity will
help children to learn how to think.
9. Encouraging children to take their own
decisions:
Give your child a basic knowledge of any particular
subject and then ask him to apply that knowledge in
his life. In this way he will learn to make decisions by
thinking critically.
10. Encouraging children to clear their
doubts:
It is important that children doubts should be clear
quickly before they arrive at a conclusion which
might be wrong.
11. Encouraging them to listen carefully:
Critical thinking can be developed by listening to
other people carefully. Create a game by asking
children to repeat what they have heard and what
they think about the topic discussed.
12. Exposing children to challenging
activities:
There are so many challenging activities for children
such as playing mazes, puzzles, chess etc. These all
activities will help the children to think critically.
13. Asking hypothetical questions:
Children should be asked hypothetical questions
to test their knowledge. They should be given the
chance to think on other sides of their answers.