Developing Critical Thinking

Learning to think critically may be one of the most important skills that today’s children will need for the future.

In today’s global and rapidly changing world, children need to be able to do much more than repeat a list of facts; they need to be critical thinkers who can make sense of information, analyze, compare, contrast, make inferences, and generate higher order thinking skills.

In the picture below you can see one of our exercises where we asked our kids to CODE A SANDWICH! Practically they had to line up a row of commands and think in simple steps that will result a delicious ham and cheese sandwich!

They enjoyed the process and of course they had a great “second” lunch for the day, prepared by themselves!

At or workshops we encourage thinking in new and different ways. By allowing children to think differently, we are helping them hone their creative problem solving skills. Questions like: “What other ideas could we try?” or encouraging children to generate options by saying, “Let’s think of all the possible solutions.”

We help children develop hypotheses. Taking a moment to form hypotheses during play is a critical thinking exercise that helps develop skills. We often ask children: “If we do this, what do you think will happen?” or “Let’s predict what we think will happen next.”

Pause and wait. Offering children ample time to think, attempt a task, or generate a response is critical.

It is important to give children the opportunity to solve some of the problems that can occur in everyday life.

“How would you solve this problem?”

You will be amazed by the innovative solutions they come up!

Surfing together the internet, looking for informations, solutions and resources, understanding how to look for appropriate answers will open new horizonts and will make kids to love learning.

“Where do you think we might find more information to solve this problem?”

Last but not least encouraging them to bring their solutions like a contribution to their community, understating how communities work it prepares them to embrace life outside the family.

How we “train” for critical thinking at Jr. STEAM Workshops? Puzzles, board games, chess, strategic games, memory games are part of our daily curriculum.

We are not only using these tools, but we encourage the kids to create their own games, board games and to develop puzzles and riddles of their own.

Mazes drawn on paper or built from cubes are also a great way to enhance critical thinking and decision making.

Comparing, sorting and solving puzzles are also an essential in the brain development activity.

We also encourage memory games, as we all know that our brain is a muscle and we can develop it by training it on a daily basis.

Consistency is the key to all! Critical thinking and brain development needs to be practiced on a daily basis and has to became a daily habit in our kids and our life!

Looking forward to your comments, let us know your thoughts!

Happy Learning!