Critical Thinking Skills

Besides academic stuff, I also supplement Reese with other types of worksheets to sharpen his critical thinking skills. I bought a few books on analogies for him to work on and also basic skill books.

Thinking skills and problem solving are highly regarded in many curriculum development. It is important to teach children how to think and learn. If children are to become successful problem solvers, they need to become good critical thinkers at the same time. Critical thinking activities should be considered indispensable to the education of every child.

Analogies and Critical Thinking Activities

Analogies explore word—and therefore concept—relationships. Implicit in making analogies are numerous critical thinking skills. It is for these reasons that analogies appear on so many standardized tests.

Teaching analogies offers important and concrete benefits to students.Working with analogies

✤ expands students’ vocabulary.
✤ enables students to look at words in new ways.
✤ helps students understand relationships between words and ideas.
✤ reinforces students’ ability to make comparisons.
✤ increases reading comprehension.
✤ develops reasoning skills.
✤ prepares students for standardized tests.

Books we are using : First Time Analogies (Grade K-2), Analogies for Beginners (Grade 1-3), Critical Thinking Activities (Math Grades K-3) and Analogies Grade 2-3 (E-book by Scholastic)

Basic Skills

He does dot-to-dots (alphabets, counting in 2, 5, 10 etc.. ), mazes, word search

Books we are using: First Grade Basic Skills and Second Grade Basic Skills (Both are E-Books by Scholastic)

These activities are inserted in between Math and English worksheets. Reese enjoys them very much. Especially mazes.

My other article on nurturing critical thinking at home.