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Tips to Improve Critical Thinking Skills in Kids

5 Tips to Improve Critical Thinking Skills in Kids

Most parents think that there is no need to teach critical thinking skills to kids as they would learn them at the school itself. But actually, our current education system is not conducive enough to accommodate questioners or thinkers out of the box. I am sorry to tell you this hard-hitting fact, but most of us as parents agree that schools are not operating in the child-centric learning model but are driven by marks and assessments. So, where is the chance for our kids to learn to think in a logical manner and arrive at conclusions?

Children are born thinkers. They are naturally curious and big-time question banks. They try to dig deeper till they get a satisfactory answer. All this inquisitiveness and curiosity gets subdued as they enter the schools. But our foremost responsibility as parents is to keep their curiosity streak up and alive in the children, irrespective of the schools they are studying in.

Importance of Critical Thinking Skills:

Critical thinking is listed as one of the top life skills required to navigate through the complexities of the world in the 21st century. In the current rapidly changing world, children need to take a stance against any problem and be able to resolve them at the earliest, without really watching from the bylanes. The current day’s society needs more dynamic problem-solvers rather than bystanders.

Critical thinking skills also improve the child’s academic success, as most of the subjects are built on logic only.

Tips to improve the Critical Thinking Skills in Kids

Tips to improve Critical thinking skills in Kids:

  1. Encourage their pursuits of curiosity: I know that the toughest job of parenting is to answer the never-ending questions from kids. Those questions are the ones that will help them build their logical reasoning base. So, encourage the kids to move towards the 3 W’s and H style of questioning instead of the plain why. I hope you all know the 3 W’s and H principle (What, When, Why, and How)

2. Prompt them to reevaluate their strategies from someone else’s shoes: This will help the kids understand that logical thinking is not limited to one particular path. Anyone can use different techniques to arrive at a conclusion. And the end result might be the same for all.

3. Don’t help them immediately: Whenever the kid comes with a problem, never jump to help them. Teach the ways to solve the problems on their own. Show them the tools and techniques to be used while solving the problems.

4. Always ask them open-ended questions: By asking open-ended questions, the kids would be able to come up with logical explanations as to how they could solve the problems. Talking aloud improves their logical thinking capacities

5. Improve their creative and Imaginatory skills: Enacting different problem scenarios or even simple day-to-day living scenes would hone their creative and Imaginary skills. These skills form the basis of logical thinking.

The following are a few games that would improve the kids’ critical thinking and logical thinking skills. We can start introducing these games at a young age, which would become the family’s best bonding activities.

Guess Who: This is a family board game where the player has to guess who is in the opponent’s card by asking questions. This game comes in many flavors with persons, things, places, etc. We can even make this game on our own.

Brainvita: This marble-eliminating game is perfect for spending lazy weekends with the family. This game improves the power of elimination thinking in kids.

Master Mind: This is the codebreaker game, which boosts the logical and elimination skills of the kids.

Othello: Othello also helps the players improve their deduction and logical thinking skills. It’s similar to that of Connect 4.

Chess: Chess is known to be the most brainy game, which improves the thinking capacity of the players.

Funskool Games - Othello, Strategy game, Portable classic travel game, kids, adults & family, 2 players, 8 & above
https://www.amazon.in/Funskool-Othello/dp/B0076L2ZIG/
Funskool Games Chess Set, Black and White
https://www.amazon.in/Funskool-Games-Chess-Black-White/dp/B007WSPD4Q/

There are so many activities and workshops conducted by our team for improving critical thinking skills. You may contact us for further details.

Suhasini, IP, is the Author of the book “Practical Tips for Kids Mental Health.” As a certified kids and parents life coach, she helps/guides you toward a happy family life for your kids. She firmly believes that “Emotionally Happy Kids of today are the Mentally Strong and Happy Citizens of tomorrow.” Let’s make the world a happy and beautiful place for our kids to thrive.

42 Comments

  1. Giving answers to every question is quite tough job for me. I simply said sometimes Google it?. But yes, child are born thinkers. I like the game you introduce.

    1. Thank you Neeta. Glad that you are showing them the way to find out the answers by asking them to Google. That would definitely aids in their critical thinking skills

  2. Nice post , I agree with you , we should encourage kids to think and resolve some issues themselves , so that they do critical thinking as well as develop confidence.
    Ghazala

  3. I agree with you when you say, Don’t help them immediately and Always ask open ended questions. These would surely encourage kids to think and think right. very helpful post, Shravs.

  4. Very useful post and practical tips to improve the critical thinking skills in kids. Thanks for sharing this informative post.

    1. Useful post this is as I have a toddler at home and I will try some of these techniques. Thank you.

  5. That’s such a helpful post for improving the critical thinking skills in kids. Will convey this to my mom colleagues.

  6. Great post. You are right about not helping a child immediately: They should learn to solve the problems themselves. We should not spoonfeed them with this.

  7. These are great tips, Suhasini. I am sure it would be useful for all parents out there. Brainvita and chess are timeless games to improve critical thinking.

    1. Yeah, Ritu, I never get tired of Brainvita at all.

  8. I wish someone had given that kind of thought to parenting in our times. At a position where I have to take key decisions, I sometimes get stuck in self doubt, probably because we never developed these traits as kids. Glad to know thay a lot is being done finally.

    1. Thats so true Raghav. Also one thing that plagues us is humility. Being humble is always good, but we as a generation always try to downplay our own talents.

  9. Parenting is not an easy task as the kids of 21 century are more smarter than us and we need to understand them and guide them differently. This post is really helpful and the games which you have suggested for the improvement of children’s thinking are worth buying.

  10. Great post. it is important to inculcate curiosity. many times I have seen parents shut kids down because they as too many questions.

  11. Thank you for that list of games at the end, Suhasini! I haven’t heard of any except Brainvita.

    My 5-,year-old is indeed a question bank and it often gets difficult to give him satisfactory answers. It is then I realize that simplifying topics such that a young child can understand is the most challenging thing in the world.

    He makes me think upon many aspects that I’ve always taken for granted. I guess I’m developing some of my critical thinking skills with him, too

    1. It becomes the responsibility of the parents to develop critical thinking skills in children. They should be prepared for the outer world that’s full of mysteries:)
      Thanks for the game suggestions!

    2. Yeah, we all learn these skills only when our kids keep questioning us Satabdi. Same case with me too

  12. I must say these are very useful tips one can apply in their home. I have many friends who have toddlers in their house, I would love to share this blog with them. Thanks for the share.

  13. Critical thinking is lacking in most kids. You have shared excellent ways to hone them, Suhasini. I remember playing Guess who and Brainvita with my kids. The other games are new.

  14. Very helpful tips! Handling toddlers and imbibing critical thinking in them is very difficult task you have shared very good points. I have cousins who have toddlers at home I will share your post with them.

  15. These are great ways to pique the critical thinking in kids. I’m already doing some from the list, but I’d definitely take a look at the games

  16. We are doing all these, thank you to writing it down, it is king of reassuring for me. My favourites are Asking open-ended questions also not helping them immediately

    1. Thank you Pooja. Glad that you are doing it the right away

  17. Very helpful tips for parents. Critical thinking is a life skill and teaching this to our kids is necessary these days.

  18. Very useful post and handy tips for improving critical thinking in kids. Saving this for reference for my niece. 🙂

  19. Great tips as always Suhasini! We have just started playing Guess Who with my 5-year-old and happy to see him enjoy it immensely!

  20. […] Related Read: Tips to Improve Critical Thinking Skills in Kids […]

  21. I’m not that much of a online reader to be honest but your blogs really nice, keep it up!

    I’ll go ahead and bookmark your website to come back later.
    Cheers

  22. […] Want to know what books and toys foster critical analysis in kids? […]

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