How to Improve Children’s Critical Thinking Skills

Learning to think critically might be one of the essential accomplishments that today's kids will require for the future. In this modern and fast developing world, kids need to be capable of doing more than just reciting facts. 

Kids need to be critical thinkers that can make sensible decisions, compare, analyze, make inferences, contrast and develop high order thinking skills. Our current society tends to crush essential critical thinking skills with mind-resenting television shows, video games and easy guides. It kills problem-solving skills by spoon feeding simple available solutions. The killing of critical thinking has become a problem for the today’s young generation. 

The following are the essential steps to help your child develop critical thinking skills 

• Ask Your Child “Why” 

Do you recall how your kids made you go crazy during the why stage? They continuously battered you with why. Why is it dark at night? Why is the sun hot? Why? Why? Now is your time to ask them why. Asking why six times helps children build critical thinking skills to solve problems. When your kid asks for a new videogame, always ask them why. They may say because it's famous and everybody has it. Your next ‘why' will get them digging into what makes it remarkable. They may say it is rooted in WWII. Ask why again. This will make them dig more deeply into the reason why it is based on WWII. All these "why’s" will make them come up with a deeper understanding of the war fought in world war II and the reason behind the battle. 

• Support Arguments At Home 

Let your kid argue through their perspective on a topic. Do they want to have a late dinner? Have them give their answer about why they should eat late. Then rather than telling them, you were thinking why they should not, put them in your situation and have them think of the logic why you are not allowing them to eat late.

Deliberate over a solution. Maybe the logic why you did not allow them to eat late before a specific time was because they could have gone to bed late. Start an experiment - a week of staying up late to examine if they can endure early waking up. Have them gather the daily data. Do they still feel fatigue in the morning? Not able to focus in school? Evaluate the data together and have them find the perfect solution. 

Try 30 minutes for one week and rerun the data compilation and evaluate the process. 

• Incorporate Research skills in Day to day life 

Enhance your kid’s critical thinking through research that challenges their minds. This can be done in day to day life. If they need something, let them research about it by making enquiries about it like, places, prices and times. In case your children are older, indulge them in making their budgets when they need to go for trips or movies. Encourage them to make plans before the D-day, like reading movie reviews to make the right choice or campsite reviews to get well prepared for the day ahead. This experience teaches them research techniques and in turn, boosts their critical thinking skills. 

• Involve The Children In The Kitchen To Practice Trial And Error 

A lot of critical thinking is needed in a kitchen environment for anyone in that environment. This would be a great environment to enhance your children’s critical thinking skills in various ways like asking for their opinion on what to cook, how the food is, what ingredients to use and many more. Ask them what should be done to make the meal tastier or what to add to it like salt. 

Cooking also helps the child gain problem-solving skills as a skill set. Let them know what mistakes they made, why it happened, and what to do to solve it. Was it a poor choice of ingredients or wrong ratio used? When they figure this out, then it proves that their critical thinking skills are growing. 

Conclusion 

As a guardian, parent or caregiver when you help your children develop their critical thinking skills then you are playing a significant role in their life because you are providing them with vital life skills that will mold them into responsible and productive adults.