Helping Your Child Develop their Critical Thinking Skills
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Critical thinking skills allow us to make higher level choices that involve problem solving, analysis and evaluation. They can help your child to make better decisions and express themselves clearly to others. Here are a few things that you can do to help your child develop these skills according to a prep school in Cambridge.
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Encourage Them to Make Their Own Choices
Having lots of choices can be great but also confusing. Critical thinking skills are needed to assess each and make decisions in order to move forwards. This is something that you can get your child to practise by asking them to decide on things from time to time like what they want for lunch, where they want to go or what they want to buy. They will need to think about the pros and cons of each which is something that you can help them with.
Reasoning
This point stems on from the last. When your child makes choices, ask them to tell you more about them and why they made that choice. This will help them to express their ideas clearly with others and challenge themselves on things.
Show Them How You Think
Children pick up on their parents’ behaviour. By verbalising your thought processes, they will learn to do the same and begin to think critically. Have discussions where you weigh up your options for things like where to go and eat or the film you should go and see.
Play Problem Solving Games
There are lots of games designed to help children with their problem-solving. Games like Scrabble, Pictionary and even toys like Rubix Cubes can all encourage children to build on this skill. As they do, they will get better at making decisions and be able to do so for themselves.
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