Critical Thinking Skills for Kids | Ways to Enhance Critical Thinking in Kids

[Music] 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 there is no one strategy to support and teach your child how to think critically as a parent your role may sometimes be to ask open-ended questions to guide the thinking process in other cases it may be more appropriate to allow your child to experiment and refine her theories on what causes things to happen here are some tips and ideas to help children build a foundation for critical thinking testing how things work informally is crucial to developing critical thinking it is during play the children explore cause-and-effect for providing indoor and outdoor space for playing along with time for pretend play you provide open-ended opportunities for your child to try something and see the reaction and then to try something else and see if we can create a different reaction these hands-on experiences provide an integral foundation for later abstract critical thinking helping our children develop their reading comprehension skills is a critical first step to develop skills needed to become capable and enthusiastic readers kids need to develop and improve their ability to distinguish between what they understand and what they do not about a statement paragraph or a book this skill is imperative so that you can help them practice and figure out ways that can help them improve this critical foundational skill allowing your child to ask and answer questions about what they have read is a great way to prepare them to think actively as they read by answering questions children can show they have mastered the ability to understand what they have read and interpreted in addition it gives them the ability to demonstrate their critical thinking skills your child needs to have the ability to make connections when reading or maybe playing a game by working with them asking questions allows them to practice their critical thinking skills it also lets them figure out how one paragraph in a book can relate to one another the practice of these skills can help them predict how a story might end this instills the ability to size up a situation and make a critical analysis of potential outcomes pick out a few articles in the local newspaper and read them together have your child look for hints or clues to see if the article is trying to sell them something double-check facts together to show them how to use analysis and critical thinking skills [Music] read some riddles to your kids and practice solving them together this teaches your children to analyze information offering your child ample time to think attempt a task or generator response is critical but not necessarily easy to do try silently counting to 60 while a child is thinking before intervening or speaking this gives your child a chance to reflect on her response and perhaps refined rather than responding with our first gut reaction taking a moment to form hypotheses during play is a critical thinking exercise try asking your child if we do this what do you think will happen or let's predict what we think will happen next developing a critical mindset is becoming one of the most essential skills for success in our technology and information overloaded work by instilling critical thinking skills early in life your teaching your kids how to analyze the world around them hope you found this video useful please leave a comment if you liked this video [Music] [Music]