Critical Thinking: Tips to Develop Skill in Schoolkids - Fun exercises, games with Answer Keys, on analogies, word relationships, abstract reasoning, with maze, puzzles, brain teasers

 

TIPS TO DEVELOP CRITICAL THINKING IN SCHOOLKIDS: Useful exercises and games on analogies, abstract reasoning, word relationships, with  maze, puzzles, brain teasers...with Answer Keys👦👧👩📋📗📚💡💡🏫🏫

Introduction

When ships are at sea, the man on the wheel navigates the vast expanse - from rough seas to rocky shoals, he has learnt to steer the ship to a safe destination. So do in life, one needs to navigate through life with all its challenges.

With the flood of information now on the internet, the young generation, should be equipped with skills to navigate these, what better than to equip them early with critical thinking skills with simple and age - appropriate materials.

Learning to think critically maybe one of the most important skills that today's children will need for in the future. It needs to be taught now more than ever, but teaching them can be a challenge for elementary school teachers - from what critical thinking is to how to incorporate it into everyday lessons.

Our goal then is to develop critical thinkers who can make sense of data by analyzing, comparing, contrasting, and make inferences of information and generate higher order thinking skills of applying, analyzing, synthesizing and evaluating information to be able to do much more than repeat a list of facts.

What is critical thinking?

📌 critical thinking goes beyond memorization

📌 it is encouraging students to connect the dots between concepts

 📌 solve problems

📌 think creatively

📌 apply knowledge in new ways, show creativity

📌in simple words, it is a kind of thinking in which you question, analyze, interpret, evaluate and make a good judgment about what you read, hear, say or write. 

Below are the different levels of understanding with sample questions of each. Most of the time in our classrooms, we are only up to analysis level but the synthesis (create) and evaluation levels we find most difficult to develop amongst our students.

Here is a chart of Bloom's Taxonomy of Learning. I find this chart simpler to understand with regards the matter.

remember ------ knowledge level

understand------comprehension level

apply------------application level

analyze----------analysis level

create------------synthesis level

evaluate---------evaluation level

Tips in Developing Critical Thinking Skills in Kids

👉 It can happen through day to day interactions as you talk with your children/students.

👉 In everyday lessons, like during reading time, besides asking knowledge and 

comprehension level qquestions, ask 2-3 open-ended questions. 

Samples below:

 👉Pause and wait . Give ample time to think. Give the child a chance to reflect on a response, rather than responding with their very first reaction to a question asked.

 

👉Don't intervene immediately. Kids need challenges to grow. Wait and watch before you jump in to provide the answer or a solution to a problem.

👉 Inspire creativity. Imagination is the key to teaching critical thinking in elementary school. Teacher seeks out new ways for students to use information to create something new. Art projects are an excellent way to do this. Your pupils can construct inventions, write a story, create a game, sing a song, the sky's the limit.

 

👉Group Work -Group projects and discussions are an excellent way for elementary school teachers to encourage critical thinking skills. Cooperative learning exposes students to what their classmates are thinking. 

 👉Brainstorming  - when each one in the group contributes answers or ideas for a group assignment. Brainstorming is a time-honored tradition in elementary education, an excellent learning tool and an excellent critical thinking exercise.

 👉Project-based Learning - Immerse students in real-world problem scenarios by having them partake in project-based learning which gives them opportunity to engage in hands-on projects where students need to collaborate, communicate, analyze information and find solutions to their challenges.

👉 Games that develop critical thinking in kids

1. Puzzles                            

2. Brain Teasers                 

3. Riddles                            

4. Maze                               

5. Sudoku

6. Squabble

7. Board Games

8. Memory Games

9. Spot - the - Difference

Here are examples for kids to enjoy answering:

Word Search

ANSWERS:

eye

0. thumb

1. finger

2. hand

3. arm

4. ear

5. tongue

6. shoulder

7. toe

8. nail

9. leg

10. knee

11. feet

12. foot

13. ankle

14. skin

15. stomach

16. chest

17. mouth

18. teeth

19. head

20. nose

21. hair

22. eyebrow

Crossword Puzzles

Paragraph Comprehension

ANSWERS:  u, o, a, e, o, c, d, i, h, u, x, ox, su

ANSWERS: fishing, wearing, sitting, laughing, boot, between, frog, behind, eating, looking

ANSWERS: farm, your, sit, off, garden, basket, letter, its

Maze

                                                 

     

Spot- the- Difference

ANSWERS:1. dragonfly on the tree

                     2. extra hand of the ant

                     3. 3rd hump of the snail

                     4. grasshopper facing opposite directions

                     5. stripes of the bumblebee

                     6. number of black spots on the ladybug

                     7. extra flower on the bush

                     8. teeth of the caterpillar

                     9. color of butterfly wings

                     10. x on the body of the spider

Connect- the- Dots

Connect the dots and color

Brain Teaser

Answer Key: Cross out the word that does not belong to the group and then add a word to the same category:

1. park

2. chairs

3. hospital

4. friend

5. March

6. first

7. German

8. Monday

9. tree

10.salad

11. nine

12.potato

13.bad

14.father

15.aunt

16.clock

17.music

18.red

19.she

20.smart

21.car

22.know

23.stop

24.ice cream

25.bed

26.office

27.door

28.lamp

29.week

30.backpack

31.meal

32.carpet

Answer Key:

1. f                     11. e

2. n                    12.j

3. s                    13. p

4. k                    14. c

5. h                    15. q

6. g                    16. a

7. i                     17. m

8. b                    18. l

9. t                     19. d

10. r                   20. o

👉Exercises in Analogies, Word Relationships, and Abstract Reasoning 

            

Personally I find answering these types of exercises as fun mind games because you will be using thinking skills of comparing. analyzing, seeing relationships between words or objects. These can be taught to small kids in kinder 👦👧👩🌷🍁🌼up to the higher levels depending on the level of difficulty. We start from the easy ones progressing to more difficult; however, in the beginning the teacher needs to explain how to answer and give many examples. For kids who are lazy to think, these are not for them. But if we take time to explain how they are done, then they will be interested to answer. Many entrance tests to higher levels of education give these kind of tests, so we may as well prepare our kids for these types of exercises.👍👍👍💕

Exercises: Answer these analogies: Answer Key below

1. Dog is to puppy as cat is to _________

2. Smell is to nose as taste is to ________

3. Carrot is to vegetable as banana is to ________

4. Milk is to glass as soup is to _________

5. Hot is to coffee as _______is to ice cream

6. Sky is to blue as ________is to green

7. Hair is to comb as _________is to brush

8. Bark is to dog as __________is to bird

9. Left is to right as down is to ________

10. Happy is to sad as hot is to ________

11. Bedroom is to sleeping as kitchen is to _______

12. Basketball is to court as swimming is to _________

13. Sing is to sang as eat is to ________

14. Car is to gasoline as television is to __________

15. Smile is to frown as ugly is to __________

16. Morning is to breakfast as evening is to ________

17. Bed is to sleeping as chair is to _________

18. Oven is to bake as knife is to _________

19. Corn is to ear as peas is to ________

20. Instrument is to flute as _______is to hammer.

21. Triangle is to three as _______is to five.

22. Doctor is to hospital as teacher is to _______

23. Basketball is to court as baseball is to ________

24. Which is to witch as weather is to ________

25. Fifty-three is to fifty-two as six is to _______

26. Capital letter is to beginning as period is to ________

27. Author is to write as chef is to _______

 

*Challenge

28. Star is to rats as flow is to _______

29. the Earth is to planet as the Sun is to _______

30. Racket is to tennis as _______ is to golf

ANSWER KEY.

1. kitten

2. tongue

3. fruit

4. bowl

5. cold

6. grass

7. teeth

8. chirp

9. up

10. cold

11. cooking

12. pool

13. ate

14. electricity

15. beautiful

16. supper, dinner

17. sitting

18. cut

19. pod

20. tool

21. pentagon

22. school

23. field

24. whether

25. five

26. end

27. cook

28. wolf

29. star

30. clubs

Growing and Decreasing Patterns for Kindergarten

- Observe the growing or decreasing patterns and DRAW the picture that comes next in each pattern.

- To answer easily, point to each figure and say the pattern aloud, like A -A-B-B-A-A-B, etc

- These patterns for kindergarten/ lower grades are age appropriate to stimulate the higher order thinking skills for your child/pupils.

Exercises:

To answer the first pattern, point to each circle and name each circle as A, A, B, B, A, A, B, B, A - blank circle is A, so color it green because A is green. 

To answer the triangles, point to each triangle and name each triangle as A, A, B, B, A, A, B,B - the blank triangle is B so color it yellow because B is yellow.

Do the same with other exercises. 

                      

ANSWERS: 2 lavender hearts

                      1 blue circle

                      1 green triangle

                      2  blue hearts

ANSWERS: 1 green circle

                     1 pink rectangle

                     1 yellow triangle

                     1 red heart, 1 blue heart

                     1 black square, 1 brown square

                     1 yellow diamond, 1 pink diamond

ANSWERS: 1 green football

                     1 pink hat

                     1 yellow umbrella

                     1 green sock

                     1 orange popsickle stick

Growing Patterns

To answer the first exercise (triangles), 

1 triangle > 2 triangles >3 triangles > answer is you draw 4 triangles.

 

ANSWERS: 4 triangles

                     4 squares on top of each other

                     4 circles

                     4 dots forming a square

                     8 crosses

                     add 4 squares at the bottom

ANSWERS:  color 3 diamonds, color 4 diamonds

                        color 3 tree branches, color 4 tree branches

                        add 1 orange square on each side

                        color 3 green, color 4 green

                        color 16 squares in all( color 4 squares upper part and color 4 squares on the right side)

Abstract Reasoning/ Picture Analogy

---Observe the first two figures. 

---Try to understand how they are related. 

---Draw the fourth figure in the provided space that is related to the third figure in the same way as the first two figures are related.

---In some exercises, you can choose the correct answer from the choices given.

ANALYSIS 1 Arrow pointing down - 3 sides🠊 2 Arrow pointing up - 4 sides

                    3 Arrow pointing up - 6 sides    🠊  4 ?ANSWER is  A..Arrow pointing down - 7 sides

                 

ANALYSIS: Read from left to right

1st column......half of square  🠊 half of square 🠊 full square drawing

2nd column.....half of circle   🠊  half of circle  🠊 full circle drawing

third column...half of triangle🠊 ? ANSWER is B half of triangle 🠊 full triangle drawing

ANSWERS: b , c

ANSWERS: a, b

ANSWERS: c, b, c, a, b

ANSWERS: c, a, b, not so clear drawing, not so clear drawing

ANSWERS: c, b, b, c, b

Draw the answer on the blank box

Draw the answer on the blank box

ANSWERS: c, a

Last Word

One of the most difficult skills to acquire is critical thinking which involves comprehension, analysis and lots of mind work. But by slowly building it up day by day through class work, it can be achieved. Lots of ways to make learning fun along the way. 

Hope the exercises and games on this article helps.💙💚💛💜😊😊😊😊💖💕

References:

1. Google - from sources across the web

2. Pinterest

3. Bright Horizons

4. Printablee.com

5. Megaworkbook.com

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