With the resurgence of classical education methodology amongst homeschoolers and private schools over the past two or three decades, interest in teaching logic — both formal and informal — is on the rise. Yet even before the pursuit of higher level thinking skills hit the radar of most of us, The Critical Thinking Company was working to assist parents and teachers in the development of crucial thinking skills for children. Celebrating their 50th anniversary in 2008, The Critical Thinking Company is still going strong, with it’s flagship, internationally best-selling program Building Thinking Skills at the helm.
The series is presented in six levels that span PreK-Grade 12. I’ve been able to work through and review three levels: Building Thinking Skills Primary (K-1), Building Thinking Skills Level 1 (2-3) and Building Thinking Skills Level 2 (4-6). Due to the somewhat abstract and difficult to quantify nature of thinking skills, I’ll be quoting from the Critical Thinking website in order to describe these large, thick workbooks. On the whole, the series aims to build a foundation for success in academics and all areas of life by providing:
…highly effective verbal and nonverbal reasoning activities to improve your children's vocabulary, reading, writing, math, logic, and figural-spatial skills, as well as their visual and auditory processing.The activities are sequenced developmentally. Each skill (for example, classifying) is presented first in the semi-concrete figural-spatial form and then in the abstract verbal form. Children learn to analyze relationships between objects, between words, and between objects and words as they:
Observe, recognize, and describe characteristics.
Distinguish similarities and differences.
Identify and complete sequences, classifications, and analogies.These processes help children develop superior thinking and communication skills that lead to deeper content learning in all subjects.
I couldn’t have said it better myself. In addition to moving from the semi-concrete to the abstract, the various thinking skills taught in each level are also applied variously through the familiar subjects of geometry, social studies, and science.
Each of the thick, large format workbooks stands on its own as a core curriculum text for thinking skills.
Supplementary teacher’s manuals are available for purchase, but with the inclusion of answer keys in the higher levels (Level 1 and up), I don’t see a need for them in most situations. The problems are simple enough that most adults will be able to present examples to their own children and teach the correct method for completing the worksheets without any special training.
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