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Teaching Your Child to Be a Critical Thinker: A Guide

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If there’s one ability that makes a child stand out in their academic career, it’s critical thinking. It refers to the ability to challenge concepts and question them using rational reasoning and facts. If you’re wondering how your child can become a critical thinker, here are three ways to help them get started.

Encourage Innovative Thinking

Being a critical thinker significantly depends on one’s ability to think outside the box. In other words, it requires you to be as creative with your thoughts and imagination as possible. Furthermore, it’s only possible to question concepts and challenge them once you’re able to look at them with a new or entirely unique viewpoint.

Therefore, an excellent way to instill critical thinking abilities among children is to encourage them to use their imagination to think innovatively. A great way to do so is by showing them a concept or reading them a story and inquiring about their interpretation of what they understand from it. You’ll be surprised to know how everything resonates with a child’s mind.

Ask Open-Ended Questions

Another effective way to help a child become a critical thinker is by asking them open-ended questions. Open-ended questions refer to questions that don’t necessarily have a right or wrong answer. In fact, these questions encourage students to ponder on their thoughts and personal experiences to formulate an answer based on facts and evidence.

These questions play a massive role in developing healthy debates among children, allowing them to efficiently provide and receive constructive criticism. Your questions can be based on something the students have recently learned, a trending topic being talked about worldwide or a project that needs extensive brainstorming by children.

Many leading educators religiously follow the practice of starting their classes and lessons with open-ended questions. As a result, children look forward to learning more and are more likely to remember what they’ve been taught so that they can actively participate in discussions.

Initiate Discussions

The most crucial time for parents and teachers to assess their children’s critical thinking abilities is during seminars and discussions. In other words, initiating a discussion with kids without requiring textbooks or electronic devices allows children to use what they’ve learned to formulate opinions and learn from each other.

It’s critical to ensure that the discussion is healthy, harmless, and doesn’t become insensitive. The perfect time for such discussions is the end of a lesson. It allows the kids to wrap up and take a pause from their studies to reflect on their learnings.

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At Master Mind Daycare, we’re dedicated to using our resources to ensure that your child receives all the necessary guidance to become a smart individual, a critical thinker, and a person open to constructive criticism. We’re a home-based daycare in Harford County, Maryland, aiming to use our experience to facilitate an outstanding learning environment for your kids’ early childhood development without compromising on their safety and well-being. You can now visit our website to schedule a tour with us or contact us to learn more about our home-based daycare today!