Need help , other than the critical thinking apps , is there any apps you all use for challenging kids..... with logic

Hi folks, I am starting to plan for next year. My oldest will be in 6th grade. I looked through WTM in the logic chapter, and it looks like SWB recommends using "Critical Thinking" Books 1 & 2 by The Critical Thinking Company. I found a used copy from 1998 on Amazon (only Book 1) and a 2002 Book 1 and a 2005 Book 2 on Rainbow Resource, but when I went to the website for The Critical Thinking Company, I couldn't find those titles anywhere. Are they out of print? Do people still use them, or is there a different recommendation? We used "Building Thinking Skills" this past year. I appreciate any help you can offer. Erin

Does anyone know the difference between these two products from The Critical Thinking Skills Company? The Critical Thinking in United States History is made up of 4 books The US History Detective Bk. 1 seems to be new. Thanks, Rachel

Do you use any critical thinking or logic curriculum with you early elementary children? If so, what do you use and can you give a short review? Thanks in advance. Crystal

Years ago I played all the Kings Quests with my older kids (who are now in college). My oldest daughter discovered recently that there has been a remake of these games so they will play on today's computers (Mac and PC). If you played them - you will know how awesome they are. If you haven't, well, they teach critical thinking skills as you are in a fairy tale world and have to complete different quests. You move around the world and pick up items which have to be used elsewhere. The games all draw heavily on fairy tales which makes them extra fun. I loved playing them with my kids- we would crowd round the computer and brainstorm what to do. Now I am playing them again with my oldest who is on the other side of the country and we brainstorm via text messages. The link is here: http://www.agdinteractive.com/games/games.html If you download on a Mac be sure to drag the game file into your Applications folder or you wont be able to play it

My daughter is in 4th grade and beginning logic. She's a visual/kinestethic learner (with mild dyslexia). I'm attempting to find the best introduction to logic for her, and I've narrowed it down to either the Critical Thinking Skills Company 'Building Thinking Skills' series, or the Logic Liftoff/Logic Countdown series. Cost wise the latter is a lot less expensive, and looks like it's more "fun", but I haven't heard much about it. Thoughts?

I'm looking for something for my 5th grader that is not too "wordy." He is a visual-spatial/kinesthetic learner and struggles with riddles and stories because he gets "lost" in all of the verbage. I was thinking of trying Building Thinking Skills Level 2 but am open to other suggestions.

Our front door has 2 knobs. You have to turn both to get inside. (We haven't lived here long and that's one of the things I want to fix. Getting groceries inside is almost painful.) The other day my oldest daughter had a baby doll in her hand so she couldn't turn them both. I was sitting on porch watching and it took her AT LEAST 3 or 4 minutes to stop turning one knob at a time and put the doll down and open the door. SO, long story short. I'm looking for Logic/Critical Thinking problems or a curriculum for my 7 year old Daughter. Her reading is a little below "normal" and I would like them to be as independent as possible. I am a widow with 3 little ones so cheap is good an free is better.

I am in the process of planning out the last 6 years of my first set of children. I have been researching everywhere for what best fits our family and have a few questions for those who have been there and done it already. I am looking forward with my high school credits and think I may use parts of the TQ MA, Ren to Ref, AOR I, II, & III to teach "worldview" in history for the kids. I am also looking at using it in conjunction with something like Walch's Focus on US History Series or http://www.classicalhistorian.com/ We are eclectic in our HS approach and tend to do a mix of providential/christian viewpoint books with secular and source documents. I am trying to find a balance with our religious beliefs and fact, without going to an extreme in the religious end - as we don't tend to fall into the traditional "providential" catagory. I find much of that material to be "over the top". (I am NOT invoking a discussion on this topic, so please understand that. I am trying to get opinions on types of materials to consider to reach my family's goals for our education) As of right now, they are using HOD- Resurrection to Reformation. we have found it to be a good year and have found some new favorites for the younger set in our home. BUT, I've had to practically redo the whole thing to make it fit our kids. I don't really like the next guide (yes, I own it and have looked thru the first 27 weeks of lesson plans). There's nothing "wrong" with it, but it just doesn't fit where my girls are now and would require a complete overhaul to make it work for next year. Besides that, my kids have NEVER had American history past the settling of the 13 colonies (not intentional) and we would like to do that before they hit High School. They've had extensive history on Ancients/Bible History and Middle Ages. I've tried Sonlight - again a complete rewrite Winterpromise - hated all the crafts and didn't like the flow MFW - really didn't like Tapestry of grace - I cried for 3 months - too overwhelming for some reason. STOW - We used a lot of this over the last several years Just never made it thru the rest of book 3 or 4 So, not interested in the above (other than I tend to use them for various resources). I also have a 3rd, 1st and young PK coming up behind them. So, here's my basic plan - geography, cultural studies will be interwoven throughout: 7th - American History 1 (using Guerber books, Focus on American History (Walch), lots of living books, state study notebook, composer study for music appreciation) 8th - American History 2 (Focus on american History (walch) - I think, president study, not sure what else. 9th - world history- picking up in the early church/late Roman era thru 1600's (creation to Christ being covered in Bible/worldview and we have already studied ancient culture/civilization 3 times pretty extensively) 10th - World and US history 1600-1865 11th - World and US history 1865- 1900's (flexible on the time's here) 12th - World and US history 1900's - current year, including Government and Economics So, any suggestions of books, curriculum, ideas would be helpful and greatly appreciated. I would like to use non-textbooks materials for a majority of my studies but am not opposed to a good text spine. Thanks in advance! Heather

My ds is almost 15 – I’ve discussed him on this board before (though I don’t expect y’all to remember him exactly – there are so many people here!). He has CAPD, particularly the auditory associative deficit subtype. Before we received the CAPD diagnosis, he was diagnosed with Mixed Receptive-Expressive Language Disorder because he has trouble with vocabulary and figures of speech. He received speech therapy for a few months, but it did absolutely nothing except waste our time and money. Honestly I think the SLP was at a loss too as far as how to help him. Basically his “therapy†consisted of her explaining different figures of speech to him. Her main piece of advice for me as to how to help him is to print off different figures of speech off the internet and discuss them with him. I have been hitting vocabulary hard with him, and he is almost finished with Wordly Wise 4 (he’s in the 9th grade, so he’s doing a vocab book 5 grade levels below where he should be). He does great on the first couple of exercises, where it goes over the basic definitions, but the last 2-3 exercises give him fits, particularly C and E, since that involves context of some sort. Dh and I are beginning to think that while yes, vocabulary is a problem, his MAIN problem is in the area of logical and critical thinking. He doesn’t seem to be able to think logically about things in order to understand language or to correctly interpret a situation. We have often said that our 4yo possesses better logic than he does. Granted, I think the 4yo is advanced in that area for her age, but STILL! Some examples: He is reading Sign of the Beaver for school. I ask him comprehension questions about what he has read (a la Sonlight). The other day I asked him, “The Indians used an oral tradition in training. What is an oral tradition?†At first he gave me his standard answer, “I dunno.†Since that is unacceptable to me LOL, I asked him what “oral†meant. He said, “Something having to do with teeth????†I knew he was at least aimed in the right direction, so I started from there and said, “Sort of, what else?†He didn’t know, so then I asked him, “OK well so whenever you are learning something, say history, you read a book. Did the Indians have writing?†He said no. So I asked him how Indians taught their children things like their history and such. He answered (swallow your drink if you’re drinking anything right now): “They ripped their teeth out and used them as writing utensils????†(He was dead serious.) It’s hysterical at first, but when I think about it, it’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about. Instead of thinking, “There must be another meaning for the word ‘oral,’†He went off to Wacko-Land and came up with THAT, even though it made absolutely NO sense whatsoever and wasn’t logical in the LEAST. Logic should have told him that he must have messed up his definition of “oral†somehow, but it didn’t. Another example: He has seen the movie Big (with Tom Hanks) a couple times. I overheard him explaining the plot to a sibling a couple weeks ago. “Yeah, that’s why he had all those toys even though he was big – he had to buy them because he was trying to find the toy that would make him young again.†Um, not at ALL. So I had to explain it all to him very specifically. Another example: After seeing Back to the Future at LEAST 10 times, he asked if Marty's mom looks so dumpy at the beginning because Marty hadn't come to earth yet. I had to explain the whole plot to him, that when Marty got hit by the car his mom fell in love with HIM instead, which changed history and made him no longer exist anymore, and then when his dad punched Biff out he actually got self-confidence, so that's why he's so much more "with it" at the end of the movie. Ds had NO IDEA. He cannot follow a root-based vocabulary program because that requires some logic in putting different roots with different base words to come up with what they mean. Anytime I’ve tried even discussing things like that with him, he is LOST. Whenever he doesn’t understand something, it is rare for him to realize it. He either misunderstands and thinks he DID understand, or he just ignores the fact that he misunderstands. I just found where I’ve detailed some examples before: http://www.welltrainedmind.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144997 Anyway!!! Like I said, I think a lot of this stems from some sort of deficiency in logical thinking. But I don’t know to help with that. I’m planning to have him go through Building Thinking Skills 3 Verbal (or whatever it’s called) and Reading Detective. He’s done the BTS 3 Figural and it was SUPER difficult for him also. Maybe I’ll have him do it again??? Are there any other easy-to-use (for me) materials that can help him in this area? Not just “exercise†his logical thinking but to actually DEVELOP it, since even the bare basics when it comes to logical thinking and being able to connect things aren’t there. A friend of mine and I are always wondering just HOW he functions in daily life since surely he has got to be perpetually confused. As he gets older and doesn’t get any better, it concerns me. He wants to join the military as soon as he graduates from high school, and that scares the bee-jeebies out of me. Not because I’m scared of my child going into the military but because he misunderstands communication/misinterprets situations so often that I’m scared he’s going to get himself killed by not understanding something he should.

This isn't a subject that was ever on my radar, especially with younger elementary students, but on the thread for Grade 3 plans, I see lots of people listing it. I'm wondering if I should consider adding this in to our plans next year as well. I'll have one in grade 1, and one in grade 3. For those who have taught logic to these ages, can you tell me what you've used, and what to expect from it? Do you feel it's been beneficial? Fun?

Ok, so confession time first. I was taught through ABeka. So while I can diagram fantastically, the idea of literary analysis is kind of foreign. Ok now that the confession is over... :lol: No really, I know one of the greatest complaints about SL, which we are choosing to try next year is the lack of literary analysis especially in the older grades. Now I know we are a longtime from worrying about this, but is there a single resource either for me or a supplemental something for my dc that would teach this well and we can apply it through the years on our own? I am the crazy type that has long term planning on the brain right now and I am wondering if a few years of SL followed by a MOH cycle combined with SL will prep my kids for 3 years of high school omnibus. And yes I am keenly aware I can and will change plans 652 times by then, and I may not even want omnibus :tongue_smilie: I just want my kids to be prepared for anything, and omnibus seems like a high standard. :lol: So anyway, back to literary analysis! :tongue_smilie:

I am new to the forum and was wondering if anyone has used the Steck-Vaughn Critical Thinking books. I have two old books (1987) that have the level Violet and the level Grey. They do not have any grade level or equivalent on them. Does anyone know what the grade level conversion would be? I know they now use A, B C, D etc. but cannot figure out if Violet would be F or sixth grade. Any help is appreciated,

I think I get it, and then I take a look at the Answer Guide and find I'm wrong. And even sometimes when I'm right, I can't figure out why! I'm feeling like such a dunce today! Has anyone had this problem? Is there hope for me? Aside from reading and re-reading the lessons, is there anything I can do/read/follow up on online or elsewhere that will help this Logic-deficient Momma? Sigh. Patty

I watched this movie for the second time yesterday and think it would make a great study to tie into a logic or critical thinking class. We'll be doing formal logic next year and I'd like to spend a couple of weeks on this movie. What would you study? My initial thoughts are read the story of Ariadne and the Labyrinth and study some of Escher's art for background info. Then watch the clues and notate what facts are given, then diagram each level of the dream state, starting with the assumption that the assumed reality is such. There are a maze of ideas you could do, such as use figure up how much time is spent in each level, the myth of "limbo", etc. From that you could get into the analysis of what is the reality and what happened at the end. I can imagine a very lively discussion. I watched the movie almost with a backward mindset yesterday, that the reality we see is not the reality and it could be workable. What other ideas would you include?

I'm pretty clueless about this. Can someone advise me or direct me to older threads? My dd is in K and my ds is in 4th, thanks in advance!

My 4.5 y.o has already done half of the Saxon Phonics program and half of the Level A of Critical Thinking's Mathematical Reasoning. We will actually "DO" homeschool officially starting in the fall. She went to preschool this year which was fun for her, but a total waste of time for me. Anyhow,I'm planning out her school year (I have to be a planner down to the T due to having 2 special needs children that are older). I need recommendations for the amount of time that would be appropriate for an almost 5 year old. She loves doing worksheets and some days I HAVE to cut her off. She'll sit and do them forever! That sounds great, but I will have to split the time up between subjects. I appreciate any guidance and suggestions.:bigear:

I am so stuck on this. Daughter will be 11. We have not done anything in the critical thinking/logic area. Something that starts off slowly and builds?? I don't want to frustrate her. As always, thanks!!:)

One of my biggest reasons for hsing is that I think public schools no longer teach kids to think for themselves, rather, they focus on memorizing facts and promoting conformity. But, being a product of the public school system myself, I really am unsure how to go about achieving the goal of open mindedness for my children. How do you teach your children to think for themselves and not just repeat what they hear? Ideas, links, book recs all welcome!

if you have used these, would you please share whether the content is christian or secular... or pretty much nuetral? Have your dc like the curriculum? Benefits? Pros and cons? Thanks! :001_smile: