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This section provides teachers, students, parents, and school administrators quick access to an array of important educational information. |
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| Helping Your Child to Think |
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Helping your child become a good thinker will enable him/her to be a problem solver for his/her entire life. Thinking is a step-by-step process used to make decisions. As a parent, you can do things with your child at home to develop his/her ability to use these thinking skills.
There are many different ways to help children think creatively and make intelligent judgments. Asking your child about what he/she has read or would like to do are some ways of encouraging in-depth thinking. How you ask is important. Simply asking for a response that is repetitious or that can be answered by a simple “yes” or “no” will not allow for higher-level thinking.
Below are examples of different types of thinking skills and questions to help you help your child develop these skills.
- Ask Questions that have a Variety of Answers - Encourage flexible thinking by asking your child to give you responses that show a variety of possible answers:
- What are the different ways to … (make objects out of wood, make the best use of your free time, use a wink, tell about the day, etc.)?
- What if there were … (no weekend, no rain, no money, sun all day, etc.)?
- Stimulate with Activities - Encourage original thinking by asking your child to do specific activities:
- Make up … (an original recipe, a poem about family, new ways to use garbage, etc.)
- Design … (a get-well card, clothing for members of the family or a pet, a new house, etc.
- Think of new ways to … (walk to school, make your parents happy, improve your work habits, entertain a baby, etc.)
- Inventive Questions - Encourage your child to use imagination through inventive questioning.
- Role-play real-life situations and pose problems to your child such as … (“What should parents say to a child who always forgets his/her lunch?, doesn’t do his/her homework?, etc.”)
- Suggest to your child that he/she draw pictures of what he/she thinks a Martian person might look like … (a moon person, a person from a make-believe plant, which planet, etc).
- Ask your child to pretend he/she is living in a house 100 years from now: What would it be like?
- Ask your child to imagine what kind of toys or games he/she might have in the next century.
As a parent, the best way to help your child be a better thinker is to gently and sensitively probe his/her mind with questions and challenges. Allow him/her plenty of “think” time and lots of encouragement. Most of all, make it a fun experience, free of pressures associated with being in school.
(Source: EPIC) |
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