Critical thinking at an early age.?

Question

If critical thinking is thought at and early age some say that children are not developmentally ready to learn critical thinking until later stages. What are some of the ways that will help develop these skills?

Answer 1

All children think logically. Young children make sense of things with the information they have. At birth, babies have very little information to go on. As a child gains experiences in the world his/her conclusions change to adapt to the new information. Piaget called it assimilation and accommodation. The child assimilates information when it adds information to her/his knowledge base. A child accommodates information when s/he has to change previous thinking in order to "accommodate" the new information. People are hard wired to assimilate and accommodate information from birth.

When young children think, they think logically. They are just making conclusions without all the information. Adults do this too.

The best way to develop critical thinking is to provide children with a wide range of experiences. Knowledge gained by actual experience is more valuable than information handed to you in a textbook.

Read the works of Jean Piaget, especially his work on logical-mathematical thinking.

Answer 2

Creating open ended activites to allow children to explore and follow their own lines of enquires, susutained shared thinking and interaction are the best ways to do things Hang on i have a page that might be useful to you.....

The Early Years Foundation Stage 00012-2007CDO-EN

Effective 01 practice: Creativity and Critical Thinking © Crown copyright 2007

Effective practice: Creativity and Critical Thinking

Key messages

Creativity emerges when children become absorbed in exploring the world around them.

Directing children’s attention during play often disturbs a child’s flow of ideas but adults can, and

should, contribute by following children’s leads.

Sharing children’s thinking makes adults aware of children’s interests and understandings and

enables them to foster development of knowledge and ideas.

Children discover new meanings when they explore possibilities and create new connections

between people, places and things.

Creativity fosters critical thinking by allowing children to review and reinvent.

What Creativity and Critical Thinking means

Creativity and Critical Thinking are processes that are child led but which benefit greatly from the

sensitive contributions of others. The processes involve making connections between things, people

or places in ways that are new and personally meaningful. They occur in all areas of Learning and

Development.

Why Creativity and Critical Thinking is important

Creativity is very much a process and often there is no clearly identifiable outcome or product. Yet, the

outcome in terms of children’s confidence and skill in learning can be immense. In having scope to

explore new possibilities and create new and exciting connections between people, places and things,

children discover meanings in their worlds. They are also learning that they can transform ideas and

rethink what they know. In this way, creativity can transform understanding by fostering critical thinking

and allowing children to review, reinvent and make new meanings.

Babies and children are naturally creative and flexible in their play, turning anything that they can reach

into something that they can investigate. Creativity emerges as they become absorbed in exploring

what things are like and what they can be made to do. These self-initiated investigations help them

to give meaning to the things, sounds and situations around them and they seem to have their own

agendas and ideas as they play. The range of this play increases significantly from around the age of

eight months when most children begin to move around. This surge in capacity for physical exploration

enables them to find new things and new places to explore and increases ingenuity. For example, a

box can become a hiding place, a house or a cave.

By directing children’s attention during play adults often disturb a child’s flow of ideas, yet they should

contribute. Simply being attentive to a child’s explorations and inventions is helpful as this promotes a

sense of security and gives licence to experimentation and risk-taking. More purposeful contributions

involve tuning in to children’s ideas and helping to take them forward. Pierce (2000) speaks of

play, story making and creative acts occurring in the co-constructed worlds of adults and children.

Sharing and sustaining children’s thinking in this way makes adults aware of children’s interests and

understandings and enables them to foster development of ideas and skills.

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The Early Years Foundation Stage 00012-2007CDO-EN

Effective practice: Creativity and Critical Thinking © Crown copyright 2007 02

Effective practice in relation to Creativity and Critical Thinking

Making connections

Help children to make connections in their learning by linking free play to adult-led activities.

For example, read the story of ‘The Three Billy Goats Gruff’ and then set up a bridge over a ‘river’

of blue cloth in the block play area and display pictures of bridges.

Encourage creativity and opportunities for all children to link their ideas to new situations by introducing:

new places, things and situations to children who have restricted mobility or who are less

motivated to move;

materials, artefacts and spaces to children with visual impairments;

opportunities for children with hearing impairments to experience and experiment with sounds

through physical contact with musical instruments and other sources of sound.

Tell stories that present different possibilities within familiar situations to stimulate children to make

new connections. For example, read Way Down Deep in the Deep Blue Sea by Jan Peck where

bath-time becomes an imaginative exploration of an underwater world. This might stimulate enquiry

into sea life and can add creative and imaginative dimensions to water play.

Value what parents tell you about the things their children do at home. Find out about their games,

pretend play, artefacts and stories that they enjoy at home and build on these contexts in the

setting to stimulate creativity.

Provide opportunities for children to express their ideas in a variety of ways, for example, through

movement, dance, painting, imaginative play and language.

Appreciate children’s ideas and individual ways of capturing and representing them.

Make it easier for children to make connections by giving them easy access to resources and

allowing them to move materials from one place to another.

Transforming understanding

Create conditions within which children are inspired to be creative and rethink ideas, for example,

create novel spaces by moving furniture or promote new relationships by changing age groupings.

Provide resources from a variety of cultures to stimulate new ideas and ways of thinking.

Sustained shared thinking

Give children time to explore and develop their initiatives. Encourage them to discuss what they are

doing and what they want to achieve.

Build on children’s ideas as you help them to see new possibilities in their play.

Listen to and discuss children’s ideas; offer suggestions and pose questions that extend their thinking.

References

Pierce, D. (2000) ‘Maternal management of the home as a developmental play space for infants and

toddlers’, The American Journal of Occupational Therapy, May–June, vol.54, no.3, pp.290–99.

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Answer 3

your child's brain has to be developed enough to be able to think like that, so i don't think there are any activities that can speed up the process. Ever child has to go through the stages at their own rate

Answer 4

ok, the only way there gonna be doing critical thinking at ages three four and five is there like super geniuses I think you should wait until their older

Answer 5

Learning at any age is critical...The earlier the better...When children ask "Why", tell them in a constructive manner and be precise...Continue to encourage your child's' enlightenment...