When it comes to logical thinking, everyone may suddenly think of mathematical ability, or programmers, engineers and other science and engineering careers.
In fact, the use of logical thinking permeates all aspects of life and work, and even when we talk, write, and communicate with people, it is essentially the transmission of logical thinking.
For example, in the workplace, we will see that some people have a particularly organized thinking, and there is a clear logic between the basis of the list and the conclusions drawn, which makes everyone very convinced; when dealing with some complex problems, they can quickly grasp the key points and give effective solutions, which are based on their excellent logical thinking ability.
However, looking back at our education from childhood, the cultivation of logical thinking ability is not a very important part, and many basic thinking methods are not rooted in our cognitive framework, so that logic has become a shortcoming of many adults.
But in fact, logical thinking training is not too difficult, especially for children, as long as our parents are a little guided, they can quickly learn and improve in daily life and play, and adults can also improve their logical thinking ability together while training children.
In today's article, I will tell you about the characteristics of children's thinking development in different ages and some of the training methods, so that everyone can have more understanding and reference.
Before the age of 3: Use movement to understand the world
First of all, the word logical thinking is often hung on our lips, and its specific refers to the process of people's understanding of the nature and law of things, which belongs to abstract thinking.
Logical thinking sounds advanced, but it actually begins to sprout before the baby is 3 years old, when the baby first explores the world by observing the process of "action-result".
For example, the baby will find that if the bowl falls to the ground during eating, the food will be scattered on the ground, and then the parents will fry the hair.
For example, if you press your feet hard, your body will take off, and the world in front of you will move up and down.
Because the "action-result-learn" process gives them pleasure (yes, babies love to learn!). Therefore, they will be fascinated by some repetitive actions, such as stacking blocks from the flat ground, and then pushing them, constantly playing in a loop for half a day, don't think that this is a "boring" performance, in fact, the baby is exploring and finding the rules.
The simple process of rotating turrets from top to bottom can be repeated countless times
Babies will also observe the laws of some accompanying events, such as the cage bun will stare at the door at about 5-6 o'clock in the evening on weekdays, waiting for the mother to return from work. This is not because he knows to look at the time, but at 5-6 o'clock in the evening Grandpa will turn on the living room light, and the cage bag will find that the living room light will not be long before the mother will arrive home, which is the simple law observed by the child (the sad thing is that there is no example of the cage bun waiting for the father to come home)
How parents guide
01
Keep it safe and let your baby explore to the fullest
Babies may have all sorts of weird explorations, and they especially like to see instant feedback on their actions, such as knocking out objects, tearing paper apart, playing with toys with buttons, books with mechanisms, and so on.
Under the premise of ensuring safety, adults can let the baby explore freely, such as arranging a mat and fenced area in the home, putting some non-dangerous toys, objects and books, which is a very interesting exploration for them.
With a three-dimensional interactive book like this, babies will feel amazing
02
Increase your baby's language input
Language understanding and expression is an important part of logical thinking, and we can give the baby more verbal descriptions when repeating certain actions or playing with a toy repeatedly.
Babies at this stage may not be able to express accurately, but the switch of auditory language is always on, and adults give them more input rich language, which will help them learn and understand, and will also greatly promote their expression.
For example, when playing with mushroom spikes, we can say: the baby planted a small yellow mushroom, another small red mushroom, and a large blue mushroom, and now we have many different mushrooms.
In this seemingly simple sentence, it contains the description of the attributes of "color" and "size", and also implies the logical concepts of "classification", "time sequence", "cause and effect", and the child's thinking is subtly cultivated in the daily play and communication.
3-6 years old: A blowout of figurative thinking
During this period, the baby's hands-on ability, comprehension ability and expression ability are greatly improved, they can have more subjective and dynamic observation and attempts, can clearly and accurately describe things, and gradually can think and solve problems.
But at this time, the baby's thinking is still dominated by figurative thinking (image thinking), and their thinking and reasoning are based on specific images.
For example, if we want the baby to understand 3 + 3 = 6, we often need to visualize the abstract number of "3" and give the baby two pieces of candy with 3 pieces each to help them understand, including the baby loves to count fingers, which is also the performance of figurative thinking.
Although babies are more likely to have figurative thinking at present, these figurative thoughts (including observed things and accumulated experience) are the foundation of abstract thinking in the future.
How parents guide
01
Increase the depth and breadth of figurative thinking
3-6 years old is a period when children's figurative thinking is blowing up, and we can provide children with as rich an environment as possible to provide materials for figurative thinking.
What we are talking about here is not to let everyone have to take the baby to wade through the mountains and see all kinds of strange things, in fact, daily life is rich enough for children, and what we have to do is to increase the depth of children's cognition.
The philosophers of ancient Greece searched for truth by asking each other questions, and many truths about nature and society were discovered in their countless inquiries.
Children naturally like to ask why, then we do not have to rush to give the correct answer, we can guide the child to more thinking, expression and discussion of the observed figuration, increase the depth and breadth of the content of figurative thinking.
For example, when We were more than 5 years old, we once went on foot to find a small lizard, and the cage asked: Why do small lizards live in the wild, while small geckos live at home?
In fact, I don't understand this problem, and it's too late for Baidu, so I asked him, what do you think?
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Cage: Is it because the little lizard loves to eat insects in the wild, you see there are a lot of small flying insects in this meadow, and geckos love to eat the insects at home, like mosquitoes and flies.
Me: Well, possibly, is there any other reason?
Cage: Maybe the little lizard likes to bask in the sun, the little gecko doesn't like it, you see this little lizard is basking in the sun.
Me: Oh yes, why does that little lizard like to bask in the sun?
Dumplings: The teacher said that lizards are warming animals, and they need to bask in the sun to keep their bodies warm.
Me: That's right, so what do you think animals would look at when they choose their place of life?
Dumplings: Well, animals will see if there are anything they like to eat, and whether the living environment is their favorite.
We see that in a question and answer, the child's attention from a small lizard in the wild to a gecko similar to a lizard, the characteristics of warm animals, the living habits of reptiles, etc., the breadth and depth of cognition have greatly increased.
Through this process, children gradually learn to use the information they observe to think, and under such guidance, they begin to apply the logical methods of "attribution", "comparison", "analysis", "synthesis" and so on.
In addition to asking questions and discussing, we can also use books, animations, documentaries, or field trips to make children's interested content more in-depth experience and learning.
02
The transformation from figurative thinking to abstract thinking
Children in the future to learn mathematics, English, as well as language writing, reading comprehension need to use abstract thinking, before the child's school age, you can follow the child's figurative thinking leap, do abstract thinking enlightenment, the following recommended methods for everyone is both training, but also games, can let the baby develop abstract thinking in play.
01
Categorize training
An important step from figurative thinking to abstract thinking is to learn to observe and summarize the commonalities and differences of things, and everyone can do classification games with your baby.
Classification game is a method that will be used in various thinking training courses and books, which can help extract the law from the figurative and gradually form abstract thinking, and the classification method is to find the commonality and differences of the essence of things, which is very important for children's future learning.
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Figurative thinking: isolated objects
Abstract thinking: the color, shape, characteristics of objects, the similarities and differences between objects
The specific way to classify a game is very simple, such as asking your child to follow the shape of the building blocks or toys according to different shapes:
Children can also observe for themselves and propose different classification criteria:
Classification games can also be played in daily life, such as taking children to the supermarket can be classified according to vegetables, fruits, meat, and all children are fascinated by garbage classification, are good thinking exercises.
02
Sequential training
Usually, we will see some people talk and do things in a particularly organized manner, and some are like a paste, which also reflects the gap in logical thinking.
In fact, in the preschool stage, we can consciously exercise children's sequential thinking, or orderly.
Sequential thinking includes chronological order, primary and secondary order, causal order, etc., which we can exercise a little deliberately in the life of ordinary children.
For example, chronological thinking, our headache children do things grinding, no order, may wish to do a thing when the child to consider: what to do first, then what to do, what to do last, you can also use the flow chart to organize what needs to be done (and the project management flow chart or technical roadmap at work is the same idea):
Primary and secondary training refers to allowing children to slowly understand the "importance", discuss with children before completing a big task, which small tasks are the most important, must not drop the chain, which small tasks are not so important, and it is good to get it with fate.
For example, when you go to the supermarket to buy, you can make a list with your children in advance, which things must be bought, otherwise dinner will not fall, and which things can be seen by the way.
Causal thinking training is also easy to do in children's daily life, children always like to ask "why", at this time we can guide children to think more about the reasons, but also can further think about the causes and possible results layer by layer.
For example, a child may ask, "Why do we have to test nucleic acids every day?" ”
We can lead children to think: nucleic acid testing is to find patients who may be infected as early as possible (the cause); then why should we find these infected patients as early as possible (the cause of the cause); what will happen if these infected patients cannot be (assuming possible outcomes).
03
Recognize change
Change is the difficulty of thinking development at this stage.
Jean Piaget, the god of developmental psychology, did a classic experiment in which an equal amount of water was poured into two identical glasses and placed in front of the children to confirm that there was as much water in the two cups.
He then poured water from one of the cups into another narrower glass in front of the children, and asked if there was now as much water in the two cups.
The answer to this question may seem obvious, but Jean Piaget's experiment found that children don't spontaneously recognize as much water in two cups until they are on average 6-7 years old.
Because the child cannot yet understand the abstract property of "volume", he will intuitively understand it as "water level height = many", or "bottom width = many".
To allow children to break through this intuitive way of thinking, children need to understand the "change" of things, of which "conservation" and "reversibility" are the difficulties for children to understand.
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Conservation: Refers to the characteristics of the essential properties of the object that do not change when the appearance of things changes, etc.
Reversibility: Refers to the characteristics of things that can reverse back to their original state even if some aspect changes.
For example, in the above experiment, although the appearance of the water in the cup has changed, the volume is unchanged (conserved), and the change of pouring water is reversible, and if the water in the narrow cup is poured back into the wide cup, the water in the two cups becomes the same height again.
In the future, children will learn physics, conservation of matter in chemistry, and the core concepts of algebra in mathematics, including addition and subtraction, multiplication and division conversion, using conservation and reversibility thinking.
So how do we cultivate conservation and reversible thinking in children? The key point is to let children better understand the "change of things".
The same thing can take on different shapes and states
For example, you can play some small games with your child: a piece of plasticine, which can be kneaded into a ball shape, or it can be kneaded into a long strip like a small snake; the same cup of water poured in different containers will take on different shapes.
In daily life, you can also take your child to observe the changes around you, such as when the same leaf just falls, the color is tender, the feel is full, and after two days, the color will become dull and the texture will become dry and rough.
Recognize the reversibility and irreversibility of change
In the process of trying and observing change, we can guide them to recognize reversibility and irreversibility.
For example, a piece of paper will be half smaller after folding in half, and it will change back to its original state when it is reopened; water will become ice when frozen in the refrigerator, and it will become water after dissolving, which are reversible changes.
The fallen leaves gradually turn yellow and dry, and the raw eggs become mature eggs, these are irreversible changes.
04
Visualize your way of thinking
The above classifications, orders, changes, etc. are some basic logical relationships, which seem simple, but sometimes appear in complex forms, such as parallel (classification) relationships, inclusion relationships and causal relationships at the same time, which is difficult for us adults to understand.
We can visualize abstract logical relationships for children with the help of drawing.
For example, in categorical thinking, we can further let children understand the inclusion (subordinate) relationship and use graphics to express this relationship. Using the example of visiting the supermarket mentioned above, the supermarket can be divided into a food region and a daily necessities region, and the goods in the food area can be further classified according to drinks, staple foods, desserts, vegetables, and fruits, and you can draw a mind map like this to help children understand the logical relationship:
Image source: https://www.bangkokpost.com
Similarly, when encountering complex causal relationships (such as one cause and multiple effects, chain reactions, etc.) or other complex sequential relationships (such as nature's food chain), you can also make children better understand them by drawing pictures, or let children draw their own pictures, or think about the elements in the diagrams themselves.
Starting from the reduction of lion habitat this event, consider different causes and consequences
Image source: https://thinking-maps.fandom.com
Chronological training is also very suitable for drawing pictures, for example, after we tell a picture book story to the child, we can sort out the story line with the child; children who are interested in history can also try to sort out the timeline of historical events; children raise silkworm babies, make mung bean sprouts, and can also organize the changes in each stage into a timeline.
In some of the more complex and elemental relationships, we can also try to organize with children with diagrams, such as the network of producers and consumers in nature's food chain:
You may also find that mind maps and other tools can visualize and simplify complex relationships, not only to exercise thinking, but also to be useful in children's future learning and even work.
Like the dumpling before we often watched him explain with a mind map, now play board games, sometimes draw their own mind maps to help themselves sort out their ideas.
Today's sharing with you some basic methods of logical thinking training for children of different ages, the core is still based on the child's own development law.
In fact, the method itself is not complicated, and it does not require everyone to do a lot of preparation in advance, but more in daily life and games to guide and interact more deeply.
Well, today's article will go here first, do you have a good way for children to learn in play? Welcome to leave a message to share Oh ~
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