Marvelous Monday – Logic

My family does not “classically” educate.  That is, we do not use the Classical Education method.  Personally, I think we’re pretty classic, in our own eclectic way. I know that those who do prefer the Classical Education model, consider Logic as a separate and distinct subject.  I’m pretty sure you can read more about that in Kendra’s post today.  So what is logic?

Logic:  The science of the formal principles of reasoning
One of my goals for my children is for them to be able to think things through on their own.  I want them to have the mental skills necessary to make wise decisions, and to defend their beliefs and decisions to others.  Personally, I think that is best taught by discussion with your children concerning the big and little issues of life.  Obviously, I also want them firmly grounded in Scripture, with a heart for the Lord,  so that their decisions and choices will glorify God.  However, I have used a few tools in my home to help my children to develop the mental muscles necessary for reasoning and decision making.

The Critical Thinking Company has a wide variety of products available to help.  I do not care for their full line of products, but I have been very impressed with a couple of series from this publisher.

Building Thinking Skills is a series that we have used and enjoyed.  These thick, beefy reproducible workbooks are a great investment.  Permission is granted for you to make copies for “single classroom use”, making the purchase of a single copy usable by your entire family.  Levels are available for the Pre-K crowd through high school.  The upper levels are especially helpful for students who will be taking various college placement exams.

This series helps your child develop his verbal and non-verbal reasoning skills through a variety of exercises.  They are also very beneficial for children with auditory and visual processing difficulties.  Of greatest benefit in my home, has been the fact that the exercises move gradually from a more or less concrete concept to a more abstract concept.  The exercises vary and build skills in the areas of describing things, figural and verbal similarities, figural and verbal sequencing, figural and verbal classifications, analogies and more.  For a full description of this series read what the publisher has to say.

The lower level books will require that you have a few manipulatives on hand.  Many of you will have these already to compliment your math programs.  You’ll need:  Pattern Blocks, Interlocking Cubes and Attribute Blocks.  These are well worth their purchase price.  They’ll outlast your own children, so you can pass them along to the the grandchildren!  My kids have spent hours playing with these outside of school time, too.

I’ve also liked Critical Thinking’s  lower level Mathematical Reasoning books.  The books are very helpful in developing problem solving skills.  I haven’t felt the need to use these beyond the mid-elementary years, but if you have a child who is struggling in his problem solving skills, or perhaps just likes this sort of mental work out, I’d continue with the higher level books as well.  As with the Thinking Skills series, these are reproducible for use with your entire family.

Architecto is a product that we have just started using, and it’s a hit!  My boys love to build stuff, and this is a perfect combination of fun and education!  The set consists of just eighteen solid blocks in various geometrical shapes.  Your child works his way through the book, building ever more complex structures, developing spatial logic, analysis and a wee bit of geometry to boot.  Architecto will also help manual dexterity and fine motor skills.  This is a bit of an investment, but the blocks are solid plastic and quite sturdy, and the wire bound books’ pages are plastic coated.  I’m counting on this set being used by the grandkids!  Architecto is for ages 4 – adult!  (Please note that the Architecto set includes the Architecto book only.  The other books will need to be purchased separately.)

There are three books available for your student to work through, each utilizing the same set of eighteen blocks.  Each book is increasingly difficult.

Equilibrio is the first book.  There are 60 structures to be built, each a bit more difficult than the last.  This book improves manual dexterity and perspective, and will require increasing degrees of diligence to complete.  Equilibrio is for ages 4 and up.

Architecto will continue increasing manual dexterity, while it increases imagination and spatial reasoning.  There are 50 structures to be built from this book, using the 2-D diagrams to build 3-D structures.  For ages 7 and up.
Clicko, for ages 8 and up, takes the difficulty up a notch, but the fun continues.  Each page depicts the view of the structure to be built as if from the view finder of a camera.  The shape and number of blocks to be used are noted at the bottom of the page.  As the book progresses and the structures become increasingly complex, the book may offer additional camera views to assist in the building.

Best value for those wishing to purchase the entire set can be found through my favorite homeschool supplier.

These resources are all good, but they don’t replace your importance in helping your children to develop their thinking and reasoning abilities.  Talk things through with your children when they are small.  Discuss the choices they have made and why some were good and others not.  As they get older, these conversations will be more in depth.  Allow your children to listen in while you and your husband discuss pending decisions for your own family.  When they make mistakes in life, be available to search the Scriptures with them and talk about what might have been a better path for them to have taken.
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Be sure to check out Kendra’s Marvelous Monday – Logic post.

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