critical thinking

The #1 fear of most people is public speaking!  But teaching your children public speaking skills has a ton of great benefits: increased personal confidence; better writing, organizational, and research skills; critical thinking; and improved communication skills.  Plus, if your child likes public speaking, it can be a marvelous activity to include on your activity and award list!You can find speech and debate organizations in every state, and there are lots of different opportunities to be involved.  Here are...

Do you remember the dreaded analogies in high school?  Here are some examples from our past: Cat is to meow as dog is to bark Poverty is to wealth as hunger is to food. Designed to encourage critical thinking, analogies used to be included in the SAT test. But wait!  Analogies aren't on the test anymore!  For the past few years, the SAT has eliminated all analogies, and has something even MORE fun instead!  When they...

About half of our homeschool classes were traditional, textbookish classes. The rest we were just Wild & Crazy Guys!For fun, my son Kevin studied chess like crazy. One year we called it "Critical Thinking." No kidding - if you have a kid who plays competitive chess, I'm sure you understand! The next year we called it "Public Speaking" because he was going to different classes around our area, teaching to various homeschool groups and public and...