Review: Building Thinking Skills Book 1

I love having thinking skills as a class. I think it really helps with problem solving and quick thinking. Building Thinking Skills has 10 chapters in it that go over lots of critical thinking concepts. It will cover shapes, similar and different, sequences, classifications, analogies and describing things. Some of the concepts will have figural and verbal chapters. All the answers are in the back of the book incase you need them. I absolutely love that the pages are perforated. I like being about to take the papers out and put the ones will be doing that week in her binder. One thing that I do not like is that the book is all in black and white. I wish it was more colorful. Somethings in this book have been a review for our daughter since she knows her shapes and other things. While somethings even if they are not knew the problems are more of a challenge for her. 

Some of the problems will want the child to write in the blanks. If your child is not yet writing then maybe this workbook would not be the best for them. Since it is for 2nd grade I feel like most children are writing by that age but if they are not they can always tell you the answer they would want to write down. The beginning of the book says they can give the answers orally for the first chapter but they want them to be writing for the rest. Last year sometimes I would write the words she said in dashed lines and our daughter would trace them. Half of the book is done in the figural so it will be shapes. The other half of the book is verbal so it is done in things there is a lot more writing in the verbal portion of the book than in the figural.

We only do thinking skills class twice a week so we complete about 5 pages each of those day. That can be a heft amount so if our daughter is getting bored with it I have her complete a page or 2 after finishing other classes. There is also drawing, matching and coloring to do in this book. These pages are much for fun for our daughter but that is because she does not like to write. I am sure that most kids that age do not like writing. The book is not in color so to make those pages more interesting sometimes I draw the problems on the driveway and have her jump onto the answer or draw the answer. While thinking skills is not a mandatory class I think it is important for kids to learn to be critical thinkers. I am not sure yet what we will use for 3rd grade since this Building Thinking Skills book is for grades 2-3. What do y'all use? Let us know in the comment section below.