What Are The Critical Thinking Skills In Early Childhood?
People make various decisions throughout their lives. Before making a decision, it is vital to think about it critically. Simply, critical thinking is the ability to figure out the link between ideas rationally. Let’s find out what are the critical thinking skills in early childhood and it’s benefits throughout the life.
Scholars have put forward several studies to prove how important critical thinking is in anyone’s life. It is evident how much critical thinking matters by observing different scenarios we go through in our regular lives.
How do people develop their ability in critical thinking? You might assume that critical thinking is an ability humans develop at a mature age. However, scientifically speaking, humans start developing their critical thinking abilities from a very young age which is why you must have sound knowledge of critical thinking skills in early childhood. So let’s comprehensively look at what are critical thinking skills in early childhood.
Kids have more potent brain functioning compared to adults. Therefore they have the ability to learn things at a much more rapid pace. Critical thinking is a mandatory skill that every single individual should develop to improve the quality of their life.
What are the must need critical thinking skills in early childhood? Since kids have more capability to learn things, it is essential to teach them to develop their critical thinking. Some of the mandatory critical thinking abilities to develop in early childhood includes;
- Making sense of information
- Comparing
- Contrasting
- Evaluating
- Analyzing
- Interpreting
- Self-regulating
- Problem-solving
As mentioned, critical thinking skills spread into a wide area. Human beings develop these skills most significantly during their early childhood stage.
How do children develop their critical thinking abilities? Unlike common sense, critical thinking doesn’t occur spontaneously. Critical thinking is something that children develop mainly through the external environment.
Providing much space for children to engage in various activities that allow them to develop their critical thinking abilities makes them better at dealing with different scenarios as they move forward in life.
What are the critical thinking skills in early childhood?
You might have seen how certain people have exceptional skills to act according to the situation, analyze, evaluate, and solve things much better than others.
What makes them capable of it? If humans properly develop their critical thinking abilities during the early childhood stage, it will likely help them cope with different situations in their daily lives.
Living in a complex and highly interconnected society, everyone must enhance their critical thinking skills because they are essential in many practical life scenarios.
As mentioned before, critical thinking doesn’t happen in a spontaneous manner. However, as Ellen Galinsky explained, children are curious, and it creates the foundation for them to think critically.
Along with their curiosity, allowing children to interact with peers and learn from others, encouraging them to make decisions and follow their good interests, will also evolve their critical thinking in the early childhood stage.
In the below section, you can find some of the most important critical thinking abilities to develop in early childhood.
- Problem-solving skills
Problem-solving is an essential critical thinking skill. How should one act in a problem or a conflict situation? If you need to tackle a problem systematically, it is essential to think critically.
Problems have solutions, and achieving them might not be as easy as it sounds; nonetheless, approaching them the correct way will significantly help attain the solutions. You should teach your children to create answers for the everyday scenarios they deal with.
That doesn’t mean you should never help them find answers; if you can support them in a way that will help to spark more curiosity in them, that will be much more effective.
When children explore things independently, they become more observant, increasing their ability to think critically and find potential answers to problems.
- Evaluation
There are many ways how we possess information; the real concern is whether we should accept all data as they are. Evaluation is another crucial aspect of critical thinking.
When children learn to evaluate given information, they gradually understand what needs to be accepted or what is correct and what is not.
- Interpretation
Previously we discussed evaluation as a critical thinking skill that needed to be developed in early childhood. Learning how to evaluate information is a must. Just like evaluation, interpretation is also a necessary critical thinking skill.
As said, children get exposed to information in several ways. In the most uncomplicated sense, interpretation refers to the ability to comprehend the given information and communicate the processed information to others.
Suppose you present some data to a child; how do you figure out they observed it correctly? Interpretation allows for solving this concern.
If we take a group of children and present them with the same information, all the children might not explain them the same way. It varies according to their ability to interpret the information.
- Comparing and contrasting
Comparing and contrasting are valuable critical thinking skills to practice in early childhood. What is comparing and contrasting? These terms sound similar to a great extent, and they have a fine line between them.
If we are to give a simple explanation, comparing is referred to as spotting similarities and differences; on the other hand, contrasting involves comparing two more objects or events to manifest how one is different from the other.
Improving comparing and contrasting skills allows children to analyze various things and respond to them or critically understand them.
- Self-regulation
Another vital skill linked with critical thinking is self-regulation. It is indeed essential to help children to practice self-regulation from the youngest age.
Self-regulation is the ability of an individual to manage their own behavior and reactions. Self-regulation is a gradual process that humans go through in various stages of their life.
However, the basic foundation for self-regulation is created in early childhood. When a child learns how to regulate themselves, it will benefit them a lot in dealing with complex situations and, most importantly, thrive themselves to achieve their long-term goals.
Final thoughts
In this article, we attempted to understand critical thinking skills in early childhood. As clearly pointed out, humans develop their critical thinking abilities in early childhood.
Therefore it is essential to encourage them and make space for them to engage in various things that help them to enhance their critical thinking abilities.
Critical thinking can be a broad term within which a number of skills can be discussed. All these skills are essential to practice from a young age as they will be crucial life skills in the long run.
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