Specific Resources for Teaching Children Logic

In response to a question on Facebook (Hi, EH! 🙂 !), I was trying to think through exactly what resources I have used for teaching logic to children.

For my 5th and 6th graders this year, I was basically winging it (creating handouts and outlines based on where our discussions took us each week and based on old logic textbooks that a college professor gave me in the late 1980’s—does that make me sound ancient or what?!). But we were also helped by:

This (wonderful! free!) “Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies” poster. (The creator of which contacted me this spring because he is doing a TED Talk on teaching logic to children! How great is that?!)
An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments
The Art of Argument
The Thinking Toolbox and The Fallacy Detective

For younger children, we enjoy:

Attribute Blocks and Analogy and Sequence Games
Set and Blokus (probably our two favorite family games!)
Anything and everything from The Critical Thinking Co.
Super fun logic games like … Chocolate Fix, Qwirkle, Kanoodle, ZooLogic, and Safari Undercover

And I look forward to going through books like these as my children get older (some of which are in the queue for next year with my ten year-old):

One last note … my ten year-old has also been incredibly blessed to study Latin and French with two (amazing and generous) women from our church and to study violin with the extraordinary Laura Dalbey (also an amazing and generous woman from our church). I firmly believe that languages and music are “push-ups for the brain” too.

Hope that helps!

Blessings and joy,
Tara B.

PS
Please remember that if you click through to Amazon and actually purchase anything, our family receives a few pennies and we are grateful.

PPS
I am not under any delusions that super young children or even young children actually understand and remember everything we talk about. I’m (just about) 44 years old and I certainly don’t understand (more or less retain) everything I study and learn. But just as I try to discuss theological concepts that are “beyond” them (I love hearing three year olds explain sin as “any lack of conformity to or transgression of the law of God”—so great!); and I am introduce peacemaking to babies and toddlers, I also think that there are benefits to even just introducing these concepts to children. They may retain specifics. They may just remember that somewhere, out there, wise men and women have thought through these difficult issues and there are resources to help us to think through these difficult issues too. Either way, it’s worth it. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is our duty.

Especially for those of us who live in countries where philosophical naturalism is the prevailing worldview, it seems to me that those of us who agree with Professor Johnson (of the University of California, Berkeley) that such a position is merely an “unproved metaphysical assumption,” and with Professor Vitale (of Oxford) that belief in God can stand up against any intellectual arguments that are thrown at it, we have a particular duty to (gently, humbly, but insightfully) stand ready to (logically) “give an answer for the hope we have” (1 Peter 3:15).