We have two main kitchen drawers that hold most of our utensils–all the forks, knives, spoons-yes…but also, spreaders, scoops, beaters for the mixer, baby spoons (even though my youngest is in college and there are no grandbabies on the horizon), you get the idea.😂)
And much as I try to keep it organized with dividers and culling the stuff we don’t actually use…it still gets junky.
One day, I just couldn’t take it any more and emptied everything out of both drawers onto the counter and realized if I moved the measuring spoons into a different drawer, it would free up tons of space and essentially make my life perfect.
OK, not perfect, but much improved.😆
Can you relate?!
The funny thing is, in the weeks since I rearranged all this, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened the “other” drawer and just stared…wondering what in the world I did with the measuring spoons.
Thankfully, I usually remember pretty quickly and move on with life, but isn’t it funny how we operate on muscle memory…until that thing isn’t there?
The activity below, “Which One Doesn’t Belong?” builds critical thinking skills by making our brains look for similarities and differences….
We do that every day already–but we rarely think about it. It’s the thinking that is important….called metacognition…thinking about thinking.
And it all works together inside our minds to build our critical thinking skills.
💡With your learner, take a moment to think about the four pictures.
➡Come up with more than one answer and tell why it’s the one that doesn’t belong.
💡If you hear, “I don’t know why it doesn’t belong…it just doesn’t!”…then encourage taking some time to formulate a response.
💛If your learner is really struggling with the reason (frankly, that is the most challenging and also the most important part of this activity), you might ask…did you choose the dolphin because ________?
Often, even if the reason you suggest is NOT the reason they were thinking of, just hearing a reason can help to form the reason that they WERE thinking of…
It’s kind of interesting how that works!
💡Model that yourself. (“Give me a minute to think about my reason.”)
{Some possible answers are free for Successful Parent Subscribers (also free to join). Click here if you want to get some suggestions!}
📣Once you get some ideas flowing, talk about it together! It’s so interesting to hear what someone else noticed that you didn’t.
This activity is just one example of how 5 minutes can be used to build critical thinking skills.
