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Review: Critical and Creative 2

I really like having a critical thinking class in our homeschool. It is a really important skills that all children should learn. We have used this booklet previously and the reason I kept it was because our daughter really likes to use it. There will be coloring, drawing, fill in the blank, multiple choice questions, word scrabbles and a lot of writing in Critical and Creative 2. Besides critical thinking skills there are also math and literacy skills in this workbook. There are 6 main subjects covered which are throughout the year, animals, places, time to eat, human body and my world. Each sub section has a 3 pages to complete over that topic. Some main topics have more sub sections than others the biggest being animals and my world. There is not a lot of work to complete on each page but the work is pretty fun for kids to do. Critical thinking class is one that our daughter always loves and I have no issues with her completing the assignments in a timely manner. All of the sub topics will be ones your kids probably already knows about like groundhog day, mice, the kitchen, breakfast, my teeth, windows and doors. 


The work is not hard for our daughter to complete and she has started 2nd grade early. The math problems are not an issue for her as she does a lot more complex problems in Math-U-See. The most difficult thing in Critical and Creative for her is doing the word scrabbles and those while not a huge challenge can be tricky for her. There is also pattern work, riddles, designing the same item/animal but making each one look different and like I said there is a lot of writing in this one. If your child is not a strong writer or does not like writing then maybe write down their answer or let them give you their answer orally. However, I think it is best for a 2nd grader to be writing on their own. There is filling in the missing letters. This maybe a challenge if your child is not a stronger reader or speller. But anything that is challenging for them will help them learn more than things that are super easy. 



While this is a critical thinking booklet I would suggest getting one that has more things in it or one that goes more in-depth with the questions. There are lots of topics that Critical and Creative covers but I am not entirely sure that it is enough for getting kid's little brains working. I find that a lot of it is just asking simple questions that our daughter is able to easily answer. That being said she is quite advanced for her age. I kept it for this year because our daughter really likes it and I did go ahead and get the 3rd grade version of this book. We got ours from Timberdoodle with our custom 2nd grade kit. What do you use for critical thinking? Do you have a critical thinking class in your homeschool? Let us know in the comment section below.


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