Do you use logic games to grow critical thinking in your classroom? Not only are logic games great for expanding thinking and reasoning skills, but they are lots of fun! Adding some logic games and activities to your lessons is the perfect way to up student engagement and challenge your advanced learners. Looking for ways to get started? Come along as we discuss some of my favorite fun logic activities for kids!
Why Use Logic Activities?
What exactly is logic and why do we need to teach it? Teaching logic in the primary classroom is essential for long-term success. Logic prepares students for real life by showing students how to use reasoning and deduction to study a problem objectively and then make a rational conclusion.
Logic is used every day in real-life scenarios and is very important for young students to practice! Making room for logic activities in your classroom will help prepare your students for difficult situations, hard life decisions, and tricky problem-solving in the future. As teachers, we need to make room for logic in our lessons to help best equip our students for what’s to come!
Ways To Use Logic Activities
There are so many great ways to teach logic in the primary grades. I am a big fan of using a variety of activities to maintain high levels of interest in our lessons. Some of the things I like to incorporate when teaching logic and critical thinking in my classroom include:
- Puzzles (like Sudoku, Matrixes & Magic Squares)
- Board Games
- Sequencing Games
- Analogy Activities
- Comparing & Contrasting Activities
- Sorting & Classification Games
- Center Activities
By providing a mix of these activities to your students, you can ensure that engagement will stay high! You want to aim to provide a challenge to your students while still keeping the material on a manageable level. In other words, you want to ignite critical thinking skills but not choose activities that are so difficult that your students can’t solve them. Want a closer look at the activities we use? Here are a few of my all-time faves!
Logic Puzzles
When it comes to teaching logic and critical thinking, I love puzzles! Puzzles are appealing to a variety of ages and are a great way to target critical thinking skills. One of my favorite puzzle types will always be Sudoku. It is easily adaptable for a variety of topics, quick to explain to children, and fun for everyone!
Matrix puzzles and Magic Squares are other fun options that can be used in both print and digital options. Students will work to develop skills in logical thinking, problem solving, making inferences, drawing conclusions, recognizing similarities and differences, and comparing and contrasting. Logic puzzles help to reinforce reading by using picture and context clues as well as math skills including ordinal positions, greater than and less than, time, and size comparisons.
To keep things interesting all year long, I use logic puzzles and activities in my classroom that fit specific themes. We work through each of the themes throughout the year like fall, winter, spring, and summer to continue targeting logic and critical thinking skills. I have found that thematic teaching makes all the difference when it comes to maintaining high levels of student engagement!
If you’d like to try logic puzzles in your classroom, be sure to grab my Free Logic Puzzles Sampler pack which includes 3 matrix logic puzzles, 1 Soduko logic puzzle, and 1 Magic Square logic puzzle. This is a great way to test out logic puzzles in your classroom and see what they are all about!
Logic Board Games
Another great, classroom-friendly option for targeting logic and reasoning skills includes board games. There are so many great board games out there that are perfect for classroom center time, early finisher activities, and fun Friday! Some of my go-to’s include:
Battleship: Battleship is a classic game that all my primary students have LOVED over the years. Battleship promotes critical thinking as children make guesses as to where their opponent’s ships are hiding. Children will use deductive reasoning to make their next move! I like to offer this game as an option for early finishers in my classroom.
Set: Set is a great game for targeting logic and critical thinking skills. This game challenges players to race as they find as many “sets” of cards as they can. The cards feature different shapes, colors, and number groupings to create a challenge. This card is perfect for center time!
Mastermind: Mastermind is a great option for working on deductive reasoning skills in a fun way. To play, one student will take the role of “Codemaker”. The Codemaker sets a secret code, then the Codebreaker tries to match the code using logic and deduction skills. After each move, the Codemaker gives clues to the Codebreaker. The children’s version of this game is great for early elementary students or try the original version if you want to further challenge your kids!
Connect 4: Everyone loves to play Connect 4! I love this game for the classroom because it’s super simple, and quick to play and the students love it. This is the perfect early finisher game since it doesn’t take too long to play from start to finish.
Any of these games are the perfect addition to your stash of logic activities and great to pull out at a moment’s notice. Whether you make them available for special occasions, like a fun Friday, or use them regularly for fast finishers, these are great quick and easy options to further logic and reasoning skills!
Logic Activities Center
Another great option for integrating logic activities into your daily lessons is to have a year-round logic center in your classroom. You can easily swap out the activities available in this center week to week and help your students target critical thinking skills on a regular basis. In your logic center, you could include a variety of activities like puzzles and board games.
I also like to incorporate center games and logic activities that focus on critical thinking skills like comparing and contrasting.
A great topic for this is common nouns. We use a fun activity that allows students to work on comparing and category sorting for common nouns. This “Which One Doesn’t Belong” activity will not only help students develop their logical thinking skills, but it will also expand vocabulary, making it a win-win for me! I use these task cards and worksheets all year long in the logic activities center.
In addition to board games, puzzles, and classification activities, I like to make sure I rotate some other options like analogy games. Analogies are a fun way to get kids thinking, analyzing, and making comparisons in a new way. As an added benefit, these games also promote vocabulary development! I like to use analogy activities that incorporate a slide show to serve as an introduction and then place some fun task cards in our logic center for students to practice with.
Get Started with Logic Activities
There are so many fun options to try when comes to logic activities! In my opinion, the key is variety! Students like to be challenged with new games, puzzles, and activities so don’t be afraid to switch things up on a regular basis and keep those kids thinking!
All of these logic activities are the perfect addition to your primary classroom. Whether you use them as a whole class activity, in centers, as morning work, or as an early finisher activity – you can’t go wrong adding logic activities to your classroom routine.
And if you’re looking to add some more variety, be sure to check out all the logic activities in my shop. Once you set up your own logic center, these resources are the perfect way to keep your activities fresh and fun for your students! Have fun diving into critical thinking activities with your kiddos!
And. . . don’t forget to grab the Free Puzzle Sampler Pack!
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