Critical thinking skills are essential to succeed in everyday life, and there are ways to enhance these abilities for children of all ages.

But what is critical thinking for kids? It means being open to new ideas, arguments, and information. Children with strong critical thinking skills are rational and look for alternative ways to solve problems.

We've collected together the best critical thinking games and critical thinking exercises for kids to make them become critical thinkers!

Online Critical Thinking Games

The most effective way to improve your children’s thinking skills is to engage them with educational games. Here are critical thinking games for kids to support their school success

Critical Thinking Game

Critical Thinking Game

This fun critical thinking game for kids is all about reasoning as fast and accurately as you can. Let’s try!

Puzzle Critical Thinking Game

Puzzle Critical Thinking Game

It’s important to use your critical thinking skills even when you play with puzzles! Discover Tangram to develop it.

Math Critical Thinking Game

Math Critical Thinking Game

Critical thinking exercises and math can be the best friends! Here is a great critical thinking game with them.

Collaboration Game

Collaboration Game

Collaboration games are the best, and now it’s time to collaborate these numbers to find 10! Hurry, time is ticking!

Online Critical Thinking Game

Online Critical Thinking Game

Here is a fun critical thinking activity with candies! Attention and critical thinking skills make you eagle-eyed.

Basic Critical Thinking Game

Basic Critical Thinking Game

In this critical thinking activity for kids, they need to select the image that is appropriate for the given condition.

1 Number One Letter Game

Easy Critical Thinking Game

These fun critical thinking questions for kids are perfect for students in the early grades of school to sharpening their counting and math skills.

Cool Critical Thinking Game

Cool Critical Thinking Game

It’s a critical thinking test for kids! Use your thinking skills to find out the correct answer!

MentalUP offers 150+ critical thinking games besides attention, concentration, logic, language, visual intelligence, and memory games! 🚀✨

The best part of the multi-awarded app is all these gamified exercises are developed by pedagogues, academicians, and game designers. 🎓🙌

That’s why kids enjoy playing these games a lot; meanwhile, they boost their cognitive skills. 🤩

As parents, you can track your kids’ development with different report tools. These analyses are helpful to you in determining your kids’ strengths and the skills that need to be improved according to their peers! 📊🎯

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Critical Thinking Activities for Kids

Now, let’s take a look at some fun activities that can help you encourage younger children to improve their critical skills! These exercises can help them to think critically whether they are at home, at school, or in online classes. Critical thinking in classroom can make them more successful even in their exams, such as the Kangaroo Math Competition.

1. Encourage Thinking

Critical Thinking Questions for Kids

Children are full of questions, aren't they? So, to encourage their thinking process, you can ask them to try answering their questions or want them to answer would you rather questions for kids. And in the process, you can help them arrive at the answer using logical thinking instead of providing them with a direct answer.

It is possible to improve critical thinking skills even for preschoolers; one of the key elements of high-order thinking is making rational choices and justifying kids' own decisions.

Let's help your preschooler analyse the objects to make a logical decision themselves using critical thinking worksheets for preschoolers.

Go To Worksheets

2. Play Sorting Games

Critical Thinking Activities for Kids

Critical skills include the reasoning ability to solve real-life problems. And, of course, one of the great ways to support children’s reasoning and classification skills is sorting games that also function as strategy games for kids.

This activity will help children see the differences among various groups and enhance their understanding of the objects.

To play, you can simply ask your children to sort the same kind of objects using different features like colors, shapes, or sizes. Or if you would like to have an online solution here it is: Educational Games for 4 Year Olds

3. Solve Brain Teasers Together

Critical Thinking Examples for Kids

To trigger brain activity, you can always benefit from brain teasers. Solving any kind of brain teasers together will allow your children to learn from you and challenge their problem-solving skills at the same time.

Also, brain teasers are one of the greatest and fun critical thinking games for adults!

4. Ask Them Riddles

Riddles are also an excellent way to help your children become critical thinkers, not to mention how fun they actually are. Asking riddles as team building activities high school are great examples of critical thinking in the classroom!

Interactive Math Games for 5th Grade

So, let your children promote their reasoning, problem-solving, and many other skills with a critical thinking activity as simple as riddles!

5. Create Games from Real-life Problems

Since critical skills are absolutely necessary for our daily lives, then why not apply them to some educational activities?

Critical Thinking for Kids

You can take real-world problems like recycling or water scarcity as an open ended questions game and ask your children to think of solutions.

These kinds of pretend competition games for kids will not only boost their problem-solving skills as they focus on creative problems but also help them learn about their environment and develop their good sense.

Critical Thinking Questions and Answers for Kids

These fun critical thinking questions and answers are perfect for students in the early grades of school to sharpen their critical thinking, counting and math skills. It is also a very good alternative for kindergarten math games.

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Critical Thinking Test for Kids

Find the Path Brain Puzzle

Bip bip! Can you tell which scooter will reach the gas station?
🛵

The answer is B!

If you follow the road path, you will see that only B can reach the gas station.

Want to solve more puzzles? Let’s try MentalUP Brain Teaser for Kids

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Critical Thinking Example for Kids

Visual Brain teaser

Can you guess who is left-handed and why? 🧐

It’s irregular to serve drinks with left hand for a right-handed person. So, the answer is 5.

You’re good at hard riddles! Let’s continue with MentalUP to see your detailed performance reports.

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3

Critical Thinking Activity for Kids

People Buy Me to Eat Brain Teaser

What am I? 😋

Tip: You’re using this magic word every day!

The answer is easy. It’s a plate!

Use the app for more questions and exercises.

Play for free

4

Critical Thinking for Kids

Bus Direction Brain Teaser

Which way is the bus going? 🚌

Here is a tip for you: This is a bus in the U.K

The bus is moving left.

Because we cannot see the door of the bus in this picture!

Couldn’t find the answer? You can always do brain exercises and improve your visual attention easily with MentalUP!

get Brain Teasers App!

5

Critical Thinking Question for Kids

bear riddle

What colour was the bear?

The bear was white!

The only place you can hike 3 miles south, then east for 3 miles, then north for 3 miles and end up back at your starting point is the North Pole.

There are only polar bears in the North Pole, which are white.

Can’t find the answers? Do brain exercises and improve your problem-solving skill with MentalUP Brain Teasers App!

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Critical Thinking Game for Kids

Which Glass Gets Full First Viral Teaser

Which shadow corresponds to the image on the left? 🐓

The correct answer is D.

For more visual brain teasers for kids, download MentalUP and test your visual intelligence skills. You can see your detailed working reports and even compare your results with your peers!

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FAQ About Critical Thinking For Kids

How to improve a child’s thinking skills?

The most effective way of improving a child’s thinking skills is to support them with educational games. If you are looking for the right games to develop critical skills, you can jump right into MentalUP games specifically designed for your children. Also, don’t forget that MentalUP provides kids with lots of different options such as Math Kangaroo problems, math riddles, and puzzles to empower their critical thinking abilities.

How to raise critical thinkers?

Whether you are a parent or a teacher, you can do activities with your children to help them become critical thinkers. Some of these activities include encouraging their thinking process, playing sorting games, solving brain teasers and riddles, and creating pretend games from real-world problems.

What are the 5 critical thinking skills?

Critical thinking skills are a combination of various abilities, including analysis, evaluation, explanation, problem-solving, and decision-making. There are more elements to be included, but most people accept that these are the 5 most important critical thinking skills.

At what age does critical thinking develop?

They start developing around the age of 2 since a two-year-old can communicate, recognize objects around them, and comprehend the differences between them.

Does critical thinking increase with age?

Critical abilities are related to one’s age and education. But it can be improved with practice at all ages. For example, the list we’ve created “Best Apps for 11 Year Olds” offers a huge help for that.

Is critical thinking taught in schools?

It is a part of most educational programs, such as solving math word problems requires critical thinking skills. However, critical thinking in school must be especially encouraged by teachers to help children develop and upgrade these skills. It is possible to improve it by using suitable back to school activities.

What activities improve critical thinking?

Playing critical thinking games for kids like MentalUP, doing puzzles, and solving riddles are the most important thinking activities.

Which game is the best for thinking?

It would be wrong to choose only one game to develop any skills. Instead of looking for the best game, playing beneficial critical thinking games for kids and adults would be more helpful. MentalUP offers 150+ critical thinking games, so the brain keeps being active with different kinds of games all the time.

Is Sudoku good for critical thinking?

Sudoku is suitable as a critical thinking game that both kids and adults enjoy to play. It stimulates other types of cognitive skills like attention and concentration too, so playing Sudoku is always a good choice.

MentalUP Educational Games are designed by academicians, game designers, and scientists to support the mental development process of your children. Because they are in the category of best safe kids games, you can be at ease! 🌈 You can benefit from MentalUP, which is among the best funny apps for kids to boost their skills. 💪

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