I often teach parents to be with their children as they work exercises so that they can 'catch their thinking', understand it, coach it for improvement, and build on it. Yesterday, was a time to be reminded and rewarded for the taking the time to follow my own advice.
I sat down with my son to do a few activities in - Scratch Your Brain and Think A Minutes. Those two books are great to leave sitting around on the end table. They make it easy to grab and engage in with little notice. No special set-up or tools are required to get the brain working.
During the course of the activity time, I found a couple of questions useful: (1) What strategy are you using to solve those problems? (I followed up with some suggestions for alternative approaches.) (2) If time were of the essence, how well would that approach serve you? (Our children approach problems in ways that may work if the goal is to get the answer...eventually. Asking him to consider a time restriction motivates him to look for alternative approaches and to evaluate the one he used.) (3) If he got an answer wrong, I asked, "What do you think led to the mistake?", and then follow up with: "How would you change your approach to eliminate that mistake?"
Because I was sitting with him while he solved those problems, I had the opportunity to evaluate his approaches, the logic in his thinking, and to suggest new strategies or perspectives.
The questions:
(1) What strategy are you using to solve those problems?
(2) If time were a factor, how well would that approach serve you?
(3) What did you do that led to the mistake? Is there an approach you could use that would eliminate that mistake?
How do you create opportunities to coach your children in problem-solving and thinking skills?
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