7 Ways to Teach Logic on the Sly

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Are you stressing about introducing logic to your dialectic pre-teen? Feeling guilty about never studying formal logic with your teenager? Looking for ways to teach logic on the sly?

Look no further! Teaching logic doesn’t have to add time to the school day. You can spend time encouraging the kids to delve into informal logic in their free time.

Take the situation of two sons taking a lunch break and playing Stratego together. The kids think they’re just having fun. In fact, they’re studying logic and strategy!

1. Stratego

It’s a fun strategy game that my sons happily spend hours playing. It’s rather like playing a blend of checkers and capture-the-flag… without being able to see the opponent’s piece.

If you’re lucky, you just attacked a weak piece and take the ground. If not, your piece loses.

Can you defend your flag, take the opponent’s, and win the game?

It’s a fun strategy game that my sons happily spend hours playing. It’s rather like playing a blend of checkers and capture-the-flag… without being able to see the opponent’s piece.

If you’re lucky, you just attacked a weak piece and take the ground. If not, your piece loses. Can you defend your flag, take the opponent’s, and win the game?

My sons and their friends love this game and spend hours playing it, honing their logic skills.

Stratego

2. Logic Puzzles

My 6th-grade math teacher introduced these to my class and I fell in love.

Logic puzzles are fun for children and adults to solve.

You’re given a puzzle such as 4 kids and a parent went to the zoo. The kings went to see the lions. The child in the yellow shirt saw the tigers. Suzy Brown and her mom saw the elephants.

So on and so forth.

Now you have to figure out which child, parent, shirt, and animal go together. There’s a nifty chart to create. If you follow the logic correctly, you solve the puzzle!

Logic Puzzles

3. Crosswords

Crossword books are fun and useful to keep in your purse.

You can pull them out when you’re stuck sitting in a doctor’s office, in the car, or at ballet lessons.

Each child can have their own set of puzzles to work on.

Crosswords build vocabulary and the logic skills to think through various definitions of words and events.

They also improve spelling!

Thankfully, there are many different levels of crosswords from easy to difficult. Find an easier level to start and work up to the difficult puzzles from there!

Crosswords

4. Chess

The age-old classic game of strategy. Generations have spent hours honing their logical skills by playing chess.

It’s a wonderful game still for our own children. Parents can play against children.

There are books to read about various strategies to win.

As the children become passionate about chess, there are also many, many, many chess groups and clubs.

Teens can travel to tournaments and win trophies! And a couple of my children have done just that!

Chess

5. One to Five Minute Mysteries

These are fascinating short stories that keep you reading and thinking.

As you read, take note of all the information and details.

Because somewhere in the story are the clues to solve the mystery.

Can you find the clues and solve the mystery?

Can your children?

These are great books to keep in your purse, in the bathroom, or in the car. Kids love the stories and seeing if they can out-think the detectives!

One to Five Minute Mysteries

6. Sudoku

Sudoku is a new puzzle that uses numbers instead of words.

The goal is to have all nine digits in each column, row, and square. But you can’t have the same digit any any column, row, or square.

You can start with an easy Sudoku puzzle before moving on to difficult and complex puzzles.

These puzzles can be found in newspapers and books.

Again the books are a great size to slip into the purse to pull out when you’re stuck with bored kids. The Sudoku forces the kids to think instead of complaining!

Sudoku

7. Rubix Cubes

Remember these from our childhood?

I don’t know about you, but I spent hours trying to solve mine.

But my daughter actually managed to solve hers! It’s fascinating to watch her with a mixed-up Rubix Cube.

She studies it for several minutes, slowly turning it in her hands.

Suddenly her hands start to fly. A few minutes later, the Rubix Cube is solved!

Rubix Cubes

Here are just a few ways to teach logic on the sly. The kids have fun, never realizing they’re actually educating themselves!

Do you teach your children logic on the sly?

we do logic on the sly!

17 Comments

  1. Great ideas! I remember being introduced to those logic puzzles and loving them too! For some reason my memory is taking me back to doing them to pass time in hospital waiting rooms. Learning on the sly…love it =)

  2. Great ideas! I love to use games for logic – we play Blokus and Set – those are 2 of our favorites for logic. We don’t have Stratego… think I’ll be adding that to our family game Christmas list!

  3. These are great logic-building activities! I’ve heard so many great things about Stratego… I will have to give it a try some time. Ohhh the Rubix Cube! Such a classic!

    Thanks for sharing (and for linking up to the #SHINEbloghop)!

    Have a great weekend.
    xoxo

  4. My oldest has taken to bring home whatever was interesting from her school day and talking it over with me. It lets me ask her questions, share her ideas and point out logical flaws. We have a great conversation at her instigation and her logic muscles are flexed.

    1. That’s a wonderful way to add logic to the day, follow what she’s doing in school, and enjoy time together! Thanks for sharing, Helene. 🙂

  5. One of our favorite games to play is Settlers of Catan. It is very strategy based and, for me, is way more fun than chess. Even my 7 year old plays it and you can see the wheels turning as he tries to decide how to plan his next move. Board games can be an great way to learn on the sly; I love that you included them.

    1. Settlers of Catan is a favorite game around here! Board games are a wonderful way to augment kids’ education without burdening them with excessive amounts of busywork. 🙂

  6. Found you through mom-2-mom-monday-link-up.
    I love this idea. Logic can be a hard concept to teach a kid with autism, but they use logic often. So, these are fun ways to help them utilize logic.

  7. Great points… my kids love to do these things… and do a lot of them… plus I can think of all kinds of other ways that we implement logic in real life… 🙂 Thank you for the post.

  8. What fun ways to teach logic!

    Thank you for stopping by the Thoughtful Spot Weekly Blog Hop this week. We hope to see you drop by our neck of the woods next week!

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