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"My Humorous and Helpful Thoughts About Teaching / Educational Resources for Your Classroom / Music and Random Fun"

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

How to Solve Logic Puzzles

After thirty years of teaching gifted and talented students, logic was one of my kids' most popular activities. They really seemed to enjoy the challenge! If you've never done it, it's not tough to get started. Once kids know how to fill out a grid, it's a print and go activity.



gifted and talented, bright kids


No matter how old the child, if they've never solved a logic problem, I start them with a basic puzzle, like above. I'll treat the rows of the grid as ownership. For example, Aundrea owns all of the boxes next to her name; however, ownership is shared with the colors. Blue owns all of the boxes in the column below the word.


teaching logic, education


Next, I'll point to different boxes and ask, "Who owns this one?" Once the kids understand how the grid works, we move on to the symbols.

I will ask a child, "When you make a mistake on a paper, how does your teacher let you know something is wrong?" I am looking for the idea of an /X/ to show incorrect. Once that is understood, I introduce /O/ to show that something is right.

We will then work a puzzle together.

logic problem, puzzles

If your student is an older child, you'll need to challenge him or her with a multi-grid puzzle. These work just as the basic grids, except students are solving three puzzles at once. Also, kids will need to look at the other grids to solve the one they are working on. I call this feeding off of the grid.

matrix logic grid


Sometimes, I will use side notes to help organize my thoughts, too.


logic instruction, how to logic


Once your kids get the hang of it, logic puzzles make for great centers, work for early finishers, or just a fun and challenging reward for the students. Logic puzzles involve higher level / critical thinking skills and may be worked independently or in cooperative groups. Also, we all know the boy or girl in class who is brilliant, finishes everything early, and constantly needs something to do. Here you go!

If you'd like to give logic a try, the samples I used are from FREE products that can be downloaded at Catch My Products. Here are the links:

free logic puzzle for early grades


logic is fun


If you decide to use these logic puzzles, 
I would greatly appreciate feedback.

Thanks!





4 comments:

John Holton said...

Logic problems are a lot of fun. I always liked the ones in the Dell puzzle magazines, which could be very difficult. Great idea to teach this.

messymimi said...

Usually i mess these up somewhere, or get stuck. They are still fun to try!

Binky said...

I think you should send logic lessons to all the politicians.

Rhonda Albom said...

I have always loved logic problems. I used to get a bi-monthly catalogue of them (now I switched to killer sudoku).