Problem Solving Activities for Kids

Sorted by the kind of thinking each one demands, rather than by how they photograph. A child stuck on one type is not stuck on all of them.

Pattern and sequence

What comes next, and why. Jigsaws, which are pattern-matching with a self-checking answer. Sequence puzzles. Tangrams. Anything where the rule has to be inferred rather than stated.

Good for: children who leap to a guess. These reward looking before deciding.

Constraint

A goal plus a limitation. Build a bridge from twenty spaghetti strands. Get across the room without touching the floor. Make lunch using only what is in the fridge.

Good for: children who freeze without instructions. Constraints paradoxically make starting easier, because the space is smaller.

Trade-off

Where you cannot have everything. Plan a day out on a fixed budget. Choose which three of six things to pack. Decide what to drop when the timetable is too full.

Good for: older children, and the closest to adult problems. Nothing here has a correct answer, only better and worse ones.

Deduction

Working out what must be true. Logic grids. Guess Who. Twenty questions, played properly with questions that halve the field. Cluedo. Sudoku.

Good for: building the habit of eliminating rather than guessing.

Diagnosis

Finding why something is broken. A bike that will not change gear. A recipe that failed. A program that does not run. A torch that does not light.

Good for: everyone, and the most transferable. Diagnosis is the skill most adults actually use.

Open-ended making

No stated problem at all. Loose parts, junk modelling, a box of components. The child has to find the problem before solving it.

Good for: children who are excellent at set tasks and lost without one, which is more common in high-achieving children than is usually noticed.

The two rules

Wait. Count to twenty before helping. Most children solve it in the silence, and the solving is the entire point.

Ask rather than tell. What have you tried? Which part is the hard bit? That second question is unusually powerful, because narrowing a problem to its difficult part is most of the work.

An activity where the adult supplies the method is not a problem-solving activity, whatever it says on the box.