Loving Logic Books

Because I am so super organised (NOT!) I ran out of printer ink this week and therefore The Fashionista could not photocopy her maths pages. She just photocopies the ones she needs as she's ready for them, as there's 6 pages in each section and we often find she only needs to do one before she's saying just give me the test to do. I threw out over half a book once after I'd ripped out the unused pages so have learnt better now. 

So as I was racking my brain for what to do instead, I remembered that a few years back I purchased some logic type books from Blackboard Jungle, in NZ, so I went and pulled those out.

 

The first books I gave the girls to work on were Logic Links made by Mindware (educational games and toys in the US). There are different levels (age groups) for this book and we have a couple of them so they had different books/levels to work on.

 

"Logic Links helps kids build thinking skills as they reason and work out sequencing puzzles, using 48 coloured chips (included) to help them visually organise their thinking. This book includes 100 puzzles."

 

For instance how this book works is like this

1. take a green, orange and yellow chip.

2. the orange and yellow chip don't touch.

3. the green chip is to the left of the orange chip.

The child lines the chips up how they think is correct. They of course get longer with more chips as they progress.

 

Agent Smelly just LOVED these and did these for a lot longer than her sister. In fact she has finished a third of the puzzles in her book already - I should point out that she is actually doing a book that is deemed for younger children than her age.  The harder puzzles that The Fashionista worked on had two lines with up to 8 discs. I had to help on occasion and between us I had to refer to the answers in the back a couple of times ... and I am a lot older than the proposed age guide!

 

 

 

 

Once they had enough of the Logic Links I gave them some Noodlers books (I also have a green one) which were also produced by Mindware. I see on their website that they now have them as a game with cards to work on. This would be far better than the books as the crease in the middle means the sticks sometimes roll off the page which is a little frustrating. The books can still be ordered from Blackboard Jungle who are run by just the most lovely and helpful people. They stock a lot of other schooling supplies also.

"Each puzzle contains a field of shapes; your job is to separate each icon into its own area using the wooden sticks. The catch? The instructions tell you how many - or how few sticks you get to use. These books each includes 44 spatial-reasoning puzzles and 8 sticks."

They are for 8 - adult. TF really loved these books but AS found them a little hard until she got the hang of them with some help from big sister.

Even though I thought they'd do a few in each book and that would be that, they spent over two hours on these books, and they didn't even stop to eat lunch just kept working and eating at the same time. It was ever so peaceful and what went from a "oh no what will they do now" became a magical learning afternoon.

So if you have children like mine who love puzzles, then these books are a great addition to the home library or games cupboard. These would even be great at the bach (holiday home).