This year we started studying logic using The Fallacy Detective book and we have complemented our book study with this fun Thinkfun game, Dog Crimes. Coincidentally, they are both dog themed!
We’ve had a lot of fun with both resources and have learned to recognize fallacies and some predictable logical patterns. It’s been a new and different kind of brain work out that we have all enjoyed!
The game comes with 40 challenge cards of different difficulty levels. Each card tells the dog’s crime – for example, “Who ruined the shoes?” and has a list of clues about where all the dogs were and what they were doing. The player places the dog tokens around the board to visually establish what they have deduced from the clues. Once all the dog tokens are in the proper places based on the clues, he should have the correct dog sitting in front of the crime token and have caught the dog culprit!
The expert puzzles are challenging! Usually my boys have to read the clues aloud and think them through two or three times before they get everything right. It’s a great exercise in persistence and reading comprehension, besides reasoning and logic.
The game is so great and the book is fantastic too. It goes through a different logical fallacy each chapter and then has some exercises to practice. My boys really enjoy thinking these brain puzzles through so much – they discuss and argue and debate and celebrate when they have the right answer. My kids now point out the more obvious logical fallacies all the time – red herrings are their favorite.
I’ve discovered that I commit the red herring fallacy all the time. They never miss a chance to point it out to me…
Have you studied logic? What resources have you found and liked? We’ve loved a bunch of Thinkfun games, they are great for exactly this kind of problem solving/critical thinking/reasoning practice.
What’s your favorite Thinkfun game???
{This is a sponsored review. I received the game free of charge to facilitate this review, but all opinions are my own.}
