Disclosure: I received this complimentary product through the Homeschool Review Crew
In today’s day and age, I feel like we need to train our children to discern lies from truths more than ever! Learning critical thinking and logical reasoning are important skills to teach our children. If you want a fun and engaging way to teach your children about logical fallacies then look no further than The Fallacy Detective book from Hans and Nathaniel Bluedorn.
What is a Fallacy anyways?
If this term is new to you, you may be wondering “what exactly is a fallacy anyway?”. A fallacy is “an error in logic – a place where someone has made a mistake in his or her thinking.”
After completing the book, you should: know how to spot bad reasoning, put a higher value on good reasoning, and know-how to avoid fallacies in your own reasoning.
What’s inside the book?
Inside you will find 38 lessons under the following topics:
- The Inquiring Mind
- Avoiding the Question
- Making Assumptions
- Statistical Fallacies
- Propaganda
You’ll also find The Fallacy Detective Game and an answer key for checking your answers to each lesson. I particularly love the illustrations and comics that are included. They really help to give examples of the different types of fallacies, plus, who doesn’t love to read a comic as part of their learning!
How have we been using the book?
It is suggested to use this book with ages 12+. There are a few different ways you can go through the book. You can have yourself or your students go through the lessons independently, you can work with your child to go through the lessons and discuss the content together, or you could read the lessons aloud to multiple students and then go over the exercises together to create a group discussion.
I have been reading through the lessons myself to start with, so that I can have a good handle on the material before having my oldest two children work through it. My eldest, who is 14 shouldn’t have any trouble working on the book independently, but I can see my 11 year old needing me to go through it with her.
My plan is to read the lessons to them and then ask them the exercise questions. My hope is that we can have a good discussion together, it will be neat to see how they agree or disagree about the different fallacies.
My Thoughts
I feel like the lessons are fairly easy to understand, with many examples given. I think the age range given is quite accurate as well. I’m looking forward to getting into more detail on the lessons with my children. I think this book would be a great addition to any homeschool or home library, as we all need to be training ourselves to discern between good and bad reasoning!
You can find out more about The Fallacy Detective through their social media pages:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fallacydetective
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hansbluedorn/
I’d also like to encourage you to read the other reviews done by my fellow review crew members. Some have also reviewed another book from the same company, called Archer and Zowie.
Want to read more of my homeschool related reviews? Find them here: Homeschool Reviews
