Building Thinking Skills

Building Thinking Skills is the flagship reasoning series from The Critical Thinking Co., a family-owned publisher operating since 1958. It is one of the few homeschool titles that sits on the supplementary shelves of gifted-education coordinators, classical academies, and secular K-8 co-ops without anyone having to apologize for it.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Subject specialist, workbook-based, consumable
Worldview	Secular
Grades	PreK-12 (four leveled volumes plus primary readiness)
Formats	Print workbook, Kindle/eBook, teacher guide supplements
Cost tier	Budget
Parent intensity	2 (self-directed once a student can read directions)
ESA-common	Yes (commonly approved where secular supplements qualify)
Accredited	No
Established	1958 (company page)
Website	criticalthinking.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Careful sequencing from simple matching to formal analogies; strong at pattern logic.
Ease of teaching	5	Almost nothing for the parent to present; the workbook carries the lesson.
Content quality	4	Items are well-constructed and genuinely discriminating, not filler.
Flexibility	5	Pairs with any core curriculum, any method, any worldview.
Value for money	5	Full levels run $30-$43 and last half a year or more.
Worldview scope	5	No religious or ideological content; usable anywhere.
Visual/design	3	Clean but utilitarian; the color editions are a real upgrade.
Support resources	3	Printable samples and instruction eBooks; no video and no community.

Who the publisher is

The Critical Thinking Co. is a California publisher that has been in the workbook business for more than sixty-five years. According to the company history page, the firm was founded in 1958 by John Baker as Midwest Publications, originally producing supplementary mathematics and reading materials for classroom teachers. It remains family-owned; Michael Baker, John's son, has led the company for decades. The rebranding to The Critical Thinking Co. reflected a strategic narrowing: the house decided its durable advantage was not general test prep but the specific craft of designing reasoning exercises that work.

The Building Thinking Skills series is the company's signature line. The series sits in a curious market position, its primary purchasers have historically been school districts and gifted-and-talented coordinators, not homeschool families. Its adoption by homeschoolers is a secondary market that has grown steadily since the early 1990s, when classical educators began recommending the workbooks as supplements to formal logic study. The Building Thinking Skills product listing describes the series as developing reasoning necessary for "reading, writing, math, science, social studies, and standardized tests," which is both the publisher's pitch and an accurate description of what the workbooks do.

The Critical Thinking Co. catalog is broad, it publishes Mathematical Reasoning, Language Smarts, Editor in Chief, Mind Benders, Balance Benders, and dozens of other titles. Building Thinking Skills is the house's most cited product among homeschool families and the one most likely to be named when an outside educator asks which Critical Thinking Co. workbook to start with.

The core pedagogy

Building Thinking Skills teaches reasoning through pattern recognition, classification, and analogy, sequenced across four main levels: Primary (kindergarten through first grade), Level 1 (second through third), Level 2 (fourth through sixth), and Level 3 (seventh grade and up, which splits into separate Figural and Verbal volumes). Each level drills the same underlying skills, similarities and differences, sequences, classifications, analogies, at an age-appropriate difficulty, first with shapes and images (figural reasoning) and then with words and concepts (verbal reasoning).

The pedagogical posture is Piaget-adjacent and pragmatic rather than theoretical. The workbooks do not try to teach formal logic vocabulary at the elementary level, no syllogisms, no fallacy catalog, no set theory, and they do not cite philosophers. The instruction sits on the page: a worked example, then a graduated set of problems, then progressively harder variations. A child who works through Level 2 will have internalized the structure of an analogy ("A is to B as C is to D") without ever having been lectured on the word analogy.

The signature mechanics are three. (1) Parallel figural and verbal tracks. Every reasoning type is practiced first with images and then with words, so a student who stumbles on verbal analogies often unlocks the concept by returning to the figural version. (2) Consumable, self-grading format. Problems have clean answers; the teacher key is short; a diligent student can grade from it. (3) Mixed-difficulty pages. Unlike drill workbooks that repeat a single exercise form across a page, Building Thinking Skills alternates problem types so a student cannot autopilot through thirty identical items.

The four-level structure is rare in supplementary workbooks, most competitors ship a single grade-specific title. Building Thinking Skills instead offers a multi-year progression that some families run as their only formal logic instruction from kindergarten through middle school.

A day in the life

A third-grader using Level 1 opens the workbook at the page marked from yesterday and works for twenty to thirty minutes. The morning's set might include six pairs of shapes to compare (finding the relationship, rotation, reflection, size change), a sequence puzzle requiring the next figure in a series, and a page of word-pair analogies ("shoe is to foot as glove is to ___"). The parent is nearby, available for a question, not presenting, and checks the completed pages at the end of the week using the answer key.

Upper-level use shifts. A ninth-grader tackling Level 3 Verbal typically works a set of exercises a few times a week as a warm-up to Latin, formal logic, or standardized-test prep. A session runs fifteen to thirty minutes, and a determined student finishes the book across a semester. Many homeschool families sequence Building Thinking Skills Level 3 alongside a more formal logic program (Martin Cothran's Traditional Logic is the common pairing) on the theory that the workbook trains pattern recognition while the logic text teaches argument structure.

What they do exceptionally well

Pattern-logic instruction that genuinely transfers. Our editorial view, drawn from reviewing the full series at April 2026 pricing, is that Building Thinking Skills is one of the few reasoning products whose claimed transfer effect actually shows up in other work. Students who complete Levels 1 and 2 handle standardized-test analogies with noticeably less coaching; they also perform better on the figural sections of cognitive-abilities tests used for gifted identification. This is probably why gifted-and-talented coordinators buy the series in bulk.

Teacher-light format. The workbooks are designed to be handed to a student who can read. A parent does not need to pre-read the lesson, present a concept, or moderate a discussion. For a family running multiple grades or a parent whose teaching bandwidth is already committed to core subjects, this is not a trivial feature.

Price-to-content ratio. At $29.99 for Primary, $37.99 for Level 1, $42.99 for Level 2, and $32.99-$39.99 for the two Level 3 volumes per the product page as of April 2026, the series costs roughly what one evening out costs and lasts a semester. Comparable products from Mindware, Logic of English, and most classical presses run two to three times per unit of instructional time.

What they do poorly

Thin on argumentation and fallacy. Building Thinking Skills teaches reasoning patterns; it does not teach argument. A student can finish Level 3 without ever having analyzed an editorial, identified an ad hominem, or constructed a syllogism. Families who expect the series to function as a complete logic program, rather than as a reasoning supplement, are routinely disappointed. Pair it with a formal logic text if critical argument is the goal.

Aesthetics are dated. The black-and-white line art in the older volumes, and the somewhat clunky color in the newer editions, will not win design awards. Families coming from the glossy production values of The Good and the Beautiful or Memoria Press will notice the difference on the first opening. Whether this matters depends on the student.

No instructional scaffolding for struggling learners. The workbook assumes a child who can already follow written directions and identify a pattern when shown two examples. Students who need more modeling, more practice per concept, or a verbal walk-through will stall. The series is not a remedial product; it is an enrichment product that happens to work across a broad range of students.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick Building Thinking Skills if: you want an inexpensive, parent-light logic or reasoning supplement to run alongside any curriculum; your student is at or above grade level and benefits from pattern work; you are preparing for gifted-and-talented testing or standardized analogies; you want a secular option that pairs cleanly with a religious core; you are in a state ESA program that approves secular supplements.

• Skip Building Thinking Skills if: you want a complete formal-logic program with fallacy instruction and argument analysis; your student struggles with reading and needs teacher-led modeling; you prefer narrative or literature-based pedagogy over workbook drills; you want a single all-in-one program and do not want to add supplements; aesthetics are a primary factor in your materials choice.

Cost honest assessment

Per the Critical Thinking Co. product page in April 2026, the paperbacks run $29.99 (Primary), $37.99 (Level 1), $42.99 (Level 2), $32.99 (Level 3 Figural), and $39.99 (Level 3 Verbal). A family running the full K-through-high-school sequence spends roughly $185 across a decade of instruction. Separate instruction guide eBooks sell for $19.99 to $24.99 and are optional.

Compared to Memoria Press's Traditional Logic I and II (roughly $60-$75 per level with a DVD, single-year course), Classical Academic Press's The Art of Argument ($34.95 student text plus $30 teacher's edition per the CAP catalog), and Mindware's Perplexors single-level workbooks (around $12 per title), Building Thinking Skills sits in the middle of the reasoning-supplement pricing band and delivers more instructional weeks per dollar than any competitor we surveyed. For a family operating at the budget tier, it is among the strongest value propositions in the entire supplementary market.

ESA eligibility notes

Building Thinking Skills is secular, consumable, and published by an established educational publisher, a combination that typically clears ESA vendor review without issue. The series appears on the approved-vendor lists for Arizona ESA (ClassWallet), Utah Fits All, and Florida's Step Up for Students marketplace through standard curriculum vendors. Families in states that restrict "consumable" materials or require standards alignment documentation should confirm eligibility with their administrator before ordering; the publisher does not itself run an ESA portal.

Alternatives

• Mindware Perplexors, Analogy Challenges, and Logic Countdown, a family would choose Mindware over Building Thinking Skills for the more playful presentation, shorter page counts, and greater variety per title, at the cost of a less coherent multi-year progression.
• Memoria Press Traditional Logic I and II (Martin Cothran), a family would choose Memoria over Building Thinking Skills when the goal is formal Aristotelian logic, argument analysis, and syllogism construction rather than pattern reasoning.
• Classical Academic Press The Art of Argument, a family would choose CAP over Building Thinking Skills for a middle-school-friendly introduction to informal logic and fallacy identification, with optional self-paced video instruction.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed The Critical Thinking Co.'s product listings at criticalthinking.com, the company's published corporate history, and comparable titles from Mindware, Memoria Press, and Classical Academic Press. We cross-referenced against Cathy Duffy's review of Critical Thinking Co. titles and the HSLDA publisher directory. Prices and program details verified April 2026.