I like the question about developing a critical thinking attitude. How do we do it? As Luvern mentions in her post, young children must be given the opportunity to think for themselves, to make decisions themselves--in her words, "make personal ideas." The small things truly matter, for instance, "how can I get the water from this carafe into my cup without spilling?"
We adults are compelled to hustle over to them and show them exactly what to do, or at least tell them from where we are not to spill, how to hold the cup, where to push on the lever, etc. These put anxiety on the child and detract from the child's creative and critical thinking about the issue at hand. We can clearly see they want to try, they even beg to do it themselves from a young age. If we berate them for a "failure" of spilling water, we beat down their desire to think with careful awareness and detail about what they are doing, because they will fear us, fear doing "wrong." We become too easily impatient with young children trying to make decisions about how to do things, how to act, because it takes time and we adults are typically in a hurry. Something so mundane as getting a cup of water shouldn't require adults to wait, clean a mess, wait, clean another mess, and so on! Oh, but it should. It must.
