🧠 Brain Lab · Reasoning

Strategy in kindergarten to grade 5

Planning several steps ahead to reach a goal efficiently. Daily Academy tracks it as its own skill, separately from the 4 others in brain lab, so it can never be averaged away by a subject score.

Check it tonight

In any game: “what are you going to do after that?”

What to watch for

Playing one move at a time. Looking ahead is learnable and rarely taught directly.

Real strategy questions from the library

8 activities currently target this skill. These are actual questions, shown at the difficulty they are served at, with the explanation a child sees after answering.

Difficulty 0.6 — mid grade 0
You want to reach a book on a high shelf.
What is the best thing to do?
Hint shown after a miss: Which one is most likely to work, and safest?
Explanation: Ask for help. Jumping might work and might not; asking works every time and nothing falls on your head.
Difficulty 0.8 — mid grade 0
It is raining and you are going outside.
What should you take?
Hint shown after a miss: What keeps the rain off you?
Explanation: An umbrella. Planning means thinking about what is going to happen, not just what is happening now.
Difficulty 0.9 — mid grade 0
You have one sticker and two friends who both want it.
What is the fairest thing to do?
Hint shown after a miss: Which one leaves both friends feeling it was fair?
Explanation: Take turns. Tearing it in half leaves nobody with a sticker, which is equal but not much use to anyone.

The other 4 skills in Brain Lab

Each one is estimated separately, which is what lets the parent dashboard name a specific gap rather than report a subject average.

PatternsShow a pattern: “what’s the rule?” — not “what comes next?”ClassificationSort four things by an unstated rule and ask which one does not belong — and why.Spatial Reasoning“If you turn this shape a quarter turn, what does it look like?”DeductionGive two clues about three things and ask what must be true.

Common questions

How do I know if my child has strategy secure?

In any game: “what are you going to do after that?” Playing one move at a time. Looking ahead is learnable and rarely taught directly.

Which grade is strategy taught in?

It appears in both. Daily Academy does not gate skills by year group — a child is placed on a continuous difficulty scale during a five-minute intake, and strategy is then served at whatever level they are actually at, adjusted separately from every other skill.

Practice by grade

Grade 2 critical thinking and logic activitiesLogic puzzles for 7 and 8 year olds — patterns, deduction, sorting and spatial reasoning — set at the right difficulty and framed as a game rather than a test.Grade 3 critical thinking and logic activitiesLogic and reasoning practice for 8 and 9 year olds — multi-step patterns, elimination puzzles, spatial reasoning and strategy — adapted to each child’s level.Grade 1 critical thinking and logic activitiesLogic puzzles for 6 and 7 year olds — sequencing, patterns, sorting and two-clue deduction — kept small enough that they measure reasoning rather than memory.Grade 4 critical thinking and logic activitiesLogic puzzles for 9 and 10 year olds — conditional reasoning, systematic counting, nets and multi-step planning — where the first plausible answer is usually wrong.Grade 5 critical thinking and logic activitiesLogic puzzles for 10 and 11 year olds — elimination, systematic counting, and telling a valid argument from a conclusion that happens to be true.Kindergarten logic and thinking activitiesThinking puzzles for 4 and 5 year olds — odd one out, repeating patterns, first, then, last, and two-clue riddles — short enough to be about reasoning rather than memory.

See where your child stands on strategy

A five-minute intake places them on a continuous scale, and the skill map shows every skill separately from the first week. The daily mission is free.

Start free See the parent dashboard