Building Thinking Skills Book 3 - Verbal
Building Thinking Skills Level 3 Verbal is a cognitive workout for teens—part brain game, part academic MVP—that builds reasoning, writing, and logic skills across every subject.
$39.99
Quantity:
2026 Ninth-Grade Curriculum Kit
Building Thinking Skills Book 3 - Verbal
Strong readers don't automatically become strong thinkers. Building Thinking Skills 3 Verbal helps your teen move beyond simply understanding information and begin analyzing, organizing, and communicating it with greater precision.
Designed for grades 7–12 and often counted as a half-credit high school elective, this 384-page workbook develops advanced verbal reasoning through a carefully sequenced series of challenges. Students work with analogies, classifications, similarities and differences, deductive reasoning, map skills, auditory memory, sequencing, and descriptive language while strengthening the analytical skills that support success across the curriculum.
Unlike the Figural edition, which develops visual-spatial reasoning, Building Thinking Skills 3 Verbal focuses on reasoning through language. Students learn to recognize relationships between ideas, evaluate information, follow complex directions, draw logical conclusions, and communicate their thinking clearly.
One of the strengths of the Verbal book is its emphasis on flexible thinking. Many activities have students compare possibilities, consider evidence, identify patterns in language, and justify conclusions rather than simply select an answer. Those are the same skills required for strong writing, effective communication, and thoughtful analysis in high school and beyond.
The lessons are organized by skill area, allowing students to focus on one type of reasoning at a time before moving to the next level of challenge. As the exercises become more sophisticated, students develop greater confidence in their ability to process information, solve problems, and express their ideas clearly.
Many parents notice that the benefits extend well beyond language arts. The ability to analyze information, follow multi-step directions, and communicate reasoning effectively supports learning in science, history, and mathematics, as well as everyday decision-making.
Recognized by organizations such as Mensa and featured on Cathy Duffy's Top 100 Picks list, the Building Thinking Skills series has earned a strong reputation for developing the critical-thinking skills that contribute to academic success.
For teens who are ready to strengthen their reasoning through language, Building Thinking Skills 3 Verbal provides a challenging and rewarding workout for the mind—one that helps students become not just better learners, but better thinkers.
How to Use Building Thinking Skills 3 Verbal
- Plan on completing about 10 pages each week to finish the book within a typical school year. The lessons are substantial enough to provide a challenge while remaining manageable when completed consistently.
- Because this book focuses entirely on verbal reasoning, encourage your teen to slow down and think through the relationships between ideas rather than rushing toward an answer. Many activities require careful analysis, comparison, and logical reasoning rather than simple recall.
- If the size of the workbook feels intimidating, take advantage of the perforated pages. Removing a week's worth of assignments can make the work feel more approachable and easier to fit into your schedule.
- As your teen works through analogies, classifications, deductive reasoning, and language-based logic challenges, encourage him to explain his thinking. Being able to communicate why an answer is correct is often just as valuable as finding the answer itself.
- Some of the later exercises introduce more advanced concepts and increasingly complex chains of reasoning. When your teen encounters a difficult problem, encourage persistence before offering help. Working through confusion is often where the deepest learning takes place.
- One of the benefits of verbal reasoning is how quickly the skills transfer to other subjects. Students often become more thoughtful readers, clearer writers, and more confident problem-solvers as they learn to analyze information and support their conclusions with evidence.
By the end of the course, your teen will have completed hundreds of reasoning challenges while strengthening the language, logic, and analytical skills that support success throughout high school, college, and beyond.
In the 2026 kits this course earns high school credit:
0.5 credits of Logic & Critical Thinking
Thinking Skills · 9th grade · Classic and Non-Religious kits
Answers are located in the back of this book.
Publisher's Information
Publisher: The Critical Thinking Co™
Authors: Sandra Parks & Howard Black
Age Recommendation: 12+
Grade Recommendation: 7th+
Faith-Based: No
Consumable: Yes (can be reproduced in your own home or classroom, but not for any commercial entity or organization)
Pages: 378
Activities: 350
ISBN: 9781601441591
Format: Softcover
Copyright: 2007
Made in: USA
Awards and Endorsements from:
- The National Parenting Center Seal of Approval
- Mom's Choice Awards Gold Medal for Excellence
- Parent Tested, Parent Approved Winner's Seal
- Mensa Recommended Materials for the Gifted
- iParenting Media Award
- Parent Tested, Parent Approved (PTPA) Seal of Approval
- Cathy Duffy 101 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum
- Dr. Toy 10 Best Software
- Creative Child Magazine Seal of Excellence Award
- Learning® Magazine Teacher's Choice Award
- iParenting Media Excellent Products
- Cathy Duffy Top 100 Award
- Dr. Toy 100 Best Children's Products
- Learning® Magazine Recommended Resource for Successful Teaching
- The Well-Trained Mind Recommended Resource for Logic and Critical Thinking
- Practical Homeschooling Reader Awards™ - 3rd Place, Logic Category
- Practical Homeschooling Magazine 2nd Place Reader Award
- The Old Schoolhouse Magazine 1st Place Excellence in Education Award
review by My Life on a Taffy Pull
"She’s been working through it now for a couple weeks and her honest opinion is that it’s 'a little boring.' When I was asking her why I realized that book is divided into sections with the same sorts of activities, so it wasn’t that it was boring per se, it was that she was doing the same type of thinking skill each day. To make things more interesting I suggested she move around a little in the book to keep things fresh and exciting. That did the trick!"
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review by the Flanders Family
"The books use both figural and verbal problems to develop four important analytical skills: recognizing similarities/differences, completing sequences, developing classification skills, and understanding analogies. The further you go in the series, the more detailed and complex the exercises become."
Read the Full ReviewFind answers to the most frequently asked questions about this product below:
Typically counted as 1 high school credit.
Building Thinking Skills Book 3 - Verbal counts as half a credit of Logic & Critical Thinking on a high school transcript. To turn its grade into a GPA, use our free homeschool GPA calculator: it works out each letter grade from your student's scores, figures the GPA by year and for all of high school, and prints a grade record for the transcript.
- May 19, 2026
Steph H.
I love that Timberdoodle includes critical thinking in the curriculum kits. Building Thinking Skills Book 3 has been a great addition to my son's learning. It really gets him thinking, and he never complains about having to work through this book. Great addition to the ninth grade kit or to add to your child's learning!
- April 17, 2026
A P.
Another great addition to our homeschool. Sometimes we sat and completed the pages together. It even twisted my brain. It is a great book that is something different from the same ole same ole core subjects.
- June 26, 2024
We enjoyed this book
Heather J.
This book really gets the child thinking. I enjoyed this book as well. I like that made my daughter think in ways that she normally would not think.
- September 12, 2022
MONICA W.
Great for the left brain thinker
- May 15, 2021
Great little exercises
Linda G.
I have my daughter do this 3-5 days a week, but each exercise is so short she can do 3-5 pages in a single day if she wants to. I love this because she gets these skills sharpened but in little exercises. I plan on using this in probably 2 years worth of school.
- April 5, 2021
Complete
Elaine B.
This covers so many conversational skills and thinking.
- September 28, 2020
Simple to use
Jennifer S.
Very nice . Fun to use as a part of learning .my child enjoys it .
- September 11, 2020
Good logic
Marsha K.
Good stretching exercises for the mind. Building a solid logic base.
- May 21, 2020
Love it
Kisha R.
My kids love this series of critical thinking books. It is the perfect blend of fun and challenging.
- December 2, 2019
Thinking Skills
Jonna
I love how my children are able to see how this can work in their daily lives!! They are able to solidify the concepts that they are already aware of and practice concepts that are new to them.
