Classroom Activities

Practical Ethics Course for Children (Congratulations to Harry Gardner for the completion of this exciting new course!). A compilation of enjoyable ethics lessons for children of ages 4 to 12. Covering lesson plans, activities and learning sequences for various primary classes and subjects. Please click this link.

Centre for Philosophy for Children, Washington State University: Contains lessonplans, resources and classroom activities for K-12 philosophy in the classroom.

Take your students on a philosophical tour of Melbourne Museum’s permanent exhibition, to stimulate philosophical inquiry and encourage the development of higher-order thinking processes. Download Philosophy Guides for students at different levels – primary, middle years and VCE – which provide ideas and resources for approaching philosophical enquiry at Melbourne Museum. For more information, visit the Melbourne Museum website.

Philosophers and Critical Thinkers in Senior Schools (PACTISS) is the online presence of the Australian Philosophy Teachers’ Network (APTN). It is a completely free searchable database of philosophy and critical thinking teaching resources.

p4c.com is a resource and collaboration service for philosophy for children. It provides teachers with materials, ideas and support with which to help pupils think for themselves through philosophical dialogue with others. Includes resources, lesson plans, advice and collaboration available from p4c.com. It provides quick-reply support forums, guidance on all aspects of p4c, stimulus materials and practical activities to use in lessons.

The Philosophy Man – Jason Buckley’s website contains resources, information and a weekly resource bulletin to support teachers and practitioners of Philosophy for Children.

Teaching Children Philosophy is a website dedicated to helping adults conduct philosophical discussion with and among primary school children. It is maintained by Thomas E. Wartenberg, Professor of Philosophy at Mount Holyoke College in the USA. Among other resources, it includes book modules for a range of children’s books: short introductions to the philosophical issues raised by each book and questions to ask children to get a discussion started.

Six Famous Thought Experiments, Animated in 60 Seconds: From Ancient Greece to quantum mechanics or what a Chinese room or a cat have to do with infinity – From the folks at the folks at the Open University comes 60-second Adventures in Thought, a fascinating and delightfully animated series exploring six famous thought experiments.

The Questioning toolkit (published in the educational technology journal From Now On) discusses various types of questions including essential, hypothetical, probing, clarification, strategic, unanswerable, inventive, provocative, divergent and irreverent questions.

Rationale software: For structured, critical thinking & writing and debate preparation by argument mapping.

The Cave: A place for young people to exchange ideas about philosophy and the world outside. This Philosophy Shop blog proposes thinking activities for kids.

Adventures on Philosopher’s Island presents a story exploring various philosophical questions and invites readers to respond to ideas discussed by a primary school philosophy group.