Mom Tip Monday: Fostering Curiosity

Sometimes we as parents and caregivers can become too wrapped up in trying to schedule and plan the days and activities for kids. While it is very important to develop routines and keep to them in order to help children feel comfortable and secure in their environment, over planning and dictating the learning can have an opposite effect.

In fact, I recently received an article from a preschool pal titled Why Preschool Shouldn’t Be Like School, which both illustrated the negative effects of forced learning and emphasized the importance of play. It helped reinforce my feelings that we need to find healthy balance. I think that can be obtained by simply following our children.

I strongly believe that we can best teach our children by taking their lead. They have a natural curiosity about the world and simply being in tune with what strikes their fancy can open new opportunities to teach as well as foster curiosity to learn more.

Slow down and take notice of what your child is curious about and run with it. Is he completely obsessed with diggers or cars? Simply checking out books from the library, even picture books for the very young, to read together will please him to no end and give you quality time. Then plan a drive by a construction site. We have a new grocery store being built in our neighborhood and the number of moms with toddlers just standing around watching makes me wonder why I don’t invest in a coffee stand at that street corner.

At home, I’m putting the “follow their curiosity” philosophy to work.

This past month Sweetness has begun to really notice Spring for the first time. It’s her fourth Spring and every flower, leafing tree and dandelion gets special attention during walks and drives these days.

She’s also pulling out an old picture book about a seed that grows into a sunflower and “reading” it a lot. I even caught her reading it to her baby brother.

That gave me an idea.

While we were at the grocery store Thursday we stopped by the seed rack. The sunflowers were all down at Sweetness’s level. I told her we would grow her very own sunflowers; she just had to pick out the color she wanted. They had about three different kinds, from the red and orange ones to the mammoth sunflowers that made the seeds we eat.

She chose the mammoth ones, which I can only guess is because they looked on the cover of the seed packet just like the sunflower in her book.

It was pouring rain all day Thursday, but she asked me nonstop the rest of the afternoon if we could plant the seeds. Finally, around 4 p.m. when the rain slowed down to a sprinkle, we put on our rain gear and went out to plant her seeds.

Now I hear her questions about where the sunflowers are every two hours.

So to further foster as well as answer her curiosity I put two seeds in an old baby jar and filled it with potting soil. I made sure the seeds were against the side of the jar so we could watch the germination.

I also put two seeds in a ziplock bag with a wet paper towel, something I remembered my kindergarten teacher doing with us when I was 5.

While we wait for her sunflowers to peak through the soil in the back yard, she’ll be able to watch the germination in her two little indoor experiments and, if the squirrels don’t dig up her seeds outside, we’ll see her sunflowers pop through the soil at about the same time.

As an extra benefit, she’s also learning a little bit about patience and delayed gratification just by having to wait and watch nature take its course.

What are some ways you foster curiosity in kids? What did they seem to respond to best?

Tagged as: curiosity, learning, postive discipline