Thoughts for the Week:

Being curious about the world around us is an important part of learning. When children show an interest in wanting to find out about how things work and when they ask why things happen, it shows that they are developing skills they will need for later school learning. We can encourage this interest in learning by talking with children about the things they wonder about and explaining things that may seem quite familiar to us, but are a source of curiosity for children -- like what happens to water that goes down the drain.

There are some things that young children may not be ready to understand. When children's curiosity leads them into places we don't feel they're ready for, we need to trust our intuition about that. Curiosity can still flourish if we give children a sense that they'll understand more about such things as they grow.