Encouraging Your Kids to Be Curious
It seems odd to talk about teaching kids to be curious. Aren’t children naturally curious? They do start out that way, but as kids enter upper elementary and middle school years, they sometimes get caught up in memorizing facts and taking tests, and lose a little of their curious wonder. Let’s do everything we can to continue teaching our kids the value of curiosity.
Curiosity provides the basis for real learning that allows kids to make connections, solve problems, and engage with the world from different perspectives.
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Character Trait of the Month List
Each month, as part of our homeschool learning, I focus on a specific character trait. There are many character traits worth pursuing, but given the time frame of the school year, I narrowed my list down to ten.
3 Simple Ways to Encourage Curiosity
Here are three ways you can begin encouraging your child to practice curiosity today.
GIVE THEM TIME TO PLAY
First, provide your kids with time to play. When your kids have every moment scheduled for them with classes and activities, they miss out on the curiosity-building pleasure of letting their minds wander. Let them get bored sometimes without resorting to a movie, video game, or other screen time.
ASK QUESTIONS
Second, talk to them about what they observe in the world. We are blessed with ready access to information. Look up the answers to their questions. Talk about the whys and hows that make our world what it is. Invite them to experiment and ask questions of themselves and others. Talk about what you’re learning and why you’re interested. Ask questions when they don’t. Start the conversation with “I wonder…” Be curious yourself.
PROVIDE A WINDOW TO THE WORLD
Third, provide a window to the world. Visit new areas of your city or state, try new foods, take field trips to forests, factories, and museums. Read them books set in far-off places or distant times, watch movies or documentaries that explore a part of the world you’ve never seen before. Give your kids a peek into other cultures and people groups that live and think differently from them.
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Exploring Curiosity with Quotes and Questions
Here are a few quotes about curiosity, along with questions you can use to engage your kids in conversation or use as a writing assignment or journal prompt.
The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.
Albert Einstein
Question: What do you think this quote means?
I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Question: Do you agree? Why or why not? What do you think the “most useful gift” would be?
The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.
Plutarch
Question: Describe the truth you see in this quote. How is the mind not a vessel to be filled? How is it a fire to be kindled?
Curiosity is a willing, a proud, an eager confession of ignorance.
S. Leonard Rubinstein
Question: Consider your reaction to the word ignorance. How does this idea of curiosity as a confession of ignorance influence our desire to be curious?
More Curiosity Quotes
Here are a few additional quotes about curiosity you may wish to consider as alternatives, or use in addition to the four above. These quotes don’t necessarily use the word curiosity, but the ideas behind these quotations are related to the same concept.
Knowing the answers will help you in school. Knowing how to question will help you in life.
Warren Berger
Kids are born curious about the world. What adults primarily do in the presence of kids is unwittingly thwart the curiosity of children.
Neil deGrasse Tyson
I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.
Albert Einstein
Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.
James Stephens
Curiosity News Articles and Reports
Here are a few sources for news articles containing stories of curiosity. One way to teach curiosity to kids is to show them specific examples of it in action.
Science News for Students
The website sciencenewsforstudents.org is a great resource for science-related news articles written specifically for kids.
Library Books Could Come with a Side of Germs: Article about a teen’s curiosity regarding the level of bacteria present on library books.
The Milky Way’s “Yellowballs” Are Clusters of Baby Stars: Curious “citizen scientists,” members of the public, assist researchers in studying the stars.
DOGO News
Another source for kid-friendly news articles is dogonews.com
Suffering from Boredom? What Kind?: This article describes how digging into an emotion, in this case boredom, can reveal underlying motives and feelings.
Record-Breaking Message in a Bottle Found in Australia: Fun article about a curious beach-goer found an old message in a bottle and connects it to a curious sea captain, who had tossed it out to track water currents.
Books that Explore Curiosity
These books explore the theme of curiosity through engaging stories. On a Beam of Light by Jennifer Berne is the story of Albert Einstein’s journey of curiosity. 5000 Awesome Facts about Everything by National Geographic Kids opens kids’ eyes to things they might never have considered, giving them a jumping off point for their curiosity. David MacAulay’s book, The Way Things Work Now is packed with information for curious kids about the way technology and machinery work. The Curious Guide to Things that Aren’t by John Fixx gives kids riddles that describe intangible things.
Short Video Content Related to Curiosity
These links are videos I added to my kids’ Google classrooms in September to get them thinking about curiosity.
ScienceCasts: Why Curiosity Matters (YouTube – NASA): NASA engineer explains why he thinks curiosity matters.
The Power of Curiosity (YouTube – BrainCraft): Great video for older kids to think about the different types of curiosity, and why it’s valuable even when we ask silly questions.
Wonderopolis is a website offering answers to all kind of “I Wonder” questions. Reading about questions other kids have can generate questions of their own.
Movies with a Curiosity Theme
Big Hero 6 celebrates scientific curiosity.
Science Fair is a documentary about curious high school students and their efforts to solve big problems.
The Secret Garden adapts the famous children’s story of an orphan girl who explores her new English surroundings after arriving from India.
Encouraging Curiosity in Kids with Activities
Try some of these ways to develop curiosity in your child.
PODCASTS
Podcasts are an amazing resource to introduce your kids to a variety of information in a short, engaging format. If you have a child who is curious about a specific topic, search for podcast episodes related to that area of interest. For kids who aren’t tunnel-vision on space or horses or anything else, here are a few podcasts to check out. These have hundreds of episodes covering hundreds of topics. Listen in the car, during lunch or while they’re helping fold laundry!
Podcasts to Inspire Curiosity
Some of these podcasts are not fully intended for kids, so pick and choose episodes depending on the age and maturity level of your child.
- Brains On!
- Homeschool History
- The Past and the Curious
- Science Friday
- Stuff You Missed in History Class
- Tumble Science
- Who Smarted?
- Wow in the World
CHANGE THINGS UP
My three girls love LEGO builds and craft kits, but it’s valuable for kids to just tinker with things also. Give them a pile of foam, duct tape, straws, and string and let them build whatever they wish. Drive a different route to a regular place or have them give you directions and see where you end up. Let them create crazy sandwich combinations. Offer opportunities to ask “what if…we did it this way instead?”
READ TO THEM
Even your big kids will enjoy listening to a great book. Think about how much teens and adults love audiobooks and podcasts! Read books to them that they wouldn’t ordinarily pick up themselves. You never know what will spark curiosity in your child, so expose them to a variety of genres. Try classic literature, science fiction, and biographies.
Scriptures to Encourage Curiosity
We see curiosity as a natural human characteristic from our observations of children, but from a practical sense, curiosity unchecked by wisdom can lead to harm and regret. The Bible gives us some guidance related to exercising our natural curiosity. We should seek to learn, grow, and discover, but always asking for divine wisdom to guide our search for knowledge and direct it to the glory of God. Above all, we should encourage our kids to be curious about the nature of God and his desire for relationship with us.
The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom, and whatever you get, get insight.
Proverbs 4:7 (ESV)
It is God’s privilege to conceal things, and the king’s privilege to discover them.
Psalm 25:2 (NLT)
Let the message about Christ, in all its richness, fill your lives. Teach and counsel each other with all the wisdom he gives.
Colossians 3:16 (NLT)
Free Printable Curiosity Quotes and Questions
By subscribing to my mailing list, you have access to my printables library, where you can download a free printable list of these four quotes and accompanying questions. Use them as discussion questions, a writing assignment, or journal prompts.
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Teaching Curiosity to Kids
The best way to teach curiosity to kids is of course to make it a part of your family values. Explore new ideas together, learn together, welcome questions and head down those rabbit holes. There’s a big, beautiful world out there to explore and fascinating processes to explore within our own minds and bodies. Open your own eyes to wonder at the marvelous creation and Creator alike.
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September Character Trait Focus: Curiosity
I want to come back again and again to read such articles daily🤗
I’m glad to hear this!