Keep Them Wondering All Summer Long!

By: Erica Zwilling, STEAM Lab Facilitator

For young students summer can be a powerful learning time because summer is filled with the raw material of curious minds: puddles, bugs, thunderstorms, melting ice cream, fireflies at dusk. The question is not whether your child will encounter wonder this summer. They will. The question is how can we help them stay in that mindset between noticing something and understanding it long enough for real learning to happen. Luckily, there are proven inquiry strategies.

When a child holds up a roly-poly and asks, “Why does it curl up?” Every instinct tells us to answer. However, answering too quickly is actually one of the quietest ways we can dim a child’s curiosity. Young children between the ages of two and six are in a critical window for building inquiry skills. These skills drive lifelong learning. These skills are not just about knowing things; they are about learning how to figure things out. So next time before you offer an explanation, try a question instead: “What do you think it’s doing?” That single pause invites your child to think and wonder about it more deeply.

This approach, sometimes called guided inquiry, asks children to make inferences and to use what they already know to take a guess at what they do not yet understand. When your child guesses that the bug curls up “because it’s scared,” they are doing real scientific thinking. Allow them to make that guess and then explore it together. Does it curl up when you are gentle? Does it curl up in the dark? Suddenly, a bug on the sidewalk has become a living experiment, and your child has learned something far more valuable than the answer to one question. They have learned that their ideas are valuable and worth testing.

The great news is that your students have been practicing these skills at school all year long. I have been amazed and excited to see the collection of wonders grown on our Wonder Wall. The questions your children have asked are proof that curiosity is already alive and well in them. One of the best things you can do this summer is give that curiosity a home. Consider starting a Wonder Wall of your own. It could be a small section of wall or the refrigerator door where sticky notes can collect. Alternatively, put a small notebook or a little pack of sticky notes into your bag wherever you go. The truth about wondering with young children is that the moment of curiosity and the moment of exploration do not always have to happen at the same time. A question asked at the grocery store, on a walk, or in the middle of dinner can be written down and saved for a quiet afternoon, a rainy day, or a weekend morning when there is time to explore it. No wonder has to be lost just because the timing is not right. If you are looking for a little start this summer, I will be posting some of our favorite wonders from the STEAM Lab Wonder Wall along with simple, playful ideas for exploring them right at home.