![]() "While there is a generally held and intuitive belief that curiosity is important, there isn't much empirical support for it, though I think curiosity is important. Though your child's umpteen questions may tend to annoy, parents admit that curiosity is a desirable attribute of a child. For children, curiosity is a boon that ignites the creative spark. And moreover, it probably applies only to those prowling felines. It is best to forget that old adage about how curiosity killed the cat. To this, her son replied that his friend had come from Chennai and he wanted to know where he came from!" says Uma. She was wondering how to answer this, when she decided to check what had aroused his curiosity. "Once a mother told me how her son wanted to know where he came from. She wants parents to respond to questions keeping in mind their child's age. Just open your bag in front of your child, and he will walk up to you and peek into it, and take out the contents one by one!" says Uma with a smile. They want to feel, touch and taste all the objects they can hold, and enjoy sensorial experiences a lot. "If they see any object, they need to put it in their mouth to learn about it. Uma Shankar, Director of Centre for Montessori Training, Chennai, is amazed by the curiosity pre-schoolers exhibit and believes that children are born explorers. Curiosity is both motivated by individual differences and by children's environment," she says. "I believe that all children are naturally curious and that some children are more curious than others. Researchers like Jamie believe that some children possess a keener desire than others to explore their immediate surroundings. You must have noticed how the baby, tugs at the gold chain glittering round your neck when you hold him. I will not say that any of these are 'the' way to measure curiosity, but each are ways of looking at it from a specific viewpoint," says Jamie Jirout, Ph.D., a researcher at the Department of Psychology, Temple University, Philadelphia. "For example, curiosity has been measured by the number of questions a child asks, or whether or not a child engages in specific exploratory behavior, or whether or not, he has a preference for uncertainty. It's curious, but curiosity cannot be specifically measured. When a child wants to 'know' on his own, learning becomes thrilling," says Sriram Naganathan, founder of Ignite Minds, an education service firm based in Chennai. Children want to know why something is happening, or they may seek factual information like the height of Mt Everest, or get to the heart of how things actually work. It can be an answer to a child's how, what, when, where and why. "Curiosity is a search, a hunger for information, especially when things don't fall into a pattern. Therefore, curiosity may well be another word for natural inquiry. ![]() The world is an endless source of wonder to your child"where does the sun disappear at night? Why are some oceans blue, and some green? How do bridges bear so much weight? We are all born scientists as we are all born curious. Such is the thrill of exploration, that a child will forget her family and the dangers such an endeavor may pose to her life. That is a classic example of what curiosity does to children" give a child a puzzle, or an unusual piece of information and she will not be satisfied till the mysterious makes perfect sense to her. If we were to encounter a talking rabbit on the road on our way to work, wouldn't the risk-taking and adventurous ones amongst us follow it, led by our curiosity? In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again."įorget Alice. Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. This strange sight of a talking rabbit is nothing compared to what follows"the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on. It begins with a bored Alice spotting a White Rabbit muttering how late he is. Most of us remember having read Lewis Caroll's beloved and most fantastical gift to children"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
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