Hi There

Our children lack experiences and we find it really difficult to encourage their inquisitive side. They do formulate and ask questions but on the whole they are of the 'Can you put my name on please?', 'Can I have that?' type rather than asking questions to find out about things/the world etc.

If anyone has got any really good ideas to promote inquisitive questionning please can you let me know?

thanks in advance

Julie

It's an interesting question!

I think that some children are generally just more inquisitive than others. For instance, my daughter is already asking questions about life and death and things like that (age 4), but my son never did and I think works things out in his own head more.

Take a look at the 'philosphy 4 children' project - that might offer you some ideas.

Look also at Edward de Bono's books - the thinking hats approach sounds like the kind of thing you are after.

I should think the best way to tackle this would be to bring interesting experiences in and take children out to interesting experiences. If needed the adults can role model questions. Perhaps you all need to let your imagination go wild?

Adult modelling! If the children don't know how to ask this type of question this is the best way to start them on the right track. If the adults around them show interest and curiosity they will eventually too.

I had a lovely morning with a small grop of boys when we went outside and saw a motorbike paarked on the carpark. One of the boys said his dad had one so we went to look and ended by getting paper and pencils to draw it. They looked really closly at all the parts, drawing, commenting and asking questions I couldnt answer. My oldest son found a wealth of questions to ask when the council sent diggers, lorries and all kinds of machinery to our rad to install speed bumps. If you offer someting a bit outside of their normal experince they might surprise you.

Do you have a 'stimulating' Interest Table - expect you do!

Ours has lots of 'natural resources', 'investigative' equipment and last but not least our Giant Land Snail.........all of which leads to some really interesting conversations.......

As others have said - you do often need to 'start them off'!

Do you have a 'builder's tray' or 'tuff spot' - do you change contents regularly?

Good old fashioned 'Nature walks' are always a winner!

Take note of and draw children's attention to - anything and everything that happens near to setting - we had some tree surgeons - working from a 'cherry picker' opposite our setting recently - we spent 'ages' watching them work, talked about what they were doing and tried to work out why - lots of great new vocab. too!

Oh just popped back to say - do you 'grow things' - fab way to get some great questions going!