Questions

The scientific education of a preschooler is an amazing thing to witness. A child who looks into the daytime and the nighttime skies hasn’t the slightest idea that the sun, that great big ball of yellow warmth, bears any relation to the twinkling dots that cover the inky darkness of the night. The day will come, however, when someone or some book will let it slip that the sun is in fact a star. And then, explanations will be in order. For to a small person who is trying very hard to get a grasp on the world, this new information can seem almost like a betrayal. What do you mean, the sun is a star? It’s not a star, it’s the sun! (We adore their conviction, even as we are bound to muddle it.) Read More »

Remember little Alice, that “curious child” whose inquisitive streak led her down a rabbit-hole, and all the way to Wonderland? Sitting by her sister on the riverbank in state of drowsy boredom, she spied the waistcoated White Rabbit, and, “burning with curiosity,” followed him into a world of Adventures. Whenever our preschoolers poke their heads into new and often less than safe places, when they pester us with questions about this and that, and ask why, why, why?, we think of curious Alice. And we think that Lewis Carroll understood something important about children’s curiosity. Read More »