Curiosity

"Curiosity is the very basis of education."

When you read this title you may have said to yourself, “What do you mean “for a child to learn.” We’re born with unbridled curiosity. In fact, one of the things a parent does most is to wipe things down that have baby drool on them from the latest touch of their ever exploring child. You simply can’t keep a child from grabbing, touching, hitting, gnawing and drooling on everything they can reach.

This is because from the very beginning a child is trying to understand the world around him. We continue this quest through adulthood because there is always something new to absorb and learn. At least that is what we Should be doing. But more and more and earlier and earlier, children are being placed in front of TVs and movie screens, have computer games, tablets and computer shoved into their hands. For some reason free time to explore became bad and constant entertainment became good.

Think about the adult version of this. What do you do if you’re left alone in the doctor’s waiting room, with no magazines and no T.V. Add to that the fact that you didn’t charge your phone so you don’t even have that device to feed your entertainment need. Do you still know how to fill your time? To occupy your mind? To think back on recent conversations or the beauty of the flowers you saw on your walk yesterday. To sort through the frustrations that developed during your workday or consider how to rectify an undeserving reaction to a friend’s innocent comment. We need to back up.

If we don’t give children time to explore when they are tiny, they won’t even be able to forget how to be curious because they will never know. Our device-laden, entertainment, dependent lifestyle encourages (and allows) us to be intellectually self-sufficient. We have everything we need in the device in our pockets, so why stretch the mind to consider a different way of doing something or be able to develop an opinion through experience.

Developing curiosity helps a child to be willing and able to continually grow, learn and question what is around them. To develop an imagination and sense of creativity that gives them the basic tools they need to be successful adults.

In today’s hyper-competitive educational environment, parents tend to focus on the “hard” skills sets in their children’s development: reading, writing, math, science… What is skipped over in this scenario are the “soft” skills like curiosity and creativity that give the academic knowledge of the “hard” skills usefulness in the real world.

• How curious is my child???

• A child who daydreams about being an astronaut.

• A child that puts together their own very unique outfits in the mornings.

• A child who doodles and draws.

• A child that isn’t satisfied with a one-sentence answer to a question that they may ask such as “Why did the dinosaurs die?

• An older child that sets up a lemonade stand or helps a neighbor out with chores to raise money for a toy.

Very simply stated A child that doesn’t develop curiosity is not going to be an adult who innovates. This is an important skill today, but in 15 years, when your 3 year old graduates high school, these skills will be a necessity to have a hope for excelling in college and in a career.

Gajera International School always gives impetus and accelerates curiosity in our learners through by making them perform various activities like drawing, painting and making idols or miniatures out of clay planting seeds on their own, performing experiments , learning alphabet yoga. Thus helping each learner to be able to express his/her curiosity in unique and different ways.They use all their available senses and their catalogue of observations to try to figure out the world they would be stepping out of and move forward in their lives.