Curiosity: The Fuel of Development

Heart House has three beliefs upon which we build our program:

• Critical thinking skills are a liberating force in education and a powerful resource in one’s personal and civic life. We should and can teach children to be critical thinkers.
• Children are “smart” in different ways. We will honor the multiple intelligences of our Heart House children.
• Curiosity is one of the most fundamental tools children can bring to their early learning experiences. We will model and foster curiosity as a highly esteemed value at Heart House.

In this blog post, the Heart House tribe would like to share a bit more about this third bulleted belief that revolves around our love of CURIOSITY.

"Being curious about the world around us is an important part of learning. When children show an interest in wanting to find out about how things work and when they ask why things happen, it shows that they are developing skills they will need for later learning. We can encourage this interest in learning by talking with children about the things they wonder about and explaining things that may seem quite familiar to us, but are a source of curiosity for children -- like what happens to water that goes down the drain." - Mr. (Fred) Rogers




Asking questions to promote learning and sharing is important to all disciplines. We believe:

• Questions are as powerful as answers (and opinions) in the creation of change.
• There is an art to asking refined & powerful questions.

Heart House employs a 4-part questioning strategy to stimulate maximum participlation during the activities. This method helps focus and direct the discussion. Best of all, it’s easy to learn and implement. The idea behind this strategy is that by structuring our questions in a certain way, we can guide the group of children on their journey through a stimulating and interesting dialogue.

1. Selective Perception Questions: Questions start here are with “no brainer” questions that have no right or wrong answer, that surface the facts of the discussion, that directly observable data. This part of the questioning also serves to put the group at ease and begin a common understanding of the facts.
   
2. Emotional Reaction Questions: The group leader next asks a reflective question, which elicits the participants’ feeling and associated ideas about the experience, activity or situation. We suggest you spend extra time here to more fully engage the group.
   
3. Sense-Making Questions: Everyone assigns meaning to data based on our unique filters (beliefs, drives and experiences). Through sense-making questions, children are encouraged to examine the meaning or value of the experience, activity, or
   situatio. Group members begin to synthesize the happenings of the experience and realize its effect upon the group.
4. Action Questions: We take actions based on our own inferences about data. Action questions encourage the group to synthesize the discussion or determine what the next step might be.

Here’s an example of a 4-part questioning strategy discussing an oil painting:

Selective Perception Questions
What colors do you see in this painting?
What shapes do you recognize?
How many objects in the room can you name?

Emotional Reaction Questions
What do you like best in this picture? Where are you drawn in or attracted to?
What aspect do you like least? Where do you feel repulsed, distrubed, or irritated?
What sounds might you hear if you were there?
Look at the painting. Now close your eyes. Which person/object in this painting do you remember the most? Why?

Sense-Making Questions
Is the scene inside or outside? How can you tell?
What do you think this shape is?
What are the people in the painting doing? Are they related?
Why do you think the mother looks so large?
What season of the year might this scene be taking place in?


Action Questions
What would you title this painting?
Where would you like to have seen more detail?
How could we use this painting at Heart House?