Interesting facts about children (10 photos). Interesting facts about children that you didn't even know about Curious child

Every adult has probably noticed how strongly a small child has a developed desire to understand the world around him! It is children's inquisitiveness and curiosity that push children to something new and unknown, which seems completely unimportant to us adults. Perhaps there are parents who do not pay any attention to this behavior of their child. Meanwhile, experts argue that the lack of development of such qualities as curiosity, inquisitiveness, curiosity can lead to serious problems when studying at school, because Socrates said: “If you are inquisitive, you will be knowledgeable.” Caring and attentive parents are pleased with the child’s desire to learn new things, but at the same time they want to know what techniques will most effectively influence the development of children’s curiosity?

"What is this?" - the main question of curiosity

Psychologists emphasize that curiosity is a natural human quality based on cognitive interest. Defining curiosity, they characterize it as a desire for new knowledge, a manifestation of active interest in the impressions received. All this is of great importance for children, as it facilitates the process of cognition and direct educational activities. The eternal question is the surprise of “what is this?” clearly characterizes curiosity and cognitive interest, reveals their essence: “knowledge begins with surprise” (Aristotle). Every parent has noticed that during the period when the baby begins to walk on his own, when all nearby objects become accessible, his interest as a researcher awakens. All surrounding objects are subject to thorough examination, that is, they can be bitten, broken, or taken apart. You shouldn’t be upset about this; on the contrary, you need to understand your child and arrange the home environment in such a way that the space is safe and at the same time attractive for the baby. At the same time, it is useful to periodically update something (for example, a play or book corner, decoration in the kitchen interior) in order to create a variety of conditions for the development of curiosity at all its stages:

According to teachers, the cultivation of curiosity and cognitive interests begins in early childhood. It is during this period that the baby is attracted not by toys, but by cabinets with opening and closing doors, frying pans, pots, electrical outlets, father's floppy disks, mother's cosmetics, grandmother's knitting, and cat's bowls. But you never know what interesting things a baby can discover at one or two years old! For parents, this is the most restless, but at the same time important age period, when actions with objects, that is, object-based activities, become the main thing in the life of the baby and can satisfy his curiosity.

Important: active communication with the baby during early childhood and teaching new objective actions helps to develop the child’s desire to learn the unknown, leading him to new exploratory actions!

When a baby begins to speak, his cognitive interests develop. This is expressed in a craving for independence, a desire to be “like an adult,” and a desire for more complete communication with adults. At this stage, knowledge about surrounding objects expands, so children's curiosity becomes very noticeable to others, finding its expression in the appearance of many different questions: “Why are the leaves green,” “How does it rain?”, “What is a rainbow?” It’s not for nothing that the age from 3 to 5 is called the age of why.

In the older age group, the further development of children's interests, curiosity and curiosity continues, which can be seen from the following signs:

  • against the backdrop of emerging logical thinking and broadening of horizons, the beginnings of research activities appear in preschoolers;
  • motivation for new knowledge develops based on diverse interests;
  • if a child is inquisitive, he tries to penetrate into the structure of objects, showing interest in their essential characteristics, properties and purpose
  • The effectiveness of curiosity is manifested in the quantity and quality of questions asked, the ability to make assumptions, and to express one’s point of view in a reasoned manner.

How to develop a child's curiosity? Loving parents should know the concept of curiosity and the different ways to develop it. In home education, it is important to use not only educational games and exercises, but also to actively act at the level of emotions, feelings, and moods. In this regard, the formation of curiosity is influenced by:

When parents ask what conditions for the development of curiosity are advisable to create in a home environment, they can answer that the main thing is not to limit the research activities of a preschool child. It is better to ensure safety for his activities, since the preschooler tries to gain new experiences wherever possible. It is better for parents to get ahead of their baby a little and offer him different actions, for example:

Important: To develop children's curiosity, parents need to use all moments of everyday life to expand their knowledge, encourage preschoolers to ask questions and search for answers together.

Curiosity exercises and games

Games and play exercises have always been a good help for homeschooling. They will help in developing curiosity and cognitive interest. The main thing when selecting such games is that they should encourage children to engage in research activities, evoke a desire to learn new things and get to the bottom of things.

Chain of questions

The exercise can be done in any situation: at home, on a walk, in a home lesson. An adult comes up with an interesting topic, for example, “Why do you need clothes?”, “Why does it rain?”, “Where do mushrooms come from?” Initially, questions are asked by an adult to teach the child to build a logical chain of questions, and then the child can ask questions. The preschooler answers the questions until he can find the answer. The adult helps him with guiding sentences or, if there is difficulty, answers the question himself. For example, the logical chain could be like this:

  • why do you need clothes?
  • what kind of clothes are there?
  • Without clothes, what would a person be like?
  • What are clothes made from?
  • When there was no fabric, what did people wear?
  • How did they get the skins?
  • How can you make clothes from skins?

Transforming old into new

The easiest way to improve children's curiosity is to come up with new uses for old objects. For example, a mother collects all the unnecessary things in the kitchen (boxes, plastic bottles, glasses, lids) and invites the baby to figure out how to use them again in everyday life. From small plastic bottles you can make funny animal faces if you glue ears to them and draw eyes, noses, and antennae; By covering an old box with beautiful fabric, you can get an original box as a gift for your grandmother. The main thing is to encourage the child to come up with various transformations himself, to see the perspective of the old thing.

Games - excavations

Nowadays such games are becoming popular for children and adults, so by purchasing an excavation game, it can be made into family entertainment. Excavation games are aimed at developing curiosity, for example, “Secrets of the Pyramids”, “Young Archaeologist”, “Dinosaur in an Iceberg” or “Lost Expedition”. Then you can make similar games yourself and play for quite a long time. The point of all games is that you must unearth some artifact under the cultural layers. Game actions help to discover ancient secrets of history. At family leisure, it is interesting to organize a competition to see who can get to the bottom of an artifact the fastest or suggest collecting artifacts.

Traveling in time

There are different options for similar travel games that you can play with your children. They help not only develop the child’s cognitive interests, but also teach logical thinking.

  • Online game: in the story, the hero finds a time machine, but cannot control it. Without studying the instructions, he simply presses the button and begins to travel. As a result, he will meet many interesting characters from different historical times: dinosaurs, knights, cowboys. The hero of the game will face different trials in different historical times. We need to help him return to modern times.
  • The verbal logic game begins with the presenter's story: “In one country, each resident had his own time machine. Residents used it in different ways: some traveled only to the past, others only to the future. But there were residents in this country who did not travel and lived in the present. Because of this, the machines rusted. Tim lived in this country, he was very curious, but his family only flew into the past. And he really wanted to go to the future. And one day he made his way to the time machine, lubricated all the mechanisms , and the car took him to the future. After returning, curious Tim told all the residents how wonderful the future was. And everyone wanted to fly there. But the time machines only moved where they were used to flying. Many residents did not even try, but some did “We learned how to operate a time machine and fly wherever we want.” Players must tell where they will go and what they might encounter on their journey, for example, in the past tense - dinosaurs, cave dwellers, knights, kings and queens. Or in the future - robots, interplanetary spaceships. To maintain interest and implement the idea, you can invite the child to make a sketch, and the other participants in the game to guess what time the player visited.

"I am in the mirror"

The exercise helps to improve the cognitive interest of preschoolers, embody creative ideas, and verbally describe their emotional manifestations. The adult invites the child to draw himself in three mirrors: blue - I am in the present, green - I am in the past and red - I am in the future. Then there is a discussion of the drawings, for example, you can ask the preschool child what he felt when drawing, what emotions the image of himself in the past, present, and future evoked in him. Ask in what time it was easier to portray yourself? Be sure to collect all the drawings in a separate folder and return periodically to this topic in order to track how the desire to know yourself and imagine yourself in the future improves and becomes more active.

Such simple games and exercises that can be constantly present in children’s lives, as well as all other ways, will help parents raise an inquisitive, inquisitive child. Good luck in raising preschoolers!

​Remember the wonderful poem by Samuil Yakovlevich Marshak:

He pestered adults with the question “Why?”
He was nicknamed "The Little Philosopher".
But as soon as he grew up, they began to
Provide answers without questions.
And from now on he is no one else
Doesn't ask "Why?".

Curiosity in children is the norm, even one of the signs of giftedness, so it is very good when a child asks questions, and alarming when he does not. In this case, you need to seriously understand the reasons.

All children’s questions must be answered in a scientifically accurate and accessible manner, no matter how busy you are. Moreover, you need to praise for a good question, for the desire to find out. But it’s even better if you, being understanding of your child’s ignorance, encourage him to independently find answers to questions in dictionaries, reference books, and books.

In the home, in the classroom, in the group there should be a lot of reference literature on all types of knowledge: “The Life of Animals” by Alfred Brem, “The Life of Insects” by Jean Fabre, “Children’s Encyclopedia”, books of records and miracles “Wonder” by Valentina Ponomareva, “Why” Alexander Dietrich, books by Jacques Cousteau, Yaroslav Malin, Chris Bonington spelling dictionary, “Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language” by Sergei Ivanovich Ozhegov, Large Encyclopedic Dictionary edited by Prokhorov, etc.

Every child’s question is a great opportunity to teach him to find the answer himself, use dictionaries and books, and help him fall in love with the process of independently acquiring knowledge and conducting small research projects.

If you do not patiently answer all the children’s questions, a situation similar to the one described by V. Veresaev in “Stories about Children” may occur.

The boy Igor tormented everyone with the question “Why?” A psychology professor I know (!) advised parents: “When you get tired of it, answer him, “Because it’s perpendicular,” and you’ll see that he’ll soon lose the habit.”
The parents did just that. After a short time, an unexpected reaction occurred. Igor began to answer all the difficult questions for himself: “Because it’s perpendicular.”
- Why didn’t you wear galoshes?
- Because it's perpendicular.
- Why are you rude?
- Because it's perpendicular.

This is how “perpendicular” relationships are established, perhaps for life. Let us note another problem of our children. At school they are answered questions that they did not ask. And the children stop asking questions. They know that they will be told something, often something that they are not interested in or do not understand, why do they need to know this?

It is ideal when the child asks questions himself, wants to know something.

Here is a parable about the ability to ask questions:

They say that the monks of one monastery sent a petition to their diocese asking:
- Is it possible to smoke while praying?
The monks were punished for their insolence.
The monks of another monastery sent a petition with a differently worded question:
- Can monks pray while smoking?
They were told: “They can.”

How to teach children to ask questions?

So that children are not afraid to ask questions, we need to convince them that not knowing something is not shameful: it is shameful not to know if you can find out. We need to convince children that asking questions is useful: you will learn more from the answers.

Not asking a question when you don’t understand is not a shame, but cowardice. We need to encourage children who ask questions: “Well done, you asked a good question, which means you are following the train of thought, thinking.” You can give marks not only for good answers, but also for good questions. He who asks nothing will learn nothing. If you want to be smart, learn to ask questions.

You can't laugh at a child who asks a weak question. Children have the right to make mistakes.

Levina Oksana
Curious child

“And in the morning there are a hundred thousand in my head, why, explain to mom and dad what’s what?”.

Why? - said the Little Bunny, and the mother hare sighed.

Why don’t Trees, Mom, never go for walks? After all, they are already big, why don’t they run, why don’t they walk?

Why? Mom said. Because they don't know how! They have no legs, Trees, your punishment is ours.

B. Zakhoder.

Often parents "grab their heads" - "Where?", "For what?", "Why?"- and this is all from morning until evening. Age "why" everyone passes child, and it is very difficult for the parent to remain calm.

All people are curious, and children, especially children. From a very early age, they exhibit natural curiosity, while developing such quality as curiosity. Parents and the environment play a significant role in the formation of this quality. baby. A common mistake parents make is the belief that only games and entertainment bring joy to children, but these are just misconceptions and can gradually drown out the natural craving for knowledge. Exploring the world is a fascinating process for baby, but only if adults help and encourage him. Indifference of adults, ridicule, attention to mistakes and failures baby- all these are obstacles to development curiosity. Don't impose child's interests, it must develop comprehensively. Let him try himself in different directions, the child should have a choice. Always try to answer questions baby so, as will be clear to him. And if curious child asked you about something, but you decided that it was too early for him to know about it, believe me, sooner or later he will find the answer, but what it will be, correct or useful, there are no guarantees.

Children always ask questions, sometimes they cannot formulate correctly and this makes them a little lost. This is some kind of request for help. But an adult should not always show his superiority, show to kid that you don’t know everything either. Explain that it’s not scary and you can find out everything together.

Read books together, watch cartoons, play games. Give us as much information as possible about what you are interested in child and rest assured he will become a comprehensively developed personality.

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