School takes children away from the real world and places them behind a desk . It breaks the unfathomable magic of life down into things called subjects. Math, Science, English, history, geography and so on, It labels ,it grades, and it dismisses curiosity.
In most schools, memorization is mistaken for learning. Most of what is remembered is remembered only for a short time, spewed out for an exam and then quickly forgotten. Why? because it did not spark curiosity.
But on the other hand ,we have Natural learning. Natural learning or as some people call it - unschooling , allows for exploration, it allows for real hands on opportunities and it allows time for children to explore their curiosity.
(Curiosity is the natural instinct that implies wanting to know more about something through research and interaction)
When children become curious ,the brain becomes a fast moving, information gathering tool that encourages learning. The brain’s chemistry changes when we become curious, helping us learn and retain information.
Through curiosity children become explorers, they become researchers and they become wisdom seekers. 🌻
Life is full of natural lessons, allowing your child to seek out these lessons through curiosity in the things they find useful and relevant, helps create a motivated child.
Helps create a natural learner.🦋
The first and simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind is curiosity."- Edmund Burke
so What is curiosity exactly?
Curiosity is the desire to learn more about something that interests you, this could be learning a new skill, hearing about something and needing to know more about it -through research, wanting to find out how to do or create something. Wanting to know more about a person,place or thing. Inevitability following curiosity leads to learning so much new
knowledge, it crosses over many subjects and covers many topics, as your curious about one thing ,then can just as quickly lead to another curiosity from that topic. You could be learning how to make your own natural washing powder through google and youtube one minute which leads you to wanting to know more about herbalism so you research and maybe enroll in a course (just like me ). Or like my two boys , found a chicken trap at our local tip this morning , so they have been catching and releasing the wild chickens roaming around the island most of the day, they were curious and researched on youtube , what chickens eat, how many eggs do chickens lay a day, why do chickens faint ,how to make your own trap with cardboard ( they also created their own) - which lead to how to make a cupboard out of carboard boxes, a tech deck skateboard out of carboard boxes and so on- all from being curious .
Allowing your child to pursue natural learning instead of traditional learning , is allowing the flame of curiosity to stay with them right through to adulthood. Toddlers are born curious when they learn to walk and talk as children through observation, preschoolers are born curious when they learn how to use the rest room and begin to figure out how things work through motivation ,as the older children get the more they need to use curiosity to help them figure out their place in this world.They need curiosity to help retain information and they need curiosity to remain inspired.
The only lesson a child should ever follow ,is that of their own curiosity - BarefootChild