This could be the hardest thing EVER! Because we all want the answers RIGHT AWAY.
Your child asks you a question about something you see in the world… ‘why is the sky blue?’ or ‘why don’t birds have hands?’
Or they ask something like ‘where did the dinosaurs go?’ or ‘how big is the biggest building in the world.’
You pull out your phone… throw a few key words into Google… and BOOM! Question asked, question answered… DONE!
But what if sometimes we skip Google and go a little old school analog. Instead of looking it up, you and your child(ren) try to FIGURE OUT the answer together – even if you already have a good idea of what it is.
This is a great way to get them to be ‘thinkers’ – to come up with their own theories on how the world works. (And, after a little time working it through, you can test that theory by looking it up – if they still really care about the RIGHT answer at that point.)
Even something as concrete as ‘how big is the biggest building in the world’ – where there is one answer – can be first played around with. You can ask, hmmm… do you think it’s as big as that big building in town or that giant skyscraper we saw when we visited that city last year? Maybe even get them thinking about, well, what does ‘biggest’ mean? Big like TALL or big like really, really wide or has the most people inside of it.
Google and the resources on the internet are amazing gifts… and learning how to use them effectively is a necessary part of modern life. But real thinking goes beyond google – and is all about being able to break down information and put it all back together again. This little trick can be a tiny step along that path.