3 Easy Ways To Harness Your Child’s Inner Scientist

Posted on Dec 4 2017 - 2:55pm by Editorial Staff

Children are born with an innate curiosity. From an early age, everything they pick up somehow finds its way into their mouths, they love getting up close and personal to bugs, and enjoy bombarding you with ‘why’ to nearly every response that you give them. For some young people, this inner wonder about the world slowly disappears to be replaced by social media, peer pressure and other on-trend fads of the moment. For others, their curiosity builds and develops into a deep interest in science and what goes on in the world around them. As a responsible parent, it’s up to you to harness this enthusiasm for science and wet their appetites even further.

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Talking To Your Child

When you’re out and about with your little one, and he or she points to the nighttime sky full of stars and asks you how far away they are, don’t just shrug your shoulders. Even if you don’t know the answer (you won’t), you need to provide a response that sees them open-mouthed. Venture onto the web and explore sites like https://www.livescience.com to arm yourself with the best scientific answers. Mention how half of the stars up there haven’t actually been there for eons and that you’re merely seeing a snapshot of time from millions of years ago. Mind. Blown.

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Schooling

At school, there will always be those teachers at school that connect with your child and help harness their engagement with a subject. It doesn’t matter whether your child loves geology, biology, chemistry or physics, the teacher that imparts knowledge upon your child will make or break their scientific experience. Practical experiments encourage your child to hypothesize and practice the great skills of science. They’ll generate their own theories about things, enjoy testing out their ideas and begin to understand and appreciate the world in a deeper way. If their school is running a science field trip, put your hand in your wallet and stump up the cash to allow your child to go. It’s your job to support your little darling’s passion for science.

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The Lab

If your child begins to seriously consider science as a viable career option, get them in a lab. You want them to experience first hand the people in white coats, the experiments, the area and the equipment. Sites like https://atlanticscale.com discuss the different types of scientific measuring tools that your child may encounter and goes into great detail about the care needed to maintain laboratory equipment. Before you know it, your child will know their bunsen burner from their test tube and their pipette from their gauge block.

Plenty of universities have world-class science facilities, and you can ask to pay a visit to their labs. They’ll only be too pleased to show you and your child around.

Harnessing any sort of enthusiasm within your child is tough, especially when there are so many distractions around them. However, if you have one of those little cherubs who loves nothing more than collecting rocks, taking a peek down a microscope or gazing up at the stars, it’s time to capture that innate curiosity and help your child develop a greater love for science.

About the Author

Editorial Staff at I2Mag is a team of subject experts.