Session 1: Mystery Bags

We kicked off our very first Curiosity Club session with an afternoon full of excitement, discovery, and curiosity! This week’s activity was Mystery Bags, where children used their senses and thinking skills to make guesses about the hidden objects inside. Mystery Bags used three key curiosity promotion strategies: 

1. Comfort with Uncertainty: Children found joy in not knowing what was inside their mystery bag and working to figure it out without the pressure of being ‘right’. Learning to be comfortable with uncertainty leads to engaging in the challenge of finding new information, opening the door to curiosity-driven exploration and discovery. 

2. Strategic Question Asking: Participants practiced thinking about what information would be helpful for the challenge, asking relevant, specific questions that could help them narrow down the possibilities. Asking effective questions is a skill that helps children learn more about the world and pursue their curiosities with confidence, and practice doing this helps to develop metacognition and questioning skills. 

3. Use of Prior Knowledge: Children drew on what they already knew about textures, shapes, and objects to make their best guesses. Recognizing what you do and do not know is an important part of the curious learning process, so you can better recognize things you don’t know and could find out through exploration. 

Cultivate Curiosity at Home! 

Curiosity does not stop when the activity ends. You can encourage it every day by modeling comfort with uncertainty yourself. Show your child that it is okay not to know something right away and that figuring it out can be fun. 

Here are a few examples of how you can model your comfort with uncertainty in daily life: 

• “I’m not sure why I always put salt in the water to cook pasta- I think it does something, but don’t remember what. Should we look it up?” 

• “I love that pretty flower, but I do not know what kind it is. I’ll ask Grandma.” 

Small moments like these show children that they can search for information on their curiosities and that asking questions is something that grown-ups do too! 

A huge thank you to the Virginia Discovery Museum for hosting us for our first Curiosity Club session, and to NSF for funding our work. We loved exploring and learning alongside such enthusiastic young scientists! 

Catch us next at Boo Bash on October 23 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.! We cannot wait to see you there for more curious fun! 

Couldn't make it? Check out this week's parent handout!