Watch a two-year-old for five minutes and you will witness something remarkable: a small person systematically testing the world. The biscuit is dropped, then thrown, then posted behind the radiator. The puddle is stamped, then stirred with a stick, then investigated with a finger. None of this is naughtiness or wasted time. It is curiosity in action — the drive that turns ordinary moments into learning, and the single most useful thing you can protect and encourage in the years before school. For parents and carers in Enfield and across North London, where busy roads, long working days and screens compete for everyone’s attention, knowing how to make room for that drive matters more than ever.
Why Young Children Are Born Researchers
Curiosity is not a personality trait that some children are lucky enough to receive. It is a basic human drive, present from birth, that pushes babies and toddlers to gather information about how things work, who they can rely on and what happens next. A baby who reaches for the same dangling toy again and again is not simply playing; they are confirming a pattern. A four-year-old who asks “why” fourteen times before breakfast is doing the same thing at a much more sophisticated level.
Much of what looks like repetition in the early years is actually schema development — a child working through an idea until it makes sense. The child who fills a bag with bricks, empties it and fills it again is exploring enveloping and transporting. The child who lines up cars nose to tail is testing order. Interrupting these rhythms too quickly, or tidying them away before they have run their course, can quietly teach a child that exploration is a nuisance rather than something adults value.
In England, the Early Years Foundation Stage recognises this by placing playing and exploring at the heart of its characteristics of effective learning, alongside active learning and creating and thinking critically. In other words, the official framework for early years education agrees with what parents already sense: young children learn by finding out, not by being told.
Curiosity also underpins later academic life. Children who have been allowed to wonder, test, get it wrong and try again tend to approach reading, number and problem-solving with more confidence, because they see difficulty as interesting rather than threatening. A curious child is not one who already knows the answers; it is one who still believes the answers are worth looking for — a disposition that matters far more than early flashcard success.
It is worth saying plainly that curiosity needs space. A child whose day is fully scheduled, and whose free time is filled with a screen or an adult-led activity, has little opportunity to follow a thought through to its end. Unhurried, slightly boring time — in a garden, on a kitchen floor with a box of pebbles — is often where curiosity grows strongest.
A Home, Garden and Neighbourhood That Says Yes
You do not need a large house or a big budget to raise a curious child. What you need is an environment that makes exploring easy and safe. Montessori practitioners talk about the prepared environment: a space set up so that a child can reach what they need, choose what interests them and put it back without an adult hovering. At home that might mean a low shelf with a handful of toys rotated every few weeks, a small jug and cup within reach at mealtimes, or a basket of real wooden spoons and bowls next to the kitchen cupboard.
Fewer, better, open-ended materials usually beat a mountain of plastic. Sticks, stones, shells, fabric, boxes, water, sand, clay, dough and simple tools can become anything, which keeps a child’s imagination working. Real, child-sized equipment — a proper little trowel, a small watering can, a dustpan that fits their hands — signals that you trust them, and trust is what makes a child brave enough to try.
Outside, a small garden, balcony or even a windowsill can become a discovery zone. A pot of soil and a packet of seeds will occupy a child for weeks. A tray of water, some stones and a sieve creates a morning’s investigation. Puddles are free. If you have a patch of grass, leave part of it a little wild and see what arrives. Dressing for the weather, rather than waiting for it, is the key: waterproofs and wellies by the door mean that drizzle becomes an invitation rather than a reason to stay in.
Enfield and the surrounding boroughs are unusually well supplied with green space to explore together. The woods and open grassland at Trent Park, the grounds and walled garden at Forty Hall, the paths around Broomfield Park and the smaller recs and playing fields closer to home all offer the kind of loose, unstructured encounters with nature that fire a child’s imagination: mini-beast hunts under logs, collecting leaves in a bucket, following a trail and getting pleasingly muddy in the process.
It is the same principle that shapes the calm, prepared classrooms and all-weather outdoor learning at Montessori nursery Enfield, where dens, mud kitchens and planting beds do much of the teaching and adults step back rather than lead. Whether you are recreating a little of that at home or looking for a setting that shares your values, the question to ask is always the same: does this space invite my child to find something out for themselves?
How to Answer a Question Without Closing the Door
Adults are trained to answer questions. Children need something slightly different: adults who keep the conversation going. The next time you are asked why the moon follows the car, try wondering aloud instead of explaining: “That’s a good question. Why do you think it does?” You may get a beautifully wrong theory about the moon wanting to come home. That theory is far more valuable than a mini-lecture on perspective, because it is the beginning of reasoning.
Useful phrases to keep in your pocket include “I wonder…”, “What would happen if…?”, “How could we find out?” and the underrated “I don’t know — shall we look?” That last one models something children rarely see: an adult who is still curious. It also shows that not knowing is not a failure but a starting point.
Slow down and narrate. Describing what you both see — “the ice is hard here but slushy near the wall” — gives a child the vocabulary to notice the difference. Rather than praising a finished tower with “well done”, try “you balanced that big block on a tiny one; it kept falling and you tried a different way.” This kind of specific, process-focused commentary, sometimes called descriptive praise, tells a child exactly what their effort achieved and encourages them to try again tomorrow.
Ask fewer, better questions. A stream of “what colour is that?” quizzing can turn play into a test. Open questions that have no right answer — “what does that remind you of?”, “who might live in there?” — leave room for thinking. And give children time to answer: waiting five or ten seconds after a question, rather than filling the silence, often produces an answer that would otherwise never have arrived.
Curiosity is also social. Children are far more likely to explore when they feel secure, which is why a familiar adult, a steady routine and warm attention matter so much in the early years. A child who knows someone will listen to their theory about where snails go at night will keep producing theories. If your child attends an early years setting, ask their key person what has caught their interest that week and carry it on at home — a fascination with drains, diggers or ducks can be followed up in the garden, at the library or on the walk to nursery. Small, repeated moments of “I noticed this — what do you think?” build a habit of enquiry that lasts far longer than any single answer.
