Personal Interest – Smart Choice
Everyone has personal interests that engage their thinking or spark curiosity. Your child will have their own interests, and they can be used as jumping-off points to engage in learning or developing new ideas.
Ask your child(ren) about things they are interested in. (For example, your child/ren might be interested in birds) and use the following ideas to explore the topic.
Adapt the ideas and content focus to match your child/ren’s interests.
Play eye spy
Look around your local environment and see what can be found that is connected to the topic of interest. Have conversations about other things people might notice or look for that could also be connected to the topic.
If your child/ren’s interests are based on something that is not likely to be seen in your local environment, use books, and museum visits, to play eye-spy. Some museums offer on-line tours.
Treasure Hunts
Work with your child/ren to create a list of things connected to the topic of interest that you might be able to find in your local environment. Go out and try and find all the things on the treasure hunt list. See what unexpected ‘topic treasures’ are discovered along the way.
Tool Kits
Sometimes going on a treasure hunt is not possible or feasible, depending on the topic or the space you live in. An alternative to a treasure hunt is creating a ‘tool kit’.
Have your child/ren imagine working in the field connected to their topic of interest. Let them use their imaginings to create items that might be needed if they were in a job connected to their topic. Explore, examine and analyse what tools they might need. You could even do some research together.
Create a library
Find books or online resources (films, websites, etc) related to the topic of interest (both non-fiction and fiction). Create a space where the print texts can be stored and accessed easily. You and your child/ren could even create a way of organising or cataloguing the books, and other resources to share with others.
Find time to read the books together. You and your child/ren could begin to extend the library by adding different categories related to the topic of interest.
Possible ideas