September 2025 Blog: Fostering Scientific Thinking
A toddler places toys in the bathtub and watches some float and others sink. He tries to make the floating toys sink.
A preschool-age child observes ants on the sidewalk hauling away a small piece of food and asks her parent what the ants are doing.
These children are beginning to engage in scientific thinking. “Scientific thinking is a type of knowledge seeking involving intentional information seeking, including asking questions, testing hypotheses, making observations, recognizing patterns, and making inferences.”1 There are simple things we can do to help our children think more like scientists.
Share their sense of wonder
When a child shows an interest in the world around them, whether that’s the clouds in the sky, butterflies flitting about, or the ingredients and process you are using to bake a cake, notice and find ways to encourage deeper investigation. This can be as simple as becoming a fellow cloud noticer, pointing out how the clouds look different or similar from day to day. Or you can include your child in the baking process and casually talk about the properties of the ingredients, such as wet vs dry.
You do not need to be an expert scientist to share in their excitement and add to the scientific conversation. You can look up scientific information together. A simple statement like, “I’m not sure, let’s look that up together,” is teaching your child to seek information based on an interest they have.
Ask open-ended questions
Young children love to ask us “why” questions, but we can also ask them “why do you think” and “what do you think” questions to promote scientific thinking. These questions help them form and share a hypothesis with you. Instead of giving them the correct answer right away, this is a great launching point for an experiment. Here is a recent conversation I overheard:
Child: “Why do the leaves of the plant look sad?”
Adult: “Why do you think they look sad?”
Child: “Because they are hanging down like that. They look different.”
Adult: “What do you think they need to look better?”
Child: “I think it (the plant) needs more dirt.”
Adult: “That’s an interesting hypothesis. Let’s experiment. We have two plants in pots. Should we give one more soil and leave the other one alone for a day and see what happens?” Based on the results of the experiment, this adult could ask more questions about whether the hypothesis was correct or if more experimentation is needed.
There are many different open-ended questions you can use in conversations with your child to help them develop scientific thinking skills. 2
Add scientific tools
Adding a magnifying glass or a balance scale to your child’s toy box can promote scientific inquiry. Observing daily items, such as different fabrics or leaves, up close can lead to interesting discoveries and conversations.
Some of the tools scientists use in labs, we also use in the kitchen. When cooking together, a sieve or a salad spinner can turn into a lesson on separating solids and liquids. Using a blender or simply stirring ingredients together can be a lesson on combining solids and liquids. Measuring cups, scales, timers, and thermometers all have similar counterparts in a science lab.
People think scientific tools must be expensive or complicated, but there are easy ways to add scientific tools to your child’s daily play. 3
Come visit our outdoor Habitat Park exhibit and engage in some scientific thinking with our Master Gardeners during our Garden Buddies program!
See you at the Museum!
–Stephanie Bynum, Vice President of Programs
- Jirout, J. J., Supporting Early Scientific Learning Through Curiosity, Frontiers in Psychology: 2020 https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.01717/full
- Open-ended Questions: Georgia’s Pre-K Program https://www.decal.ga.gov/documents/attachments/questions_children_think.pdf
- Tools as Toys: Everyday Science Experiences: NAEYC https://www.naeyc.org/our-work/families/toys-as-tools-everyday-science