Beyond activities: Exploring real questions for deeper understandings of children’s interests

Children’s interests are an important basis for creating an early childhood curriculum. However, opportunities to build a curriculum responsive to children’s interests may often be missed if busy teachers simply add new resources to activities. This article draws on the notion of real questions as a way to interpret children’s interests more deeply. We discuss examples from one child, Zoey, and her family, to show how children’s real questions might provide a basis for curriculum through encouraging teachers to identify and respond to children’s interests, inquiry, and families’ funds of knowledge in meaningful ways.