The Why Phase Is a Skill: Curiosity and Initiative in California's Approaches to Learning

Toddlers ask why several hundred times a day. Most parenting advice treats that as a phase to survive. California's newest preschool standards treat it as the first thing a child brings to school that is worth protecting.

Where the topic comes from

The 2024 California Preschool/TK Learning Foundations added an Approaches to Learning domain, and its first strand, Motivation to Learn, opens with two sub-strands: Curiosity and Interest (Foundation 1.1) and Initiative (Foundation 1.2). Curiosity is the child noticing something and wanting to know more. Initiative is the child doing something about it without being told. The foundations describe both as growing abilities that teachers can support by setting up the environment and leaving room, rather than as traits some children have.

Put the two together and you have the front half of the inventor's mindset as I have watched it in adults for more than 20 years. Every inventor I have worked with noticed something that bothered them, and then did something about it before anyone asked. Nobody trained that into them at 30. It was there at three or it was not.

Book 1: noticing

Kit's Big Curiosity is a walk. Kit looks up and sees a bird building a nest. Looks down and finds a flower pushing through a crack. Looks left and finds a puddle that reflects the sky. Looks right and watches a dog chase its tail. Fewer than twelve words a spread, the same pattern every time, so a toddler can call the next direction before the page turns. It ends with a question for the child, "What will YOU see?", and stops.

Book 3: doing something about it

Kit Sees a Puzzle is where curiosity becomes initiative. Naya carries a magnifying glass everywhere. When she spots Mr. Gomez struggling with a jar, or a small girl on tiptoes at a water fountain, she holds it up and declares "Uh oh! I found a puzzle!" Kit repeats it, and by the last spread he spots one on his own. His little sister's juice tips over. "I see a puzzle!" That line is the moment the rest of the series turns on, because a child who calls a problem a puzzle has already decided to touch it.

What you can do

• Take the Book 1 walk. Up, down, left, right, and "ooh" at each one. Count the oohs. That is the activity page in the back of the book, and it needs no materials.
• Rename problems. When the cup tips or the zipper sticks, say "uh oh, a puzzle." Watch what a three-year-old does with the word.
• Answer the tenth why with a why back. "Why do you think the fan spins?" Wrong answers are initiative.

Phase 1 of the series, Wondering, is these four books together. If your toddler is in the why phase, you are not late. You are exactly on time.

Sources

• California Department of Education, California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations: Approaches to Learning (2024). Original PDF. Archived copy on littlesparksbooks.com (PDF), saved in case the original moves.
• California Department of Education, California Preschool/Transitional Kindergarten Learning Foundations overview page (nine domains). www.cde.ca.gov/sp/cd/re/psfoundations.asp

Chris Kuczynski is an engineer turned registered patent attorney, a preschool co-founder, and a dad. He is the author of Kit's Little Sparks, a 20-book STEM series that gives children ages 2 to 4 the social and emotional foundations of the inventor's mindset. It is the first of four age-tiered series for readers ages 2 to 12.