Reflections of Curiosity

How "I wonder..." questions can lead to discoveries of delight.

At my house, we love when the Kiwi Crate shows up.¹

This month’s crate was about mirrors, pattern and symmetry. One of the activities was making a kaleidoscope.

As my 6 year old and I were playing with the kaleidoscope after she finished it, I asked her “I wonder what it would look like if we tried to take pictures through this with the iPhone?”

So we tried it.

Photos of the Kaleidoscope with the Disc on it

Then I asked her, “I wonder what it looks like from the disc’s perspective, should we take off the disc and take pictures of our eyes?”

So we did.

Then she asked “can we take a picture of my mouth?”

So we did.

Photos of eyes and mouth through a kaleidoscope

Then I asked her “I wonder what other things around the house look like through the kaleidoscope?”

So we walked the house for an hour, picking out various things to take photos of through the kaleidoscope.

We took photos of art…

Photos of art through a kaleidoscope

We took photos of stickers, items from the pantry, plants…

Photos of plants, stickers, pantry items through a kaleidoscope

We took photos of clothes toys and instruments.

Photos of toys and instruments through a kaleidoscope

The photos we ended up with were some of the coolest photos I’ve ever taken.

We let our sense of wonder carry us to wherever it wanted.

This was a magical lesson in curiosity.

What did I learn about curiosity from this playful experience?

• We let our curiosity wander. We didn’t try to force where we ended up next, we just looked around and followed the energy.

• We held it lightly. We laughed when something turned out differently than we thought it would.

• We tried things we thought for sure might not be good ideas. Usually our ideas that we thought “weren’t going to work” were the best ones.

• We giggled. We just played. We didn’t try to make it anything other than a silly game of “What if…”

In a Venn diagram of attention and imagination and curiosity, I believe what sits at the intersection is creativity.

If you are willing to be curious rather than accept things for the way they are, magical things happen.

You can see the world with delight and wonder.

I hope you choose curiosity this week and I hope it takes you magical places.

I hope you see the world through a different lens in a way you’ve never seen it before.

If you experience the world in a new way this week, I would love to hear from you about it! ✨

Curiously Creative,

Chase

P.P.S Want to join the waitlist for my Notion course on being effective? Come sign up!

1. A Kiwi Crate is a box with activities that support learning a science or math based theme. Kiwi Co’s goal is “Inspire the next generation of innovators with seriously fun science & art projects”.