Curiosity — "Look closely, ask why"
"What's something you walk past every single day that you've never really looked at?"
Posted Week 1 · left open · answered aloud by students on Week 6, Day 5Throughout the module, whenever a child offers an interpretation rather than an observation — "the rock looks happy," "the bug is lost" — the teacher gently redirects: "Is that something you can see, or is that a guess?" Guesses aren't wrong or discouraged, but they get named as guesses, not recorded as facts. When a guess raises a real question (e.g. "why is the leaf brown on the edges?"), the teacher's job is to turn it into something checkable rather than answer it directly — "let's find a leaf in the shade and one in the sun, and see if there's a difference" — so the child tests the guess instead of just receiving an answer.
build the skill of noticing before introducing sketching technique.
give observation a toolkit — shape, light, texture, scale.
sustained attention on a single object across a full week.
observation applied to two things at once.
bridge toward the "watch across time" idea that later grades build on.
apply every skill from the module to answering the Big Question for real.