Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will notice that your child, like most children, is almost always curious and interested in everything going on around them.

This natural curiosity helps children to learn from every experience that they have, whether they are riding on a bus, jumping on the bed or playing in the park.

You might think that there isn't much to learn from these things, yet it is just these sorts of experiences that help your child to find out what things are, how they work and what they do. In the revised Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum, many of these everyday explorations come under 'Understanding the World' (see box).

As a parent, you could think about Understanding the World as the area of learning that might one day help your child to be a scientist or an engineer. Why? The reason is that it involves all the things that your child enjoys doing such as looking at things closely to find out about them, or pressing, pulling and pushing them to find out what they do - the things scientists and engineers often do as part of their work!

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