“What does _____ mean?”
“What’s ____?”
“How does _____ work?”
“Why does _____ ?”
“How/why do we ____ with ____?”

Because I’m a mean mom I enjoy aggravating my children my own ignorance knows no bounds I believe in the whole notion of “teachable moments” (that sounds so impressive, doesn’t it?), I try to avoid just giving the answer unless it’s absolutely necessary (For instance, I’m inclined to answer “What does a brown recluse look like?” immediately, in case the questioner has just come into contact with one, but am less inclined to answer “What does ‘external confirmation’ mean?” if the questioner can look it up).

For many questions, the first answer is, “Did you look it up in your dictionary?” It’s amazing how that book actually contains information about the meanings of words! Even more amazing, someone can actually look in the dictionary himself and find the meaning!

If Captain Science found the meaning in the dictionary, we discuss it a bit. If he has questions about the words used in the definition, he looks those up, too. He tells me in his own words what the word means and how it was relevant to the discussion/reading where it cropped up.

If Captain Science did not find the meaning in the dictionary, as he sometimes does not (our dictionary isn’t great), we turn to Dictionary.com for a definition. Once we’re there, we often use the thesaurus function to look up synonyms of the word, and then we use those in the sentence in place of the word we looked up.

If the dictionary or Dictionary.com don’t contain the kind of information we need, and if we don’t have a book on the topic in our personal library, we Google and/or look it up on Wikipedia (which, though not an acceptable source for formal research, has an acceptably high accuracy rate for the purposes of answering our questions). HowStuffWorks also provides well-written articles explaining the mechanics of everything from hot air balloons to zombies.

If what we’re looking up a matter of science or history, we turn to reputable, accessible sources. I vet online science and history sources prior to letting Captain Science wander through them — when in doubt, I do my own search about the site to see if it’s been the subject of controversy or if it isn’t secular and/or evidence-based. PBS is a great resource for both science and history (for example, it has a great online library of evolution resources, including lessons for educators). We also turn to a lot of primary sources online. Online copies of original texts and films of speeches provide a lot more information than a site about a text or speech.

Through all of this, I encourage Captain Science to rephrase his question or expand on it, so he not only answers his exact query, but gains some context and nuance for the answer. If you ask “how,” also ask “why?” What’s the root of that word you’re looking up? What’s the cause of that event? What’s the meaning of that saying or the evidence behind that science?

The question and the method used to answer that question are just as important, if nor more so, as the answer. We like questions here in the McLernins household and we like finding answers together. I want my children to grow up questioning, to be lifelong questioners (and thus, lifelong researchers).