I’ve always loved philosophy. In college, I relished Symbolic Logic (taken optionally, nonetheless!) and, though it was difficult, navigated through a prestigious Philosophy-of-Mind class. In my career, I was challenged to think deeply about ethics and choice.
When I began homeschooling my children during COVID, I studied all I could about educational philosophies and homeschooling. Over the years, I have studied classical education, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Sudbury, and many Christian and other homeschooling/alternative schooling modalities, including unschooling. I think all of these educational models hold valid and authentic truths for students.
Homeschooling my own children, I wanted to pass along my love of philosophy and writing. What I found when searching for age-appropriate philosophical writing journals was that — there weren’t many.
So, I put my old knowledge to the test and divided this 90-day writing prompt journal into 13 weeks of philosophical topics to explore through daily writing. Some of the topics include:
– epistemology (truth, belief, and knowledge)
– philosophy of mind (thoughts, awareness, and inner life)
– personal identity (the self over time)
– ethics and virtue
– free will and responsibility
– metaphysics (order, patterns, and meaning)
– the transcendentals (beauty, truth, goodness, and unity)
– teleology (purpose, work, and contribution)
– and formation—who we are becoming over time
My kids polled their friends and together, we put together some of their biggest questions. Combining these timeless questions with elementary and middle school philosophical study topics, the Philosophical Wonder Prompts for Kids journal was created!
Philosophical Wonder Prompts for Kids
Philosophical Wonder Prompts for Kids is a 90-day guided journal designed to help children slow down, think deeply, and grow confident expressing their ideas through writing. Rather than focusing on quick answers or performance-based writing, this journal invites children to consider big questions. Inside you’ll find 90 prompts based in classical philosophy. The daily prompts invite children to wonder, reflect, reason, imagine, and respond–helping them engage with ideas before rushing to answers while building confidence in their thinking. echoing classical approaches to learning through inquiry and narration.
This journal reflects classical educational principles, forming articulation skills that naturally support later work in composition, discussion, logic, and rhetoric.
Each day of the week invites children to respond in a different way through written narration, including:
1.wondering, 2. reflecting, 3. reasoning, 4. imagining, 5. deciding, 6. defending ideas, and 7. clearly expressing and integrating ideas.
You can get it shipped as a generously sized 8.5×11″ softcover journal (perfect for lots of writing and drawing space for little hands) or keepsake matte-cover hardback, published through Amazon, or download it as a printable PDF.
Sample Philosophical Wonder Prompts Writing Prompts
How We Use Philosophical Wonder Prompts Writing Journals in Our Homeschool Writing Curriculum and Morning Baskets
If you are a homeschool parent and educator like me, I know you probably would like your children to be excited about writing and growing comfortable conveying their thoughts about different topics in writing. As we all know, however, it can be difficult to come up with writing topics for kids each day. That’s why it can be useful to have structured writing prompts to choose from.
Philosophical Wonder Prompts is arranged as a 90-day journal, with each week broken down as a major philosophical theme. From there, the questions each day for that week are related to the philosophical topic at hand.
My kids find it fun to answer questions in the journal. They prefer the softcover journal so they can fold back the cover and take it on the go with their pencil, pen, and colored pencils. There is space to sketch and draw on each journal page, as well as child-friendly sized-lines for about a paragraph’s worth of response for each question. Even though the journal and its prompts are designed with a semblance of order and are arranged by topic, my kids like to skip around and answer whatever question piques their interest on that particular day.
If you have a young deep thinker in your life, help encourage their daydreams and teach them it’s never too early to begin the search for philosophical truth. I hope you and your children will enjoy these journals as much as we have.
Philosophical Wonder Prompts for Kids:
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