The Question Box

What makes people sleepwalk? How do you teach a chipmunk tricks? What are the ten most expensive cars? Who invented the guitar? All throughout the week questions like these pop into my mind and the minds of my five siblings living here at home. Why do people hiccup? Who was the fastest runner? What does a hissing spider sound like? What was the hottest day ever recorded? When they do, we write them down on a small slip of paper and drop them into a basket, which we call the Question Box.

Sometimes, there are lots of questions, like the time Mama looked up the answers to thirty-six questions that Jonah, Samuel, Isaac, Justus, and Gideon had written down! Other times there may be only six, but no matter the number, every Sunday evening finds us gathered in the living room anxious to find out the answers.

Since we usually don’t know any of the questions but our own, it is exciting to see what sort of videos end up on our watchlist. Mama takes care of searching our questions and finding short explanatory videos that best answer what we asked. Sometimes, the videos, usually in a time range of about five to ten minutes, can only skim the surface of a question. In that case, we dig for further information using books on the subject we get either from our own library or the local one.

Our questions have been a fun and educational way to learn many new, old, fascinating, and sometimes wild facts about our world! Did you know… In just a couple of hours, we’ve covered a wide range of subjects. 

History: Who were William and Ellen Craft? How did the Dogs for Defense program work? What was Shackleton’s expedition to Antarctica like? 

Zoology: How do Slave-maker ants live? Why is a group of sharks called a shiver? What makes locusts swarm? 

Medicine: Who discovered vaccinations and how do they work? What are the differences between bacteria and a virus? How does a person recover from a coma? 

Astronomy: Why is Pluto no longer considered a planet? What makes telescopes so expensive? How can they know what the sun is made of if no one can even get close to it? 

Geography: If there is a New Zealand, where is Old Zealand? What does Pitcairn Island look like today? Where is the tallest mountain? 

Business: What are the most profitable insects to farm and produce? What does the average day of an actor look like? Who is the richest person in the world? 

Technology: How does CGI (computer generated imagery) work? What is computer language?

We’ve learned and are learning so much from the many slips of paper that appear throughout the week in our Question Box. Each Sunday evening is looked forward to with anticipation. What was life in a Medieval city like? I’ll find out Sunday night!

~Halayah