Curiosity is the act of pausing and observing. What can you notice about what the child is doing? What can you notice about your own impulses and reactions? 

Recently, I was at the beach with my young son. He was picking rocks up, walking about 15 feet away, and throwing them over the edge of the jetty and into the water, or onto rocks below. I noticed my own impulse was to make his play more "efficient". I wanted to direct him, or better yet, to do it myself - gather up rocks, create a pile, and sit there and throw them into the water one after the other. I wanted to see the splashes they made. Thankfully, I stopped myself. My son threw two rocks in, walked back and found another, threw that one, and then moved on to something else. 

I know that my own brain generates ideas for "efficiency" thousands of times a day. And for what? My son was engaging in the very definition of play, from the second of the Playwork Principles: "Play is a process that is freely chosen, personally directed and intrinsically motivated. That is, children and young people determine and control the content and intent of their play, by following their own instincts, ideas and interests, in their own way for their own reasons." (We strongly encourage reading the entirety of the Playwork Principles, available here.)

The best thing I could offer him in that moment was the opportunity to carry on, to lead his own play cycle, to mirror his movements and engage when invited. In other words, to do less.