When I was Noah's age I built forts to defend against the bad guys. He builds forts and pretends to be a mudskipper. After the 5th time Campbell tore it down and he got mad at her he brought the problem to me.
I explained the mudskipper's tunnels are flooded every time the tide changes and has to start over clearing out the tunnel of mud. So his sister is just playing the part of the endless cycle of nature and the constant shifting of the tides.
His eyes lit up like you wouldn't believe. He ran to the other room and proclaimed "Cam, that's awesome!"
I don't know if it's the amount of information available to kids the Internet provides today. Possibly it's the amazing videos of Planet Earth or Life. Maybe we just know how to be informative and entertaining. Whatever the reason, our children know more about the world we live in at 6 than I knew at 15. They are able to experience things we either read about in an encyclopedia or were at the mercy of whatever happened to be airing on TV on a Saturday morning. Now we can watch webcams of Eagle nests hatching and how the parents care for them-LIVE! Noah can hold my phone to the sky and it points out planets, constellations, and nebula. When a plane flies overhead an app can tell us where it came from, where it's headed, and what it's carrying.
Jenna was always scared of overexposing Noah to too much information when he was in preschool. She lives in the world of achievement and academics and she (rightfully) feels kids are beat over the head with curriculum from the moment they walk into a kindergarten classroom. She wanted him to just be a kid. The only problem is Noah CONSUMES information like it was his last meal. Maybe I just can't remember what it was like as a kid but what's available today can be overwhelming but our children are so remarkably adaptable they breathe it in and make it part of everyday.
When Noah asks me something I don't know he immediately says "let's look it up." He doesn't mean at some later point when it's possible. He means right now. I hold a button on my phone and ask it aloud for the tide schedule for western Australia (so we can check to see of the mudskipper is currently underwater). Then it tells me. Then he goes right back to playing having totally assimilated the information like it was the most natural thing in the world.
;)
