A Science Lesson from a 3-year- Old?
Friends! When was the last time you learned something from a young child?
Recently, while celebrating my hubbie’s 61st birthday, our almost three-year-old granddaughter, Claire, put me in my place...
I was reading one of her favorite books (which has occupied her for countless hours and is a blast for toddlers), Poke-a-Dot! An Alphabet Eye Spy. ALL of the Poke-a-Dot books have LOUD dots you punch (a/k/a Pop-a-tronic patented technology), akin to punching bubble wrap. Once children get the hang of it, lights out forevermore.
Melissa and Doug have put these clever books together. FYI: There are nine different Poke-a-Dot books available. We currently have four, and I suspect we will soon collect the rest. (The other eight are at the end of this post.)
Progressing thru’ the alphabet, we arrived at the letters “M”, “N”, and “O.” Within these two pages, there are multiple pictures of objects beginning with these letters, i.e. mouse, mailbox, monkey, and mittens for “M.”
For the letter “N,” there are pictures of a nail, a necklace, (musical) notes, and a puzzling creature who looks like a whale. I said to Claire, “Hmmm, this animal looks like a whale, but ‘whale’ starts with the letter ‘W’, and we’re on the letter ‘N’, plus he or she has a spear near his nose?”
With great admonishment, Claire proclaimed, “Lolly! That is not a whale, that is a NARWHAL. And that is not a spear, it is a TUSK!”
Speechless and stunned, I immediately reported this to Claire’s parents. (A/k/a our oldest son, John Jr., and d-in-love, Diana.) After dying laughing, they recalled a book we have right here in this house (huh?) called What is a Narwhal? It was a gift from a friend and I’d completely forgotten all about it. It’s a darling little board book with lift the flap photos.
Apparently Claire remembers a LOT of what she reads! May this be a fun lesson for all of us! Here’s the book she retained better than I did:
And for Claire’s birthday, she’s getting this really cute book about a unicorn named Kelp who hangs out with narwhals and then discovers he’s really a unicorn.
For the past two weeks, we’ve discussed new ways to pray along with an assortment of beautiful, illuminated Scripture journals. Carrying the prayer thread into this week, let’s look at a book on prayer for children.
Best-selling author Nancy Guthrie and talented illustrator Jenny Brake created What Every Child Should Know About Prayer. I learned about this by accident when researching a new book by Nancy. (You know I’ll report on it soon...Smile)
I’m forever wanting prayer ideas with children. Nancy’s book makes prayer simple, and child-friendly. We all can learn several things:
What prayer is,
How we should pray,
Why we should pray, and
Things we can pray about.
There are Bible verses for each topic. The book’s divided into six parts:
“God wants us to talk to Him,
Prayer is More than Asking God for Things,
God’s People have always prayed,
The Psalms give us words to pray,
Jesus teaches us to pray, and
Let’s pray!”
There are prayers to make your own, emphasizing what a GIFT prayer is (love this!). The happy result is we readers will come away encouraged to enjoy speaking to God.
One of many entries happens to be timely for us NOW as God’s Word always is. It’s entitled, “The Psalms Help us Hope in God.” Nancy opens with,
“Living life in this world can be hard. When bad things happen, we can begin to wonder if God is really hearing our prayers and if we can really depend on him. The psalms help us to remind ourselves that God can be trusted because sometimes we forget!”
One of the two verses included is a favorite we can cling to:
The closing prayer is simple, succinct, and says it all: “When I am discouraged, Lord, I will put my hope in you.” Amen and amen.
And what could we have prayed after Claire’s revelation about the narwhal? “Lord Jesus, we praise you for creating way cool animals like the Narwhal. We praise you we can learn they’re cousins to the Beluga whale and live under the ice in the Arctic, where we usually cannot see them, but because you’ve created scientists who share what they’re learning, we can learn too. Thank you for making this fun! We love you and we love our families. Amen.”
‘Til next time!
Here are the other books I referenced earlier:
Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the page above are “affiliate links.”