Environmental learning!
I was checking my Google Reader one last time before bed, when JediBoy wandered in to say goodnight. He found me reading We’d Rather Be Outside, ogling pictures like these
of foam on the beaches of New South Wales. He asked what they were so I read him a bit about how the foam formed, and then told him it was in Australia. Can we go to Australia? I had him get out his globe and we looked carefully at the US, then Guatemala (so he’d have some frame of reference for distance and travel time), then Australia. He was mightily impressed. I said casually and Australia is where kangaroos, koalas, and platypuses live. His eyes narrowed. What’s a platypus?
We used Google image search to pull up a bunch of pictures, and I tried to describe it as best I could. I also told him, with lots of nostalgia in my voice, of my childhood visit to the Taronga Zoo and our repeated stops by the platypus exhibit until we finally, finally, saw one swim out. He was fascinated by the animal and wanted to know just how big it was and what it ate, so we read several pages until we found specific answers. (About 3 lbs, 20 inches; insects, larvae, shellfish and worms.) And I sang him the Ornithorynchus anatinus song from Mister Rogers.
Then he went to bed.
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