It’s true that kids are born atheists. In my experience so far, there’s no point when religion naturally comes up (in a child’s development) unless the parents or the community force the issue.
There’s a certain bliss in allowing my kids to remain ignorant of the existence of religion, but they’re going to hear about [...]
Or, in the words of my five-year-old Léo, “The zoo is my best walk.”
When I was younger, I was conflicted about zoos. It’s interesting for me to get to see exotic animals in real life, but does that justify putting the majestic lion in a concrete jail cell, not to mention the number of [...]
Here’s an interesting incident described by one of the bloggers from my ex-Mormon blogroll (Outer Blogness):
While we were in that room with Lucy, looking at the diorama of evolution, some woman walks up and asks Lizz, “Did I hear you correctly when you said that ’some people believe in evolution’?”
This led to the following:
The entire [...]
As much fun as it is to take the whole family on an astronomy outing, it’s easy to find fun astronomy tools at home, too — for free on the Internet! Today my kids would like to recommend to you some of their favorites. To give credit where credit is due, my husband found all [...]
lead elder: Harmless? It is this kind of backsliding that has brought the scarcity upon us!
a foreign penguin: Excuse me smiley, could you speak plain penguin please?
Mumble: He thinks the food shortage has something to do with me.
lead elder: Do you not understand that we can only survive here when [...]
My kids are really into the solar system these days. As I mentioned in Love of Learning, they’ve been drawing and coloring pictures of the solar system, and lately they’ve taken to playing with toy planets and inventing their own imaginary planetary system (called “the imaginary solar system” — it includes two “Giant Earths,” [...]
I’ve just finished reading a book to amuse and enlighten any science-minded parent: Parenting for Primates by Harriet J. Smith. The author — a primatologist-turned-psychologist — compares parenting techniques across the entire primate order to give human parents some ideas about what works and why.
Naturally this should invite a little skepticism: [...]
Kris V. has presented some good evidence for why you shouldn’t tell your kids they’re smart. There’s more to encouraging a love of learning than just praise, though (for the kids’ abilities or efforts ). Another technique is to dive right in and learn with them!
Here’s a space scene my son Nico drew the other [...]
Here’s a little magic trick I taught my kids:
While we were standing at an intersection waiting for the little red standing person turn into a little green walking person, I showed my kids that — just by pointing at the traffic signal and saying “Aaaah… Turn green!” — I can make the light switch from [...]