We were out for lunch with Sankar’s cousin and their family. Their son, a 3 yr old pumpkin (as his mom calls) was the center of attraction. In order to divert Arjun (that’s real name of pumpkinJ) from the real hard job of eating during our lunch; I started entertaining him with a new game – Call out the names of the animals/ birds we both know one after the other. I have to tell then name of an animal and Arjun will tell next one.
Here we go; the game started – I started with Cat and Arjun has Dog; I say Tiger and he immediately says Lion. I say Blue whales and he has Beluga Whales. For anything that I say, Arjun will relate that somehow and get an animal’s name. for me, I could call out all the animals that I see mostly and my database was running out pretty soon. I started telling “A for.. “; “B for.”; “C for …” within myself and started calling out the names. At some point Arjun was giving me hints – Tell the name of the animal that lives in the Desert. I know, it is a shame to say that I wanted the clue from a 3 yr old to call out ‘camel’. I was surprised when he called out Vulture and Ostrich. Every time, he tells something I am like: “Ops, I knew that; why didn’t I tell then”.
Kids of Arjun’s age learn all these names and have them registered because that’s the primary work for them. They are excited learning new things; seeing new things. As we get older, may be we are so pre occupied in our work or may be our priorities are different; or may be we have too many other things to remember that names of animals/ birds are down the stack. I think I have to learn all these pre school stuff from Arjun.
Cheers
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Dame's Galaxy 