How does one prepare a three year old to live on a different
continent for three months? I don’t know
either. We read library books. We looked at maps. We talked about going to Africa to visit Aunt
Stephanie and Uncle David. We have thoroughly enjoyed hearing Timothy’s thoughts and questions on the topic.
When we arrived in Johannesburg and were walking through the airport to
our connecting flight to Durban, Timothy asked, “Where are the elephants?” Because, really, we had been in Africa for an
entire 30 minutes and he hadn’t seen any elephants in the airport yet…what was
that all about?! (Safari animals are the major theme of kids books related to Africa...so you can hardly blame him for coming to this conclusion.) Yesterday we were driving in the car and he informed us that
Africa is a continent. I had no idea he
knew the word ‘continent’. At church he
asked people he met if they also live in Africa, like maybe we live in Africa
but they might live in a neighboring continent and just came over to Africa for
church. Once he told me that he wanted
to go outside to South Africa, as if inside our house is not South Africa, but outside our
house is South Africa. Today we were at a view
point where you could see many miles off in the distance. Steph was pointing out the various
communities and places we had visited.
Timothy asked if we could see Minnesota in the distance. So…he’s picking up on bits and pieces of the
world around him, while other concepts are still forming, and of course way
more is soaking in than he can articulate.
But I do think the magnitude of a continent or the distance between the
USA and South Africa is a bit lost on him:-)
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