Tonight began like so:
Sophie: Can we play dolls? Please, please can we play dolls?
No. No, we cannot.
Instead, we took my globe off the bookcase and played the classic “spin it and point to a place” game. When the real globe got boring, we switched to Google Earth, and zoomed into Street View in each of the places Sophie picked. Thus we had a little world geography lesson combined with fancy computer graphics to occupy our imaginations.
Next we switched to my lunar globe and naturally started talking about how people have walked on the moon. This naturally lead to YouTube videos and footage from Apollo 13 of Saturn V liftoffs, men bouncing across an alien surface, and ocean splashdowns.
Tonight ended like so:
Sophie: (running down the hall with a kite in tow) 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… blast off!
Now we’re talkin’.
May 16th, 2010 at 10:01 am
OK, I get it: Girls like to play with dolls, have them talk and dress up and be girly-like and stuff.
Boys, on the other hand, would take that doll, build an overly elaborate contraption to launch said doll to ever-higher altitudes, to slip the surly bonds of earth, to reach the moon, the planets, the stars. Their five year mission: to explore new worlds to go boldly. But remember, it all started with a doll.