V has always been fascinated with animals since she was an infant, and at about 18 months she loved visiting zoos and seeing animal pictures. At some point of time, she realized she couldn’t see a ‘real’ dinosaur anywhere and that bummed her. And that is when her dinosaur-obsession began.

She had some dinosaur figurines, but she had to imagine exactly how big they were. Thanks to some wonderful books, the size difference between dinosaurs and other regular wild animals was understood. She also learnt about the different types of dinosaurs, their food preferences, temperaments, etc. Frankly, this was a little annoying for me, because I do not care about dinosaurs at all. But when a child becomes interested in a topic like this, they can’t just be receivers of knowledge. They need to actively pursue it to understand it. This in turn, also helps them process information better, and leads to better attention spans.… Click to read the rest

At one point of time, V wanted to visit the penguins in their natural environment (more on that in the following posts). We told her it was too far and cold there. She couldn’t understand, and ultimately, we had to pull out an atlas and show her the different habitats, distance between places, etc. She let the argument rest, but was fascinated with all the different countries and places.

When we took her on her first and only international trip, she was stoked to find some animals she hadn’t seen before, but the question of why they weren’t found everywhere remained. She joined the dots and figured the whole habitat-country connection. Also, the fact that when a relative visits a particular country or place, they bring back either a fridge magnet or animal soft toy from there, combined her 2 most loved animals and geography, and got her obsessed with this study.… Click to read the rest