We have been watching episodes of Cosmos as a family. (Colleen is now 4 years old.) This is best when Colleen is engaged and asks us to pause the show and answer her questions every other minute. The good thing about that of course is that we can gauge how much she’s absorbing, as opposed to when she’s silently watching or not really paying attention, and then we have no idea. Anyway, one consequence is that she definitely likes to talk about science and the universe, and has incorporated that into her play. These are only good things as far as I’m concerned.
Another consequence by way of a quick anecdote this morning: As we were getting ready to leave the apartment, she was looking at a calendar with animals on each page. (For those who haven’t seen it, one of the recurring themes of Cosmos is an analogy where the lifetime of the universe is broken down into the length of a single calendar year.) She told me it was a calendar with pictures of the very first animals. Then I took a video of her, trying to get her to elaborate on that idea, but instead I just got descriptions of the animals. Some of which are rather… interesting. I particularly liked the unicorn, and “walrus bear”.