My 2 year olds are teaching Grandpa Astronomy

[MrsR]

My 2 and a half year old twins last night were flicking through one of my NASA books and came to a picture of Saturn, my father said "that's a planet isn't it" and they both replied "yes Grandpa that is Saturn", they then followed on with pointing out and telling my father what was Jupiter and what was the Moon - my dad couldn't believe it.

That's my girls

[bullettooth]

haha sweet. i have a 19month old and she's great

[Rihard]

My 2 and a half year old twins last night were flicking through one of my NASA books and came to a picture of Saturn, my father said "that's a planet isn't it" and they both replied "yes Grandpa that is Saturn", they then followed on with pointing out and telling my father what was Jupiter and what was the Moon - my dad couldn't believe it.

That's my girls

It's so amazing to see how smart kids are nowadays!!

I had the same experience as a kid, but as soon as I tried to teach him the little I knew, my grandfather actually turned into my teacher. When he was 6, he would take care of the cattle on his own (day and night completely alone) and never went to school. He didn't even wear shoes back then (it was the 20's, in rural Sardinia). However, shephards would use the stars to find their way home and sky knowledge was very common, but I wouldn't imagine anything like that, and he surprized me with his knowledge. He knew the names of many celestial bodies in Sardinian language, which I found were the same in the ancient mesopotamic civilizations and in many semitic language and he would even tell some myths about them!

Anyway...

My niece surprised me. When she was 6 she popped up on the facebook chat (she stole her mother's account ) and started talking about Martian atmosphere and interplanetary travel . When I went to visit them in Sardinia, she was reading 2 books: one about scientist Galileo and the other one about the father of modern chemistry Lavoisier. I then decided to buy her a 114" newtonian reflector (Skywatcher) as her first scope so she can do some practical astronomy too (I bought myself an equally sized newton at around 8 and really enjoyed it so I hope she will learn something more then I did!).