Teaching moments

On my last post I mentioned how sometimes movies can present teaching opportunities for M. After watching Frozen, M wasn't quite sure she understood why Hans was a bad guy. I mean, at the beginning of the movie he totally sweeps poor gullible Anna off of her feet. They sing "Love is an Open Door" together and he proposes to her. I had to explain to her that he was just pretending to be nice in order to take over the kingdom. She still isn't quite sure about that explanation but she goes with it.

The other day I had my laptop open and it went into sleep mode where it starts scrolling through pictures we've downloaded. On this day it was scrolling pictures of our trip to Hawaii with Marc's mom and his brother's family when they had just one child. Neither of my girls were yet in the world. Particularly, these were of our visit to Pearl Harbor. There were pictures of The USS Arizona Memorial, The USS Bowfin and some of the artillery that had been used. M asked what the pictures were and I told her we visited Pearl Harbor, where a long time ago, some bad people attacked.

M: "Why mama?"
Me: "Well they wanted to take control"
M: "Like Hans?"

The way her young mind made that connection was really just awesome. I know that my explanation of the event was beyond simplistic but she's 3, she'll learn about the events that led up to that fateful day when she's older. I was just amazed that she made that connection. Our conversation expanded a bit from there about why but, I just thought that this was a perfect example of a teaching moment from both life and fiction. I love to see her mind grow with each experience she has and when she makes connections it just blows me away. I know that's how I grew too but to see it in action is to see life. The life that grew within me and is now out in this big, wide, scary and amazing world.