About three years ago, I was at my daughters school science fair with a small demonstration, when a gentleman with his two children, a daughter and a son, around 7 and 5, walk up to my table. “What’s up?”, dad asks.
Now, normally I would have given him a canned response like “not much”‘ but this being a science fair, warranted a better response. “Hmmm… depends on which way you consider up. If it’s that way (pointing to the ceiling), then roof, atmosphere, sky. What else?”. “Stars”, the little boy added, “galaxies” the girl said. At this point the parent was clearly out of his comfort zone, realizing that I had just made a dad joke, and his kids embraced it. So what the heck, since he is uncomfortable already, I ask, “so which way do you think people in China point to when they say up?” It takes more than a couple of seconds for the kids to figure out the relevance of being in China. “They will point that way (pointing at the floor)”, answers dad helpfully.

Yesss… he was in the game too, but he just threw out a spoiler. I hastily looked at the kids and asked, “correct. But why is that? Are they walking upside down, on their hands?” … brain gears churn for a sec … then the boy says, “cause up means down in Chinese?” “No silly”, big sister figures it out, “they are on the opposite side of the earth.”

A minute later we were discussing how astronauts probably don’t know which way is up, but they could just point away from earth and call it up. Then completely out of the blue, the little girl adds thoughtfully, “Maybe that’s why there’s fire in h-e-l-l (spells it out). It’s all the lava and stuff at the center of the Earth .” On that hilarious note I exit the conversation, as theology is probably not something you discuss with other people’s kids. However my little game of “Think-a-Boutit” was a success.

I play Think-a-Boutit with my daughter as frequently as I can, and encourage you to do the same. I believe it promotes the art of critical and scientific thinking. Here are some Thinka-Boutit questions to get you started. Remember the idea is to keep thinking, there are no answers, and silliness is encouraged.

Does wind shake the leaves or do the shaking leaves make the wind?
How come most animals have even number of limbs and odd number of hearts (octopi have 3)?
What if we started naming everything like we named the insect “Fly”, would humans be called “walk”? What about frogs, cars, kettles?