Ting Ting development @ 37 months

At 37 months, she can now memorize all the planets' name in the solar system and the sequence of the planets from the sun. Her hobby now is to read books about planets and kept asking to watch the planets in the solar system videos. It is now a goodbye to her Peppa Pig and Dora the explorer.

She got an intense interest in astronomy especially planets. She can even tells me which planets have rings around it correctly and some features of the different planets. For instance, she will tell me there are lots of craters on Mercury and very hot because it is the nearest to the sun. She will also tells me that there are storms on Neptune.

Previously her favourite planet was Saturn and her reason was "Because there are rings around it!". Now she tells me that her favourite planet is Pluto. When I asked her why but she couldn't answer me (I guess it could be due to the "Heart Shape" landscape on Pluto?). Even though officially Pluto had been "demoted" to be a dwarf planet because it couldn't meet the so called "planet requirements", but I always counted Pluto as the ninth planet. Also the recent New Horizon space probe mission had revealed Pluto to be a fascinating world which is totally out of expectations. I felt that it is important for her to know about Pluto as part of the solar system so I just shared with her how Pluto looks like and why it was not classified as a planet now anymore. She was intrigued with Pluto and it now become her favourite planet!

Last night when we were cycling in the park, she was able to recognise the bright, non-blinking star-like object in the night sky as Jupiter. I used the Skyview app to check if that was really Jupiter and true enough it was! Maybe it was a coincident but Jupiter was the planet which started off her interest in astronomy.

Her interest in astronomy really surprised me especially how much she learnt within a short period of time. All these are very basic and simple knowledge but for a toddler who barely passed 3 years old, it is very commendable to me.

I hope her interest in astronomy will continue. I am open to her studying astronomy in the future if she has a passion in it even though this subject may not be offered in Singapore currently.

To keep up with her interest, I will try to borrow more books on astronomy for children and perhaps bring her to the science centre observatory in one of the Friday night to see the stars too.