So I took my 7 y/o daughter fishing and camping last night. Out of nowhere she asked me how the world was made, I inturn asked her to explain to me how she thought the world was made. She proceeded to tell me that the earth was just a bunch of rocks and stuff, and she guessed it had alway been here like the moon and stuff. NO MENTION OF GOD!!! I then explained to her about space, gasses, the Big Bang, and so on. She thought that was cool. We kept talking about evolution and where animals came from. She figured that a fishes fins would be a great place to grow some legs and start walking around, but did not understand the vast amount of time it takes for things to evolve. She then got mad when her fish she caught and put on the ground didn't sprout legs and walk away, hehe. It was all in all a very good night, we didn't even discuss gods, she really hasn't had any exposure to religions we just don't, and never have, went to church.

To top it all off, Pratt is home to the Kansas Dept. of Wildlife and Parks. There is a little natural history type museum that has state animals, fish, and reptiles, as well as KDWP displays. This morning she wanted to go there for the umpteenth time. We stopped off to view the new alligator snapping turtle, that is absolutely HUGE, and I start looking through the pamplets and coloring books. What do I find? On T.R.A.C.K.S.:Teaching Resource Activities and Conservation to Kansas Students, an educational pamplet geared towards gradeschool kids that has about 20 pages. This months issue? The Scientific Theory of Evolution! Needless to say she liked it. I read through it first, because we all know how Kansas is, and there was nothing objectionable. Pretty straightforward, there was a section in the back called Problem Concepts of Evolution. I thought here we go, however, it was just geared towards helping parents and teachers explain things like deep time to kids when they might not understand 5 billion years. It also says that science and religion differ in such ways that it makes it inappropriate to teach intellegent design. Kind of a win for a state department to put out such a booklet geared towards kids.