Orbits are Easy

After blogging about my conversations with BSM about why the moon doesn't fall down, I was inspired to go on ebay and buy a beach-ball globe. A few days after that, I saw a kid's ball printed with a (Hebrew) globe. It was cheap, BSM is currently without a 10-inch bouncy ball, and I was impatient for my little science demonstration, so I bought it.

My plan was to spend a few days explaining about various countries and oceans ("This is Israel; we live here. This is America; Bubby/Savta/Grandma/etc. live here. This is the Ocean, like we saw at the beach.") until BSM began to grasp that the ball is actually a model of the world in which he lives. Then I'd add another ball for the moon and show it going around and around the earth.

BSM found the ball and got very excited. "You bought me a present? This is a ball? It is for me?"
"Bring it over here," I told him, "I want to show you something cool about that."
BSM, being an obedient child (and excited about additional features on his present), complied promptly. As he was walking over to me, he said, "This is like כדור הארץ [Earth/globe]. Show me ישראל [Israel]? That's where we live. The blue is water."
Say whaaaaaaaaaaat???

I knew that his Thursday teacher (Israeli school is 6 days a week, and the workweek if 5 days a week, so preschools have a steady substitute once a week) started a unit on "Nations and Countries" with the kids, but she's only been there 2 or 3 times, and these children are three years old. I'm floored that she already got them to master the globe so quickly.

My curriculum in a shambles, I figured I'd do the briefest little, "See Israel. See America," and hop straight to the moon. BSM was totally cool with a smaller ball representing the moon, and he liked that it went around and around the Earth (and weirdly, that alone seemed to satisfy him about why the moon doesn't fall). However, he did not totally approve of my model: "Also the Earth spins, though! On a... On a... What's it called?"
"Axis?"
"No... Spins on a..."
"On a stick?"
"Yeah. Earth spins on a stick."

So I had to rotate the Earth while the moon orbited. Because BSM knows what's up.