My middle child has about the most expansive mental library of animal facts you’ll ever encounter. She loves animals and she loves facts, so it’s a natural state of affairs. Today, I took her and some of her siblings and cousins to the zoo, which she was delighted about.
On the drive there, she made an off-hand comment that it would be hard for her to learn anything new, since she already knew “every fact about animals.” While I could have corrected her hubris, I elected not to – that wasn’t the lesson I wanted to come out of this very teachable moment. I didn’t want to belittle her expansive knowledge base; it is, after all, quite impressive! Instead, I just wanted to challenge the notion that you could ever know everything. And I wanted it to be fun.
So I gave her a challenge: If she could find 5 animal facts in the zoo that she didn’t already know, she’d earn a prize. What a delightful scavenger hunt it was! She definitely found five and earned her prize, and I was happy with the lesson: it’s not always about how much you already know. It’s about how much you can still learn, every day.
The Opportunity Machine 