Stella’s Counting Was Inspired by Noah

Stella has a picture book called Noah’s Ark. It is an abridged version of the biblical story written and illustrated by Lucy Cousins (author of the popular Maisy series). While she nowadays has an attraction to story/picture books that are more complicated, Stella dug this book out from a box on Thursday and asked me to read it to her. She said she used to like it as a baby, which I think is referring to a time before I came into her life. She spent a few extra minutes looking at the pictures in the book afterwards before we left for the park. When we got back, we still had more than an hour before her mum’s arrival. I had nothing to do because I was not expected to cook dinner. I asked her for ideas.

Stella suggested we make a boat just like Noah. Trying to let her make the decisions, I asked her what she would use to make the boat. She went straight to her ‘useful box’ and fished a men’s shoe box declaring, “This is it. This is the boat.” Next, she told me that she would fetch her toy animals from the cupboard. I was just watching all this from the couch. She set up the scene on the big coffee table in front of me. She lined up the animals like they were queuing to enter the ark. As she busied herself, she mumbled the same line from the book, “Then the animals came, two by two into the ark.” I noticed that she was having trouble pairing up some of the animals because she didn’t have two of every animal. For the dogs, she paired a Jack Russel with a Black Labrador. She was also forced to pair two lionesses because she didn’t have a lion. She was aware of the two’s identical gender as well.

Noticing that the two important human characters were missing from the scene, I asked Stella if she was Noah’s wife. She replied, “No.” and carried on pairing things for the ark. By then she had even paired buttons, balls, pencils, paper clips and other little toy vegetables for the ark. I asked her for the whereabouts of the famous couple. At one stage, she stopped and explained that they had gone to the market to get more food for the animals. A few minutes later, she stopped again and gave me one of those looks as though she had just thought of something. “I suppose I can use those Lego people to pretend to be Noah and his wife.” To that, I got up because I would be needed to help carry the crate of Duplo blocks. I was hoping earlier that she would come to use the Duplo figures on her own because there were more animals in the crate. She did and it was a great idea. She looked through her collection and selected animals from there to pair up with lonely plastic animals on the coffee table. I watched as she tried to select the human characters. It was fortunate that she has at least one female figure. This female zookeeper was selected to be Noah’s wife. I told her that was a nice choice because we need her help with the animals. Stella wanted a male figure with a beard of some sort to be Noah but she didn’t have any sporting facial hair. Bob the builder was given the honour to be Noah. (By the way, we don’t think that Stella knows Bob the builder in the same way that other children would. She knows of his name but has not watched his shows.) After selecting the couple, she had no choice but to choose 3 male figures to be their sons. One of the boys had a darker complexion. I thought he was probably adopted.
Stella proudly showed her mum the scene she created. She explained that the animals were all lined up, two by two, just like the story. Her mum asked about the buttons and toy vegetables. Stella explained that Noah’s wife needed the buttons to make clothes and the vegetables were food for everyone. Before I left, Stella’s mum couldn’t resist whispering, “Luckily Noah picked the right pair of lions for the ark.” She obviously didn’t notice the dogs.