We've all had it happen. We spend hours picking out just the right gift to give the baby and then find the toy strewn on the floor and the child happily playing with the box it came in. A child’s imagination and attention is often sparked by those things that we take for granted. That’s why magicians don’t like to do shows for the under 4 set. To most preschoolers, turning on the faucet is as magical as turning a scarf from red to blue. The child doesn’t know how either thing happens, so each is just one of the many mysterious events that happen in life. Such was the case one day last summer when 3 year old Hannah visited for a special Nona afternoon.

I had every minute planned. We would start out with dress-up and a tea party followed by Spin Art. We would play outside in the sandbox, build with Lego, and before I took her home, I would read her a Fancy Nancy book to calm her down.  Little did I know that this agenda was about to undergo a major overhaul. There we were, all dressed up ready to party (the tea kind).  I went to get some water for the tea out of my new filtered Zero water dispenser.  Hannah was fascinated.  When she saw that by pressing the spigot the water trickled out at exactly her height, she was thrilled. She filled the little teapot, all the cups, then started making up reasons to need more water. All of a sudden the cat bowl needed to be filled, the plants needed to be watered, and I “looked thirsty”.  When I realized that my agenda was falling by the wayside, I decided to make it a teachable moment. I showed her the TDS tester that came with the zero water setup. We took a glass of water from the tap, pushed the button on the tester, dipped it in the tap water, and then read the digital display… 1.17 ppm. Then we repeated this exercise with water from the Zero water bottle and walah! After being filtered, the numbers registered 0.00 ppm. I tried to explain to her, in a simple way, that because the filters had made the water cleaner, the numbers changed. Well, as far as Hannah was concerned, now all the water in the house had to be tested. What fun we had! The child was completely engaged and it gave us the opportunity to have a simple conversation about water pollution and putting only healthy things into our bodies. Before you know it, half of our time together was gone. I managed to guide her toward some of the other activities I had planned and we parted, as always, with big smiles on our faces.

The next day I get a phone call from her father. “Mom, Hannah keeps telling me before she can drink our water we have to go to your house so we can find out what number it is. She's really insisting. What’s she talking about?” 

Oh Dear! 

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