<div dir="ltr">My older daughter has been fascinated by both Torah and science at least from kindergarten. Fortunately, AFAIK, no teacher ever told her that dinosaurs didn't exist.<br><br>In general, when I don't have a good way of reconciling Torah with science (and this child has been reading secular science magazines and books since she learned how to read, so her science was never filtered through Bais Yaakov), I say straight out that it's a good question and I don't know the answer. Sometimes she keeps working on the problem and refining her hypotheses. Recently (she's 13), she gobbled up Natan Aviezer's book on Creation and Science in a single day. I expect she will continue reading and thinking on the topic and refining her understanding. Unlike me, she has the FFB advantage of a firmly imprinted worldview from a very young age that G-d created the universe - I think the strength of her emunah gives her the ability to ask hard questions without ch"v stumbling into kefirah. Whereas I, who was raised with kefirah, find that more challenging.<br>
<br>As far as the BT on the blog - I think a good answer (and it's hard to think of a good answer on the spot) would have been something like: It is hard to understand where dinosaurs fit in the story of Bereishit. Different rabbis have different ideas. Some people say that there were no dinosaurs - G-d just made dinosaur bones and put them in the ground. Other people say that G-d did create dinosaurs along with the other animals, but they all died. Your rebbe is correct that no one has ever seen a dinosaur, and no one knows the real answer to the question.<br>
<br>I'm not sure if I would get into the age-of-the-universe question with a six-year-old. I originally chose not to, but my daughter discussed the matter with an older cousin and got information that way, and it doesn't seem to have done her any harm. So the father could also have said something like, We don't really understand how time worked when the world was created. Some people think that "days" were much longer back then, and that the world is very old. But I would be cautious with this, because I wouldn't want to swear the child to secrecy and I am sure there are parents in the school who would not want their first graders exposed to these ideas.<br>
<br>- Ilana<br> </div>