Sam's "Mogabi" Desert

Over the past few days, Sam has been fascinated with Google Earth and geography. I think this whole fascination came about because he played a little geography game on the computer at the library last week. In this game, you could visit different parts of the world and take pictures of the monuments and landmarks that were in the area. One of the areas was Egypt, and Sam "took a picture" of the Sphinx while playing the game. He has a bit of an interest in Egyptian culture, and he was excited to recognize the Sphinx while he played this game.

A few days later, J and Sam were looking at different deserts that are on Google Earth. J told Sam about the Gobi Desert in Asia and the Mojave Desert in California. Sam also is aware that there are sandy areas in Egypt, and I think all of these recent events helped to inspire the drawing he made at school today:

Sam told me that this is a picture of the "Mogabi Desert" (which must be a conflation of the Gobi and Mojave). The triangle-shaped image is one of the pyramids at Giza. The figure on the bottom is the Sphinx. (The other shapes in the upper-left corner were ones that he tried to erase.) He also brought home two other drawings with this same general composition, but they also were "erased" a bit because he didn't like how they turned out. It's kind of fun to think about how he had a specific idea in mind for his drawing; he wanted to make sure that he got it right.

My art-historical heart is happy to see Sam taking an interest in art, especially Egyptian art. And I'm tickled that he's trying to incorporate his new understanding of geography into his little world. I don't know of too many four year olds who are interested in the drawing pictures of a desert.