The absorbent mind

We owe the concept of the "absorbent mind" to Maria Montessori, and we take it for granted. But it is so amazing to witness the process! Case in point:
I was reading "My Carthaginian cousin" to my 6 year old, which is a historic fictional story covering the time of the Carthaginian domination in antiquity. The language and sentence structure is pretty complicated, so I assumed my 4 year old was not really following it.
All of  a sudden, while working with clay, he told me that he had made a "Carthaginian ship"... It was pretty cool :)