Great question, and an important one to begin to answer, ....and keep answering through their teen** years.
I'm often reminded that young children are often just asking simple questions that ONLY need a simple answer. The child may have just wanted to know "Does God likes dinosaurs?" So dig a bit deeper before launching into a theological argument.
Teaching Kids Interpretation Skills
The Bible contains ALL SORTS of "TYPES" of writing: Poetry, Instructions, History (though not "history" in the modern sense), Miracle stories, Parables, Letters, Proverbs, Prophecy, etc etc. each of which needs a different approach to how we understand them. You don't want to confuse parables with history, or Psalms with Gospels. Thus, we need to help our students identify the type of story we're in --in order to know how to interpret it. You don't ask "factual questions" about poetry, you ask about themes and feelings, and deeper meaning.
Genesis 1 is looks, reads, and has the beat of a Psalm (poetry), not prophecy, parable, or history. Psalms/lyrics/poetry are meant to move us and inspire deep insights, not to be looked upon as lists of facts. This is what I teach my students. This gets beyond the red-herring of evolution and dinosaurs and gets into the more important insights that God created and God made it good. Dinosaurs = good ...which should make any child wonder about and appreciate God even more.
**As Barna Research statistics continue to indicate, "Evolution" is one of those subjects about which Millenials are largely in the "science" camp about (as am I and most mainline church leaders). According to Barna, evolution has become one of the "wedge" issues pushing young people out of even mainline churches whom they lump in with the creationists and science-deniers. Thus, we need to speak up in our churches about how to interpret scripture -- including with regard to science and historicity, and that begins with knowing what KINDS of scripture there are in the Bible.
