When my boy was three, we came home from his preschool on a Wednesday afternoon and Cassy was dead under the coffee table...she was fifteen...old for a dog. I said, Cassy has died. Humans are equipped to handle death. Mortality is a higher order concept.

My random advice from the internet is that your child is probably more comfortable with death than an adult would be.

Good luck.

They show corpses on TV now, so before you ever leave the TV news on in front of them.

Kill two birds with one stone, tell them Santa died.