"Strewing"

When I first started researching home schooling, Aislinn was about a year old and I was pregnant with Tara. I already knew our family would consist of these 2 little people and that they would share many experiences being so close in age.

Most of my early "research" came from reading the home schooling forum on the Today's Parent website. One of the phrases that often came up especially with unschooling was "strewing". The concept being that you leave out items or a book or a new supply with the intention that if the kids come across it, it would be available for exploration. If it sparks interest, great, if they don't particularily take to it, it can be ignored or brought out at a different time. In doing this, you can let the learning be child lead, but still encourage a new direction or a return to a much loved subject purely by "accident".

I have decided to make strewing a more important part of my evening activities by leaving something enticing on the kitchen table to lead us in a new directions and start new conversations as soon as breakfast is done.

So far it has worked incredibly well (2 days in- lol). The girls have immediately started asking questions as soon as the items were viewed, and were rushing to tidy the table and wash up in order to jump in.

The first day I left out this:

The girls happily explored measuring for a few minutes, by making marks on tape to measure odd shaped objects, lying objects that were flat up against the ruler, and measuring elastics by cutting string to the same size. It quickly turned to water play for Tara, as she decided the spoons had much more usefulness in stirring than as objects to be measured, and Aislinn switched gears to creating a pig puppet for herself using the index cards, pencils, tape, string and whatever other tidbits she gleaned from the craft drawers. I did manage a few comments about inches verses centimeters, parallel lines, rays, and intersection points that I was quite proud of -- whether they heard me or not!

This was the final result, and it took me the rest of the day to tidy it up!

Today I left out this basket which the girls were eager to explore. The idea of magnets is not new to them as we have played with them in the past, but I tried to mix in some new items, and we had a few surprises when a silver coloured bracelet and picture frame turned out to not attract the magnet. After finishing with the basket, I sent them off into the rest of the kitchen and the girls happily chased their magnets around as they gave the walls, doorknobs and light switches a try.

Tomorrow we have gymnastics at 9, so I opted for leaving out a picture. I called Jeff at work and requested an interesting pic (being low on ink) to be brought home - haven't seen it yet myself, so we will see what conversation it will start in the morning.