Are you ready for Week 4 of Organizing Your Homeschool for a Brand New Year? This week we will discuss the term ‘strewing‘ and talk about how this may work for your home and learning lifestyle.
Strewing is a word you may hear more often tossed around in unschooling or child-led learning circles. Sandra Dodd defines it as “leaving material of interest around for our children to discover.” Aadel Bussinger offers an ebook called The Art of Strewing and it is filled with many wonderful ideas! Aadel also offers many articles on strewing in different circumstances over at These Temporary Tents.
4 Steps to Strewing for Education
- Know your child.
- Choose items based on what you know about your child’s interests.
- Place the chosen item somewhere it can be easily found, or simply tell your child that you found xyz and thought they might be interested.
- Leave your expectations behind. It could be that your child is not interested in the game, art supplies, movie, etc. right now. However, they often will pick it up a day, weeks, or months later. The ‘art’ is in being able to allow that exploration on their own timetable.
So what does strewing look like in a child-led learning environment?
- An exploration table with just one item or related set of items where your child may explore, engage in imaginary play, and generally learn more about these items with all of his or her senses!
- Books left on the coffee table for children (and adults!) to pick up at their leisure to read or gaze at pictures until their hearts are content.
- Chalk and construction paper placed where little ones will find it and create drawings and experiment with color as much or as little as they choose.
We set this out over the holidays and our girls spent many hours playing with Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus. I plan to set out a new toy, or otherwise fun-to-explore item, for them to enjoy every couple of weeks, or perhaps monthly.
- An impromptu trip to the park or for a walk around the neighborhood to examine the newly fallen snow or the changing colors of the leaves.
- A new game laid out and ready to be played with the family.
- Watching an entire Netflix series about airplanes, World War II, dragons, and more, simply because that is what your child is ‘into’ at the time.
There are many more—and different—scenarios that could be described. The above are just a few of the scenes that have played out in my home, a few ways that I have found to easily strew and pique the interest of my children.
If you do more research via the above-linked sites, or if you get Aadel’s book, you will learn much more about what strewing looks like and glean many wonderful ideas for implementing this idea in your own homes.
