How we use strewing in our home education!

 

I often get asked how I manage to home educate the twins. It is a very big question to answer, as we do countless things that contribute to the twins education  it is very difficult to summarise all of it in a few sentences. However, breaking it down there are a few aspects or things that I do frequently that I have found really beneficial to us as a home educating family.

One of them is “Strewing”. No, not the kind of strewing where the kids empty all their drawers of clothes and throw them all over their bedroom floor when I ask them to get dressed, although that is one version of strewing.

Strewing, a term said to have been coined by Sandra Dodd, in a home education context is the art of allowing your child to discover something you have casually left out for them to discover for themselves, providing a resource in a way that allows a child to discover it for themselves and learn naturally from it.

Sometimes the 'seed does not work out, but other times it develops nicely, my trick is to ensure my cover is never blown, I know I am successful when they delight in telling me all about it.

A recent example is my painting a flower post, I found a youtube video of a lady painting a flower, by accident, I knew Olivia loves drawing so I said to her 'look at this video it's so cool.. she looked and she looked some more and the next thing she is painting flowers and asking for new paint brushes and painting equipment, for Oliver it was a book I saw in the charity shop, an old fashioned book on how to draw different figures, he didn't seem interested at first because there was a lot of writing in there, until I pointed out the Dinosaur pictures in there, he then went on to spend the next few days drawing faces and copying different techniques out of the book reading it as he went along, Olivia also took up some time drawing faces from the book.

This allows a strong, authentic learning experience without it being marred by an arbitrary agenda or stunted by frustration. 

Other examples might be again as I demonstrated in the Shel Siverstein post, where I left a book out after reading aloud and the next thing you know Oliver has his head stuck in the book. I might leave other books out or games lying around like chess. I may suggest a day trip to see something interesting like the Magna Carter and their curiosity runs wild and they end up researching for themselves what it is or like another post I wrote about our trip to a play about the Peterloo Massacre coupled with a trip to their favourite art gallery which happened to have a debate about contemporary art.

They learn organically, I plant the idea and they take it from there. It does not always work however, there are many occasions that I may suggest something or leave something around that they show no interest in at all, many a time things just flow and happen naturally.

With strewing I use resources to meet the educational and developmental needs of the twins in ways that are best for them; a kind of intensely tailored personal programme of learning. At the same time it is free from toxic stress and pressure that often discourages children from exploring something fully, with the fear that they will ‘get it wrong’. Another benefit is that it is a great way to engage several children of different ages with one resource; perfect for families with multiple children.

We strew all kinds of things in all different ways. We like working in subjects or topics, and strewing makes it easy to provide interesting resources that target specific areas of learning (depending on the age of the child think buttons/ counters/ LEGO/ something cut into pieces for maths; magazines /interesting stationary/ new books for English, etc).

Strewing can also be outside the home. Reading and playing games with posters in a doctors surgery playing spot the letter or find a fact, Pausing by a bus stop to look at the timetable may stimulate an interaction about time, or perhaps a socially-focussed discussion about lateness, or a more politically centred exchange about public services. Going to a new playground with different equipment is perfect for developing new physical skills. Booking a holiday or short break somewhere new opens up a world of learning potential and resources, from unfamiliar accents, to maps, to new food and landscape. 

Topics for us is one of the ways I can strew endless novelty into the twins path; so much so in fact that it would be almost impossible to stop them learning constantly.

One of the main points is that I do not present strewing ideas in the hope that the twins learn from them, I leave them out in the hope that they will enjoy the idea and it is a bonus if they do learn something from it.

The point of strewing is to open new doors to new ideas, to feed interests and hobbies, to provide  resources structure and information and sow seeds of potential. It must be presented in a way that is 100% willing participation. 

My job is not to be a teacher but more of a facilitator, I’m listening to their questions, watching their interests, and recognizing their potential. I’m not sitting down with lesson plans in mind or an objective to teach them certain skills. Instead, I’m filling their environment with opportunities to discover their world and allowing them to show me what they want to learn.