Homeschool Strewing

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Strewing is a great homeschooling idea to try with your children – whether you are an unschooling or homeschool family.

The term was coined by Sandra Dodd, and is the art of allowing your child to discover something you have casually left out.

Try to see yourself as a secret agent! Your mission is to infiltrate your child's education with something that delights and interests them.

The first part of your mission is to find something you think they will like – then you must leave it lying around. It doesn't have to be 'educational' - almost anything is educational if it sparks interest.

You will blow your cover if you point the item out or try to get them interested in it! Your mission is successful when they discover it – and it DOES interest and delight them.

Homeschool Solutions

In homeschooling, I want to expand my children's awareness and knowledge as much as possible. Whilst everyday learning can be rich and interesting, I want to open this up even more.

I want to ’seed’ their life with interesting/humorous/unusual/thought-provoking moments. I see it as scattering these moments throughout my children's waking day - and watching them grow into a connection made, or fact remembered, or just something that makes us laugh or wonder!

But I also accept that I need to be equally happy with a ’seed’ not taking root - with an item being ignored or passed over, because it doesn’t interest them at that particular moment.

When you get it right, then strewing can be magical!

Once, I got hold of an old book All about Arrowheads and Spear Points and left it for them to find. It struck a chord with them at that time - and they got excited about finding their own arrowheads. We ended up reading Stig of the Dump, and taking a field trip to a local prehistoric flint mine (where the staff kindly looked at the pieces of flint my children had been collecting - and confirmed that yes, they had found some arrowheads!).

Another time I made pictures of my children next to famous landmarks. This turned into a wonderful geography activity, where they looked up the landmarks they were 'pretend visiting'.

The key is that I didn't leave these things out in the hope that they would become an 'educational experience'. I left them out because I thought my children would enjoy them. The learning comes from the capturing of their imaginations.

What should I use?

All types of things can be left out to catch your child's interest and curiosity - a book, game, puzzle – even an unusual fruit. Be imaginative. Some of my best successes have been with simple, everyday objects. Try it out on your child. If you need some ideas on what to strew then start here :

The Homeschooling Ideas Store is packed with creative and interesting products to download.

A list of fun things to use.

Free home school stuff to strew.

Activity books for children.

A list of educational movies.

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