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.

Our Home Education Curriculum

Our home education curriculum is designed for the easy going family that we are.

Most of what we do is child led, Olivia is very much the creative type and Oliver is very much the academic type.

Olivia loves to make and create while Oliver loves to read and is always questioning.

Our basic structure consists of Maths and English. For maths we use Khan Academy which we also use for English Grammar, this is a free program but as the twins are both visual learners it is the best program we have found that works for them, they love khan academy and actually ask and look forwards to using it. 

We also use MEP for maths, this consists of downloads so we get to do some writing practice, the kids also enjoy doing those maths challenges and it gives them some backup learning from what they learn on Khan Academy.

We used to use DISTAR when they embarked on their learning to read, backed up with reading eggs and Maths seeds, which they both still enjoy using but more for the games than anything else.

Using DISTAR taught me a lot about how to be patient and how to encourage them in their learning, I would recommend that method to anyone, it has worked for us.

Reading lots of books both fiction and none fiction has made a huge impact on the twins and how they learn, they enjoy and have enthusiasm for most topics that they come across, as they know the book will have a film or a play or some kind of website to go along with it, and it sparks their imagination to learn in different ways and see things from different angles.

History is a particular interest of the twins, this has rubbed off on them from me, they love to learn about different periods and have so far enjoyed 1600's in Britain more than any other, Olivia is a keen royalist and the stories of the royals throughout history from many different cultures sparks her interest.

They both love learning African history as it is part of their fabric and family background, lots of books, films, documentaries, you tube videos, day trips and conversations and web surfing is carried out for the history learning, and we have a book which we use as a guide of where to go next called 'a history of the world', which is religion based but as we are quite a scientific family this is great, as they get to see other perspectives on history, and have a fundamental understanding that history is a perspective and we very much like to view other perspectives when looking at history. 

I also manage to come up with themes, like, how the way people lived in the past has changed, which encompasses all sorts from food to technology and science etc. But I find it easier to work with themes to focus on as it gives us a base to start from, despite deviating quite often which is common with child led learning.

We also cover Geography and science and technology and home economics, it seems easy to say this stuff but in reality it is just daily life so there is very little structure.

I am very in tune with the kids and were they are at with their learning, and I often pick up clues from what they are saying or doing that guides me to steer them in the direction for learning what they are querying.

I often worry about were they are at academically and if there are any gaps in their learning, but you can ask the same question to any home ed parent and they will tell you of the same concerns.. Are they at the right level of learning, in say maths or English?.. but it doesn't matter what level they are on, what matters is that they are learning at their own pace, and really learning and not just remembering or regurgitating facts, but understanding those facts and enjoying them too. 

As home educators we do not have to learn for the sake of passing a test, we are learning to enrich life with a life long skill for learning, life is fascinating and even the best educated child will have gaps in their learning, school is only designed to provide the basics, the rest is up to that individual child and what interests them in life and will help them and enable them to have an enriched life.

Olivia asked if she could have the Muzzy Language program for Xmas, which I did buy her, so we will be embarking on learning one of the languages on the course, she very much enjoyed the French club that we used to go to which sadly stopped due to the teacher leaving for brighter horizons and she is fascinated with different languages, so it will be fun to do together as a family thing. You never know it may end up with a trip to France to test out our French language skills that is something else to aim for.

I wrote in a couple of earlier posts about languages and how we had embarked on a language lapbook, you can find that post here and here.

They also go to Hockey club held by the Oldham Women's hockey team, they both love playing hockey and it brings out their competitive side as they can take part in tournaments, along with St John's ambulance Badgers they get plenty of mixing with other school kids in addition to regular meet ups with their home educated friends. 

They do sorely miss going to stagecoach and I can see that in their eyes and I feel so sad and slightly guilty that I can no longer afford to send them there due to a very tight budget, but I have found an alternative that they can attend at Oldham Theatre Workshop and it is far more affordable for us. My eldest lad went there and he loved it and got to perform at the Oldham Coliseum back in 2004, you can read the reviews here. He remembers well the friends he made from going there and talks about it fondly still to this day, so I think the twins will love it too.

There are so many other things that they do, Olivia enjoys playing the violin and guitar and keyboard and she also loves to sing, singing is her real passion when it comes to music, particularly Opera, although she seems to be developing a style of her own which is a cross between opera and the pop scene, she did ask for singing lessons but from the enquiries I made they are reluctant to teach someone so young as apparently it can damage their voice.

I am quite positive that I have missed things out as they do so much it is hard to keep track of and I am not very good at keeping up with this blog, so I forget a lot of stuff that they do, but for the most part we do not use pre made curriculums, we tend to just follow our own and make it work for us.