strewing

The first photo is of my kids playing with a Lego Mosaic set -- basically a set full of tiny, one-square legos in various colors which they can then use to make mosaic pictures on a flat lego board. Sort of ties in with my topic today, as it's one of the things strewn about the house available to the kids when they want it.

Strewing is the term used by unschoolers (people who homeschool without a curriculum or schedule -- they let the children learn naturally from what interests them) to describe leaving materials available for their kids to come across and explore on their own, if they so desire. In other words, there is no requirement that the kids ever pick up the books or materials, but they are available in case they want to.

Now, my entire life is basically one big strew. We've got LOTS of stuff. Too much even. And most of it is accessible to my kids at any time they want it. Basically, if they show an interest in something, I pretty much let them run with it. But lately I've been making a more purposeful effort at strewing. There are now art materials (crayons, pencils, scissors, several kinds of paper and cardboard) on the kitchen table: I figure I'll swap it out occassionally for paints, cloth materials, clay, etc. When I'm gathering books for our Family Storytime on a theme, I gather several more to just leave available for the kids to explore on their own. Some books are just better geared towards self-explanation than reading anyway, especially factual type books. I try to save the STORIES for Storytime.

In any case, I'm liking the effect. After ignoring the art materials for the better part of the last week (and neither one of my kids is particularly interested in arts and crafts, much to my chagrin -- I was a kid that was all about doing crafts!), J suddenly started drawing some pictures yesterday with the crayons and paper. I was surprised at how well he did with the crayons -- nice, bold lines -- the last time I saw him use crayons he had trouble getting any color onto the paper, it just took more effort than he was willing/able to put out.

And then he further surprised me by showing me this:


He told me that it was a house. (The paper is folded in half, he cut through both halves on the fold to make these cut-outs.) I was surprised, he'd never shown a whole lot of interest in using scissors, yet this looked pretty skillful to me. And then he really blew off my socks by unfolding the paper to produce:


This mask! WHOA! I said, meaning it. Where did you get THAT idea? That's SO cool!

As it turns out, it was something he learned in school (he went to preschool for 1 1/2 years before we came to our senses and pulled him out), and he went on to tell me the entire story which goes something like this:

Once upon a time there was a witch who found a piece of paper. She decided to make a house -- she cut out a door with one point so that she could fit through it with her pointy hat on. She cut out a window so she could see outside. What she saw was a little ghost, so she cut a small door to let him come in. (Then you unfold the paper to reveal the mask and yell:) Happy Halloween!

Ok, so let's recap. Halloween was how many months ago? About 7. Yet, he wasn't in school this past Halloween, so he's remembering this from the Halloween before, so that makes it (quick math:) 19 months ago. And he probably hasn't picked up a pair of scissors since then. So I'm pretty impressed with his ability to duplicate the visual props as well as the story after that amount of time. Of course, Zoo Boy immediately got to loving the mask idea, and he himself started messing around with paper and scissors. The boys made paper mustaches and beards and hats and costumes.

I'm so totally loving the strewing!