What We Are Strewing

Strewing is a term that unschoolers use to describe what interesting things they are leaving around for their kids to discover. That definition is provided by Sandra Dodd. You can read more about strewing here . So I have been strewing. We bought an ant farm a couple of years ago which the kids found the other day. We filled it with sand and caught some ants to put in it. We wanted a queen ant and some eggs. If you order ants you only get worker ants. So we got out our Pets in a Jar book and looked up how to catch ants. We didn't get a queen ant but we did get some eggs. Lacey, Lily and Kyle helped catch the ants. We watched the ants build their tunnels and carry the eggs to a separate nursery. Lacey and Lily spent a lot of time looking at the ant farm with a magnifying glass. A couple of times we were even able to see a little black dot inside the egg that we believe to be the little baby ant. I checked Kyle out some books on drawing and bought him a calendar that he can color and make. We started reading Little house in the big woods. We built a diorama of a jousting tournament (something else I had bought years ago and never got around to doing). I took Lacey and Lily shopping. We went in flower shops and looked at flowers, we spent a good bit of time in an old antique store here in town, we visited a pet store and talked to the owner about her different pets. The antique store was especially interesting, we looked at old kitchen utensils and farm equipment. Then I picked Kyle up and we all went to the library. At the library I showed Kyle where the joke books and dinosaur craft books were and he spent a long time reading and then telling us all jokes. I also checked out some books on Native Americans to leave laying around. No interest in them so far. My Aunt and Uncle just started a blog about building their house so I showed the blog to the kids and we read it together. It was pretty interesting, so far we saw how a foundation is built. Kyle really like the pictures of the trucks and crane. We created a family blog. I left colors and alphabet coloring books around and I found an old electric calculator that the kids have all had a ball playing with. We found their felt board in the garage and made felt pictures together. Its been fun.

If you found this post interesting or helpful , please share it!