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Today is the last day of the iHomeschool Network Hopscotch!
I just want to thank all of you for your greats comments and feedback on here, Facebook, Google+, and in person. You guys are great and I had a blast.
I hope you have enjoyed The Art of Strewing!
From Africa To Korea – Through Space And Time
Most of this series has been written like an instructional manual, and I haven’t shared much of our own personal experiences with strewing.
For my last post, I thought I would share a story of how strewing opened up a whole range of topics and pursuits for Denna.
Denna is 7 years old, she is our middle daughter, and she has always unschooled. She has never had a formal lesson (at least not from me).
When she was 4 she met a missionary from Africa. We went to a presentation at our church and the girls listened with great intent as stories were told of a mission to single mothers and hurting women. This missionary gave Raven and Denna a little carved elephant.
That experience sparked a curiosity in Denna that could not be quenched. She wanted to know about Africa, about elephants, but most importantly she wanted to learn about missionaries.
So I set about strewing stories of missionaries, audio, video, magazines, everything that I could to quench her thirst for information.
When Jay was deployed for the first time to Iraq, I bought a little book about persecuted Christians in Iraq. When we were done with that, we signed up for the free Voice of the Martyrs magazine.
Strewing outward from there
From those magazines, she began to wonder about different countries and about maps. So we did a few activities and puzzles with world maps on them. I bought a small globe for her to study. She also had place-mats with different maps on them – US, World, North America, etc.
It was about the time we moved to Kansas that her curiosity with Asian culture came to a full speed. It started with Hello Kitty and spiraled into strewing:
- Information on Japan
- The history of samurai
- Japanese language podcasts
- Ni Hao Kai Lan (a cute Chinese cartoon)
- Making and eating sushi
- Books about monsoons
- Learning how to cook rice
- Making Pad Thai
For a while, Denna was sure that she wanted to be a missionary in Japan. She learned quite a bit of Japanese by listening to podcasts and watching a few online cartoons from Japan.
The whole time – I was just by her side strewing resources, books, experiences, and enjoying the adventure with her.
Strewing over a distance of time
This was over the span of several years, and she didn’t always stay on these topics. Within those years, she also taught herself how to read and write, basic math, and much more.
Her interest in Asia had waned over the past year or so, until we found out that Jay was going to be stationed in Korea.
Now both the girls are interested in Korean culture, food, and language.
I have been strewing language resources for them, we have looked up several places that Jay visited on Google maps, the girls are exploring Korean pop music, and they want to learn more about North Korea and the history of the Korean war.
The other day Denna noticed that my Samsung phone was made in Korea, and so that got us talking about electronics and Korean exports.
Just the other day I began to strew printables for her to learn how to write in Korean - she did 3 last night.
Strewing full circle
One of the amazing things to note about this strewing story is that it comes full circle.
While the girls and I were looking up information about Korea, we learned that they send out more Christian missionaries than any other country in the world except the US.
That idea stuck in Denna’s head. Now she is once again interested in missionaries – and wants to find out if an American can become a missionary for (not to – for) Korea.
And she just might find that information out very soon – I have big news to reveal on Monday!
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I hope you can see from this story that strewing doesn’t have to be complicated. It can simply be taking a child’s interest and expounding on that – branching off like a tree into all kinds of topics.
Most of my strewing stems from just being curious myself, and joining in on their journey.
Did you have any burning questions about strewing that were left unanswered? I would love for you to email me at deldobuss@gmail.com and I will try to address your questions or concerns in a post.
This post is part of the iHomeschool Network Hopscotch – go check out some of the other series that are being featured (and check out the giveaways that are being hosted there)!
Here are the lovely ladies that are participating in the Autumn 2012 Hopscotch:
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