Interesting things

Strew their paths with interesting things. SandraDodd.com/strewing photo by Cathy Koetsier __

The bright, shiny parts

On a scale from dull and dusty to bright and shiny, where is your life? How much of the happy outside world is flowing in? How much are you and your children interacting with the bright, shiny parts of the world outside?

Unschooling should and can be bigger and better than school.

If it's smaller and quieter than school, more should be done to make life sparkly.

Let one thing lead to another for you. Explore. Not the parent pressing the kid to explore, but the parent exploring and connecting.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Exploring locally

Deb Lewis wrote:

I have found so many interesting things to do around our little town just by talking with people and asking questions. I ask everyone questions about what they like to do, etc. I have met so many people with interesting hobbies who have been happy to share what they know with my son and show him their collections.

The man who runs the local green house lets us help transplant seedlings. He grows worms too, and lets Dylan dig around in the worm beds.

The guy who works at the newspaper speaks Chinese and draws cartoons. He's given Dylan lots of pointers about where to get good paper and story boards, etc.

The old guy at the antique shop was a college professor and is a huge Montana History buff, whenever Dylan has questions, we go browse the antiques.

The lady at the flower shop keeps birds and lets Dylan hold them when we visit.

—Deb Lewis

some local particulars from Deb Lewis's "List of Things to do in the Winter"—a long list of things a parent and child could do if it's cold or they want to explore SandraDodd.com/strew/deblist
photo by Diane Marcengill

Winter picnic idea

Deb Lewis, as part of a long list of things to do in winter:

We've gone on picnics on the coldest of cold days. There is a big shelter, open at one end with a big fire pit that was built by the snow mobile club up at a campground near us. We've gone there on cold days with thermoses full of hot soup or stir fry, built a fire, had fun.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/strew/deblist
photo by Brie Jontry

Easy learning

Everything counts, and every connection made increases the depth and breadth of the map of the universe each person is building. It makes it easier to learn the next few things, because there are more places to hook the knowledge.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd

Bigger and better

A mom who's going to help a child learn from the whole wide world should herself become ever increasingly comfortable with what all is IN the whole wide world, and how she can help bring her child to the world and the world to her child.

Unschooling should and can be bigger and better than school.

If it's smaller and quieter than school, the mom should do more to make life sparkly.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Kirby Dodd

Ice cleans up after itself

Some of my kids' best bathtub toys have been ice. We have a copper fish mold (you know those molds for jello and aspic and pate and suchlike, all out of fashion now) and an ice-fish was fun, but ice in a bundt pan (like they do for big bowls of punch) has been a fun bathtub toy too. Some bathtub toys make a mess or get moldy or have to be stored, but voila! I mean "where'd it go!?" Ice cleans up after itself.

When we hadn't planned ahead and had ice, I would just set a big plastic bowl full of ice cubes within reach of the tub and Holly would float them, sink them, hold them while they melted it, race them around by swirling the water and I don't know what all.

SandraDodd.com/strew/tadaa.html
photo by Sandra Dodd, of ice for Devyn in 2014
P.S. Public service reminder. Ice cleans up after itself in a bathtub, in a wading pool, on the patio, but not on a nice wooden table, and not on the keyboard.

Strewing, and teens

Someone asked about strewing for a teen. I wrote:

Your family needs to be interested and interesting. Go places. Bring things and people in. Visit friends of yours who have cool stuff or do interesting things. Ask him to go with you if you take the dog to the vet. Drive home different ways and take your time. Putz around. Go to the mall some morning when it's not at all full of teens, and windowshop.

If you can afford it, find something in another town like a play, concert, museum, event and take him there. Stay overnight.

Go touristing somewhere not too far from you. Like if you had out-of-town guests, but just go with your son.

There are other ideas, too, at SandraDodd.com/strew/teens
photo by Karen James
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Everything else

A mom once expressed excitement about strewing books. I wrote and said strewing books wasn't the best way to strew. She asked "What else is there to strew?"

I wrote:
         "Everything else."
And then I listed a few dozen things, which are saved at the link below.

My kids have been interested in books and documentaries, but if I only "counted" that, or thought those were more valuable than the other connections, unschooling would fizzle.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Rocks and shells and...

Robert Prieto wrote:

"If strewing seems manipulative, think of Mother Nature. Nature has strewn a whole world out there, full of trees and people and birds and animals and rocks and shells and plants and bugs… We each get particular pieces of what she has to offer, based on where we live and how we live (urban/rural, traveler/homebody, etc.)—and those pieces are sitting right there for everyone to pick through, explore, enjoy, and learn from.

"That is all strewing needs to be. Here's the world, kids—and here's a few things from that world that I think you in particular might like, or a few things that relate to you in some way. Have at it."

—Robert Prieto

SandraDodd.com/strew/strew
photo by Karen James

Interesting, wet and chilly

From Deb Lewis's list of things to do in winter:

I have found so many interesting things to do around our little town just by talking with people and asking questions. I ask everyone questions about what they like to do, etc. I have met so many people with interesting hobbies who have been happy to share what they know with my son and show him their collections.
. . . .
Cool things are everywhere, summer and winter. David and Dylan went to the tennis court on Sunday and tried to play with snow balls. There's no snow now so what ever we do this weekend will be wet and chilly, but we'll find something.

—Deb Lewis

SandraDodd.com/strew/deblist
photo by Heather Booth

Explore. Connect.

On a scale from dull and dusty to bright and shiny, where is your life? How much of the happy outside world is flowing in? How much are you and your children interacting with the bright, shiny parts of the world outside?

Unschooling should and can be bigger and better than school.

If it's smaller and quieter than school, more should be done to make life sparkly.

Let one thing lead to another for you. Explore. Not the parent pressing the kid to explore, but the parent exploring and connecting.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd
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A little bit of magic

"Strewing for me, is a little bit of magic. It's like the potential energy of wonder that's all stored up in something unexpected, waiting to wow a person specially primed to be wowed by its offering. Each person brings their own experiences and interests to everything they meet. It's a mystery what might capture the imagination of a person and to what degree it will hold their attention. But that's the fun of strewing and finding, I think. For me it is!"

—Karen James

SandraDodd.com/strew/strew
photo by Erika Ellis
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Strewing might ring a bell

Once Colleen Prieto wrote:

Yesterday, a neighbor offered me something that looks sort of like a cross between a bell and a gong, a stand to hang it from, and a mallet. It was interesting and I figured we'd find some sort of use for it, so...

In the less than 24 hours it's been in the house, my 9 year old has:

• Experimented with the different sounds it can make (soft hits, hard hits, hit in different places)
  
• Used it to call us all to attention so he could announce important things (like "I'm hungry" 🙂)
  
• Told our elderly friend about it, and in turn checked out the links she sent to websites that have photos of gongs that are bigger than people, Tibetan singing bowls, etc.
  
• Added The King and I to our Netflix queue after my mother said she thinks they use gongs to summon dancing maidens in the movie
  
• Looked for other things in the house to bring into the living room to make it look "even more Avatar air temple and less ordinary living room" 🙂
  
• Put Avatar episodes on in the background and made up his own air-bending moves while they were on
  
• Wondered why a mallet is called a mallet and is not called a hammer
  
• Asked me to find the bell collection we used to have out, so he can play with the bells again

The fun (and learning, and connections) that can come from exploring one simple item can be amazing.

—Colleen Prieto

SandraDodd.com/strew/strew
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Depth and breadth

Everything counts, and every connection made increases the depth and breadth of the map of the universe each person is building. It makes it easier to learn the next few things, because there are more places to hook the knowledge.

SandraDodd.com/strew/how
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Stream of Shakespearean Consciousness

Instead of a quote, I'm going to list words and terms from a page called "One Thing Leads to Another, and some things are Shakespeare":

Buffy, Angel, Jeopardy, pizza, a priest, Asterix, Animaniacs, "Go Fish", hemlock, Harry Potter, Looney Tunes, Vishal Bhardwaj, The Reduced Shakespeare Company, The Simpsons and Star Trek.

There are happy Shakespeare stories from several families here:SandraDodd.com/strew/shakespeare
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Connecting with Shakespeare

Pam Sorooshian, once upon a time:

Somebody once seemed concerned that my young kids loved to watch Much Ado About Nothing, over and over. They thought the subject matter was highly inappropriate for kids.

I asked Rosie, who was about 8 at the time, what the whole thing was about. She said, "Claudio thinks Hero kissed another guy."

—Pam Sorooshian

SandraDodd.com/strew/shakespeare
photo by Sandra Dodd (click to enlarge)
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There it is.

Robert Prieto wrote:

If strewing seems manipulative, think of Mother Nature. Nature has strewn a whole world out there, full of trees and people and birds and animals and rocks and shells and plants and bugs… We each get particular pieces of what she has to offer, based on where we live and how we live (urban/rural, traveler/homebody, etc.)—and those pieces are sitting right there for everyone to pick through, explore, enjoy, and learn from.

That is all strewing needs to be. Here's the world, kids—and here's a few things from that world that I think you in particular might like, or a few things that relate to you in some way. Have at it.

—Robert Prieto

I've changed this to past tense, later:Robert Prieto spoke at ALLive in Maine in September [2014].
There's a photo of him here: SandraDodd.com/strew/strew
photo by Sandra Dodd
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Ice

Ice is a good bathtub toy. Some people suggested freezing a little toy inside ice, like in a popsicle mold. Just ice can be fun, frozen in a bundt pan or some kind of mold. Jello molds (large or small)—we have a copper fish mold, and a fish made of ice is a bathtub toy you don't have to clean up after. Regular ice cubes can be fun, too. Winter note: Icicles from outside, or snowballs, could be fun in the tub, too!

SandraDodd.com/strew/tadaa
photo by Sandra Dodd

A million ideas

I'm glad to live in a time when photographs are so easily taken and shared, without ever needing to be set on paper or touched with hands. I can show you things I've seen.

Just Add Light has had images from four continents, from mothers and fathers sharing photos of their children, and from teens and children sharing photos of things they've seen. A thousand people can see them on the same day. A thousand photos have come through. It's worldwide strewing from which each reader makes his or her own connections. Shared experiences are interpreted differently by each person involved, and connected by each to his own existing knowledge and images.

SandraDodd.com/strew/sandra
photo by Sandra Dodd,
and it's one of over 1200,
but I rounded to the nearest thousand

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Note in 2024, when I modernized some code on this post. A few photos have been re-used, over the years (often by accident), but there are over 5,000 posts these days.