Today, I'm beginning a new tradition at BreadwithHoney called "Strewsday Tuesday." 'Strewing' is a homeschooling term that refers to filling the environment of the child with materials to pique his or her curiosity, inspire his or her interest, and giving them the freedom to pursue these things.
"The thing that works... is to follow delight - and scatter it like a flower girl in front of the bride - not every petal will be crushed to release fragrance - but enough will. ...of course to follow delight, you have to admit to yourself that you feel delight .."
-Nora Cannon...from Sandra Dodd's Strewing their Paths
Strewsday Tuesday is a fun way to take stock of what's been going on in our homeschool during the previous week.
"A few months into our homeschooling adventure my 8 year old daughter spontaneously said "Our house is like a museum with really cool stuff in it!" This was the moment I decided it was going to be alright....."
-Your House as a Museum
Today snow is falling fast and the temperature is dropping every minute. The wind is springing up, expected to gust to 60 miles an hour today. This effectively foils our outdoors plans. (We attempted a walk the last time the wind was doing this and I was rewarded with a face-ful of extreme, itchy, bright red windburn the rest of the day.
Yesterday we watched this
collection of classic Dr. Suess cartoons, given to us some time ago by my grandma. I like these old cartoons as they follow the books very closely. Also, the DVD has a biography of Dr. Suess at the end which is excellent. It was interesting to my 5 and 8 year olds and to me, too. (There's a lot of interesting 20th century history woven in- I think even older kids would like it.)
I was hoping for a pajama day today, but the kids are desperate to get to the library to check out all the Dr. Suess books we haven't read.
"A child educated only at school is an uneducated child."
-George Santayana
We continue to learn about bees,inspired by our 2 year old- John Paul- and his recently developed obsession with bumble bees. He has made a stack of every book in our home involving bees, which he insists on hearing every day, while clutching the stuffed bee his grandma recently gave him. These are his two favorites:
which I find endlessly annoying, but he adores, and
which we all enjoy.
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school."
-Albert Einstein
Isaiah has been reading Choose Your Own Adventure books this week. His first was given to him a couple weeks ago by his grandma (Grandma has done a lot of our strewing this week!), and he picked his 2nd out last week during a rare trip to Barnes & Noble in Albuquerque. They are actually somewhat above his reading level, but he is so excited and determined, that I'm sure his reading level will soon match and exceed them.
Rosie has developed her own little obsession with math workbooks... snort... who knows where that came from! She picked one out at Dollar Tree and completed it in 24 hours and is pestering me to take her back. In the meantime, I'm making up some worksheets for her to appease the math monster inside her.
Well, that's about it for our week in review. Over the next week, my aim is to focus on the season of Lent with the kids. We had a bad experience starting our Good Deed Jar on Ash Wednesday... it was put away in the closet by noon. We may go back to our tried and true salt-dough crown of thorns. We'll see!
"Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing worth knowing can be taught."
-Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist," 1890
Hi Maureen! My 10 yo has gotten fascinated with Geometry and just begged me to get her the Life of Fred Geometry text. But then later when I told her that she should probably get those times tables down, she wept. Poor dear.
ReplyDeleteLove all the quotes!