Author: Jessica Waldock

Jessica Waldock is a writer, photographer, and homeschool mom of one living in sunny Florida. She founded The Waldock Way as a way to give back to the homeschool community that she loves so much. At The Waldock Way Jessica shares tips, tricks, inspiration, and unique resources that help ignite a love of learning in children that will last a lifetime. She inspires families to engage in homeschooling as a lifestyle where relationships come first and interest-led learning prevails. Jessica also has a fabulous collection of unit studies on her website and shares generously on her YouTube channel.
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The Art of Strewing in Your Homeschool

Strewing is definitely an art! The art of strewing in your homeschool is all about carefully choosing special items and activities for your kids to explore. I love setting out items for my daughter to discover when she wakes up. It’s a fun way to start the day with learning, without adding another task to my to-do list first thing in the morning.

Items that match up with your child’s interests are always going to be a big hit with strewing. For example, if your homeschooler loves art like mine, you might want to try strewing art supplies. 

Prepare to be amazed as you see what they can come up with from strewing something simple like aluminum foil or video art classes. Keep reading to learn more about strewing and how you can introduce this awesome new concept to your homeschool days this year.

Strewing is definitely an art! It’s all about carefully choosing special items and activities for your kids to explore. Strewing in your homeschool is a wonderful way to spark your children's creativity! Art lessons can be a fabulous resource to strew.

What Is Strewing?

Strewing is about placing items out that will encourage your kids to interact with them. Carefully chosen items placed in the path of your homeschoolers encourages them to get creative and explore. Strewing can begin as a small activity or a single item placed in your child’s path once a week, or you can use strewing to set the tone for homeschool lessons every day.

I would encourage you to choose items that match up with your kids’ interests and passions. Strewing things they’re curious about, or topics you’re currently studying in your homeschool lessons is a great place to start. Place the chosen items in a designated area or use fabric bins to help keep items tidy when they’re not being used. 

Ultimately, strewing can become a homeschool tool you use to encourage independent learning and bring lessons to life in a whole new way! You can leave a bin of blocks on the coffee table, a new book open on the kitchen counter, or set up a new game in their room. Then, watch the magic happen as you get started with strewing in your homeschool.

If your kids don’t show interest in what you’ve chosen at first, don’t lose hope. Try not to take it personally and resist the urge to get involved or give instructions. Remember, the goal is to encourage independent learning by letting your kids discover and interact with the items on their own.

Strewing is definitely an art! It’s all about carefully choosing special items and activities for your kids to explore.

The Benefits of Strewing In Your Homeschool

Practicing strewing in your homeschool can have some amazing benefits! There are tons of skills our kids can develop by interacting with new materials in this way, but it’s also a great opportunity for homeschool moms too. I have come to love strewing in the mornings for the beginning it provides.

Strewing gives me a chance to wake up, have quiet time for myself, and drink my coffee while it’s still hot. Placing items out the night before means my daughter doesn’t need to come to me first thing in the morning for instructions. Instead, she can spend time discovering strewing items while I wake up and prepare for the day.

In addition to providing a soft start for those of us who aren’t “early risers,” strewing sets a great tone for the day. When we practice strewing, we begin the day with an activity that inspires our homeschoolers to get curious, explore, and think creatively. It’s a great way to get ready for a day filled with lessons and learning together.

Plus, you’ll be encouraging your homeschoolers to become independent learners as they explore and interact with items without instructions from adults. That’s a valuable skill for lifelong learners!

Strewing is definitely an art! It’s all about carefully choosing special items and activities for your kids to explore.

The Art Of Strewing in Your Homeschool: Resources To Inspire You

Strewing is an art! As you practice strewing, you’ll learn what works really well for your kids and what items don’t spark their curiosity too. 

Unused craft supplies and art activities work really well for strewing in our homeschool space because they are open-ended and line up well with our daughter’s interests. Check out some of our favorite art-related items for strewing:

  • Playdough
  • Beads and string
  • Aluminum foil
  • Pencils and paper
  • Old magazines and scissors
  • Origami book and papers
  • Rocks and paint
  • Clay flower pot and paint
  • Sand art kit
  • Spirograph
  • Chalk pastels
Strewing is definitely an art! It’s all about carefully choosing special items and activities for your kids to explore.

Strewing With You ARE An Artist Clubhouse

Strewing doesn’t always have to be loose parts and craft supplies, you can strew books, card games, and even videos. We love strewing online lessons like the ones at You ARE An Artist. They have lessons on all kinds of awesome topics!

It’s easy to find lessons that match up with your child’s interests or tie them in with what you’re studying in your homeschool this year. You can learn to draw world landmarks, the solar system, or holidays and celebrations using chalk pastels and their engaging step-by-step video courses.

Want to learn more about how to practice strewing in your homeschool with practical tips and a list of ideas for items we love to strew? Check out my free ebook all about strewing to help you get started. 

About Jessica Waldock

Jessica Waldock is a writer, photographer, and homeschool mom of one living in sunny Florida. She founded The Waldock Way as a way to give back to the homeschool community that she loves so much. At The Waldock Way Jessica shares tips, tricks, inspiration, and unique resources that help ignite a love of learning in children that will last a lifetime. She inspires families to engage in homeschooling as a lifestyle where relationships come first and interest-led learning prevails. You can connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.

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Why Adding Art To Your Morning Basket Makes All The Difference

A morning basket is a great opportunity for kids to learn about a variety of subjects together that you might not always get to during your regular homeschool lessons. Adding art to our morning baskets has been an awesome benefit for our homeschool lessons throughout the day. 

Starting our homeschool day with art has been a beautiful way to encourage creative thinking throughout the day. In fact, incorporating art into your homeschool lessons has tons of amazing benefits! Keep reading to discover how we are using art in our morning baskets to support our current homeschool lessons and unit studies. 

Why Adding Art To Your Morning Basket Makes All The Difference - Adding art to our morning baskets has been an awesome benefit for our homeschool lessons throughout the day.

What is a Morning Basket?

When I first heard about morning baskets, I was uncertain if I could make the method work for our family. You see, I’m not a morning person. Thankfully, morning baskets work any time of day and I’ve learned how to use a morning basket without actually being a morning person.

Since I’m not a morning person, I like to choose activities for our morning basket that don’t require me to be functioning at 100%. These are usually things my daughter enjoys and can do with relative independence. Adding video art lessons from ChalkPastel to our morning basket plans makes it easy to incorporate art activities while I’m still waking up.

Sometimes morning basket activities are called “circle time” or “morning time.” The activities that go into your morning basket are made to bring everyone together, to set the tone for your day, and (sometimes) to incorporate activities and subjects you find yourself falling behind in. 

Morning baskets are ideal for incorporating art lessons into your homeschool days because they give you a chance to start the day on a creative note. Beginning your homeschool lessons with creativity gest kids excited about the day’s lessons and encourages creative thinking all day long. 

Morning baskets are great for adding other subjects like poetry, books read aloud, and foreign language to your homeschool days too. We often use our morning baskets to supplement our current unit study or lesson with art projects and other fun activities.

Art during morning time in our homeschool

How We Use Morning Baskets To Support Our Current Unit Study

Currently, we are learning about all things Space. My daughter, Emily, is fascinated by Outerspace so we are learning everything we can about planets, constellations, astronauts, and astronomers. 

I’ve put together a Space Unit Study with lunar lore, constellations, information on all the planets, and lessons on astronauts and the Apollo Missions. We also put together a really cool themed morning basket to use with this Space unit study.  

Our Space morning basket will give Emily opportunities to learn more about all the things we’ll be studying through art, games, and experiments. Some of our favorite art activities from the Space morning basket include a themed playdough kit from Playful Days Dough and Usborne’s Astronauts Sticker Book. 

Chalk Pastel art during our morning basket time

The Value of Adding Art To Our Morning Basket

We might not get to every activity in our morning basket each day, but throughout the month we tend to cover everything. Incorporating art in our morning basket activities has all kinds of great benefits! For starters, art encourages creativity so it’s a great way to begin the day’s lessons.

Adding art to our morning basket also helps us to start the day on a high note. Emily loves art! She’s always excited to begin the day with an art project or art activity, so art is an easy choice for our morning basket routine. Beginning the day with something she really enjoys helps start the whole day off right. 

I have found that one of the best ways to add art to our morning baskets is with You ARE An Artist. Lessons are available for all subjects and interests. I can easily pull up one that matches our current unit study when needed. I also use them to help plan our morning baskets each season.

You ARE an ARTiST has lots of fun video art lessons that match up well with all kinds of interesting topics and unit studies. Here is an example of all fun options we are using for our Space unit study:

You can access all of these fun and easy video art lessons for your morning basket or homeschool unit studies with a clubhouse membership. 

I’m particularly excited about exploring the Solar Exploration Video Art Lessons with Emily because they include a Hubble Lesson that is going to be super fun to do together with our mini unit study on Edwin Hubble. If you’re thinking about beginning morning baskets with your kids this year, this is a great way to get started. Pair a book with an art activity and watch the learning fun begin! 

About Jessica Waldock

Jessica Waldock is a writer, photographer, and homeschool mom of one living in sunny Florida. She founded The Waldock Way as a way to give back to the homeschool community that she loves so much. At The Waldock Way Jessica shares tips, tricks, inspiration, and unique resources that help ignite a love of learning in children that will last a lifetime. She inspires families to engage in homeschooling as a lifestyle where relationships come first and interest-led learning prevails. You can connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube.