The Montessori philosophy talks about the “prepared environment”. Unschooling philosophy sometimes talks about “strewing”. Reggio offers “provocations”. Whatever you want to call it, the fundamental principle is the same — leaving something educational ready and lying around for the child to discover and pursue in their own time according to their own interesting.

This isn’t something I have done much with my son through our homeschooling journey. I have purchased curriculum and allowed him to have a say in the decision-making processes, which to buy and when and how often to use them. I have tried to help him organize his space. And I have sometimes bought ‘extra’ things and given them to him outright, which he has consequently ignored, and which I have then left around in his bookcase or on his shelves, in hopes that someday he’ll notice it by chance and say “oh hey, this looks interesting, I wonder where this came from” or even “oh yeah, I remember this… hm, looks interesting now.” That’s about as close as I’ve gotten to “strewing” for him.

With my daughter having entered the “teachable” ages, where I must decide how much to simply leave her to develop “naturally” and how much to, um, “assist” that natural development, I’ve done quite a lot of reading on Montessori principles and the prepared environment. We’ve implemented quite a few things already which I’ll talk about in another post sometime soon.

Seeing how well she is responding to her prepared environment has made me stop and consider what I could be doing differently for my older son. Sometimes I feel we’re straddling a no-man’s-land between rigid curriculum expectations and a free-floating laziness with no motivation or goals… we rock back and forth from strict daily schedules with checklists, to days of complete sloth and boredom. Where, I ask myself, is the homeschooled child I was promised by all the advertising? The one who is keen and curious and grabs things off his shelf to read or to do just because it’s there and looks interesting? The one who isn’t whining that there’s nothing to do when he has shelves FULL of things he hasn’t yet done… and that I know he would like if he just tried them?

Kakuro to the rescue.

For those unfamiliar with Kakuro, or “Cross Sums”, it’s another fantastic Japanese logic puzzle along the lines of Sudoku, with one big difference — it uses math! Sudoku of course uses numbers, but no actual math. It’s pure logic, and can just as easily be done with letters or with shapes. Kakuro, on the other hand, is like a crossword puzzle, but you have to find the numbers that add up to the sum for each “word” across or down, and no digit can be used twice in the same sum. For instance, to get the sum of 7 with three digits, the solution can ONLY be 1, 2, and 4… your task is then to figure out which order they go in, as determined by the other sums that are running crosswise to it.

I’ve been through my Japanese puzzle addiction and survived. I have broken the back of Sudoku and grew bored with it. I fooled around with kakuro as well as nonograms, hitori, links, and bridges. I gave up on my addiction when I was no longer able to find any puzzle books with the more obscure puzzles and my favourite website shut down.

About a year or so ago, I think, maybe more, I found a puzzle book called Kakuro For Kids: Ninja Editionsince the progressive levels of difficulty were labelled “White Belt”, “Yellow Belt”, etc. This was perfect! Flipper is a martial artist, the belts will be the perfect “hook” to get him into logic puzzle games!
I gave him the book for his birthday, or Christmas, or something. And so it ended up on his shelf, unused, unloved.

Until a few days ago. I was out for the evening, and when I got home he was so very excited about something and he just had to show me.

It was the Kakurobook, and he had already done the first half-dozen “White Belt” puzzles.

One of the few things I’ve managed to accomplish so far in re-designing a “prepared environment” for him, is that I organized his bookshelves… books he’s already read on one shelf, books yet to be read on another shelf, “school” books here, and “activity” books over there… that’s things like colouring books, puzzle books, instructions on magic tricks, that sort of thing. I had explained this new system to him a couple weeks ago, and it had been untouched until now.

He had looked at his shelf of activity books, saw something and said “oh hey, that looks interesting”.

And all proud of himself, he said, “and it’s doing MATH too, isn’t it mom? I have to add and subtract to solve these! And it’s FUN! I’m already halfway through the White Belt! It’s called the Ninja Edition!”

And so every night in bed, and every day on car trips, he has been puzzling away at his Kakuro book. He’s into the Orange Belt now, the logic is getting a wee bit trickier… And he’s still loving it.

And tonight, when I went to tuck him in to bed, I caught him dismantling the Activity Book shelf, books everywhere. He said he was looking for something else to do. What about Kakuro? Oh, he said, “I can’t find a pencil”. I don’t know what activities he was hoping to find that didn’t require some sort of writing implement… but the fact remains that he was doing what I sometimes thought would never happen… he was delving into his environment, seeking out new discoveries that lay therein. He was dealing with his own boredom, he was eagerly and independently searching out things to do.

Now if only there were some way to ’strew’ lessons in respectful behaviour, self-discipline, selflessness, and empathy, we’d be all set!




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