Email strewing.

We have drifted away from our structured pattern of work at the moment, which makes me slightly nervous, but I’ll explore than in another post very soon. (Maybe even today if baby continues to be surprisingly happy to be other places than my arms or feeding!)

However, I keep myself from the brink of panic by indulging in a bit of email strewing from time to time. Which works very well with the boy at least.

For example, a few weeks ago, Big and I started a project on democracy. (It’s still kicking around in case you were wondering. Am hoping that leaflets coming through the door will rejuvenate interest in it.) As part of that work we investigated graphs and I found Kids Zone – Create a graph, so I used it with Big and then stuck a link in an email to both of them. Over the days following Small explored the site extensively, even finding the Dare to Compare section and testing himself out on 4th grade maths questions (and doing surprisingly well, meaning that I can relax a little about the lack of anything resembling formal maths work going on atm).

So, if you were wondering about the wisdom of letting your children loose online, consider this – they might ignore you irl, but will they ignore you in chat window? Or if you email them?

(Turns out Big will ignore my email, I think she thinks I’m boring, but Small is a little more forgiving!)

So in the last month or so I’ve sent them a number of links. There was What on earth, which sparked a brief reinterest in the outside world and digital photography, even going as far as Big uploading some pictures. Schools organic network which sparked nothing at all, oh well. Maths games – not sure he’s even seen that yet! I found Imaginary Exhibition courtesy of a HE blogger I know 😉 although they were only interested because I said a friend had seen it.

So that’s my hi tech way of eliciting interests. Have you any links to recommend or share? At least it’s better than physical strewing in that you don’t trip over this stuff 😉