Name Change

I changed the name of this blog. Just a bit. It is now actually the combination of my first blog's title and the Strewing one. I've been thinking about changing the name for a while. My initial vision for this Strewing blog was to be a resource for unschoolers, but our family has moved away from unschooling as being the primary form of our education. Of the remaining three of five kids left here at home, Josh is 17 and about to finish his last year of high school here at home. He's done a pretty typical course of study, even though it hasn't always sat well with him, he couldn't seem to come up with an alternative plan, so unschooling kind of went by the wayside. A typical course of study was the default mode of operation. I'm not happy with it but it was how things fell out for him. My 13 year old, Sean, really wants to go to school. He's been terribly unhappy at home. He's stuck with home for one more year at least, but in order to counter his restlessness, boredom and misery, I find myself really micromanaging his time. He can not seem to cope on his own. My husband and I have some concerns and are going to seek counseling for him. It is hard to live with someone so unhappy. My just about to turn 11 year old, Becky, is very happy doing a formal classical curriculum which involves going to a "school" one day a week. It is a great balance for her when it comes to socialization and structure. She gets lots of free time to be really creative with her dolls, read, etc. And frankly, the vision behind this curriculum has ignited my own love for learning in a fresh and new way. I love it! I find myself becoming more and more committed to it.

 So I feel like the blog title had become a misnomer. My family is just too unstable when it comes to finding a niche for our style of learning. We shift back and forth, back and forth. It is a totally natural movement and if I insisted on remaining unschoolers in some ideological way, it would be untrue to who we are. At the same time, highly formal, structured learning a la The Well Trained Mind or something like that is grating and a real strain. We are some where in the middle constantly moving slightly up or down the spectrum.