I made a breakthrough today about Piper’s education.
South Carolina requires children to be in school from the age of five, and we’ve elected to homeschool. We considered other options, but we are choosing to keep her at home so that she can work at her own pace, as our five-year-old operates on an eight-year-old level in many areas. Also, we want to continue building our relationship with her in this capacity before we put her in a place where she may learn to respect others more than her parents.
That said, I’ve been dreading this. Fully, all-out, body-aching, stress-making DREADING it. Parenting is frightening enough on its own – adding education to the mix has all my internal voices going with the “you’re not enough” and the “holy wow, this is too much.” Thirteen years of my own education have been piling up in my brain, a jumble of facts and figures and symbols and absolute crazy.
Pete has been more level-headed, researching our homeschooling options and thinking practically about how we can schedule 180 days of education for our girl around his work, my work, and the rest of our lives. His diligence is what led to my breakthrough today, when he was signing us up for a local group and discovered that we needed a name for our home school.
It’s one of our hobbies, thinking of names we like. We gave each of our kids three names (Piper Joelle Rhiannon and Peter Bredon Michaelson) because we love names. We have two names picked out for another baby (no, I am not telling – or expecting, but I dream of twins!!), and this was a perfect opportunity for us to engage our creativity.
We knew we wanted to keep Sauer OUT of our school name; we wanted something creative and original. We talked about French names (E’Cole de Artiste, Quatre Coins Salle), played with place names (Four Corners, June Street School), and names with personal meanings (Canaan Corners, P & B Academy), but everything was falling flat. I opened up my design program and started playing. I googled school names and noticed that some schools are named after people, but I couldn’t justify just naming our school after some person I didn’t know.
Finally, much like it happened when we named Piper (who was going to be Maddie or Norah before we saw her ultrasound), the right name just happened. We had named our son after Lord Peter Wimsey’s son, Bredon, and I thought perhaps a “Dorothy Sayers” might work well somewhere in the name. It didn’t. Dead end. Then, on a whim, I typed something into my worksheet, and I knew we had it. My world started moving again.
It was perfect. Exactly the right amount of literary, erudite, and fun to stop my dread in its tracks.
As I waited for Pete to see and love the name (which he did!), I played with logos and focus and design, and I realized that I don’t have to be the plan-booking homeschool mama my mother was. I don’t have to leave myself and the way I would do things at the schoolhouse door. I can bring my own creativity to this gig. I can even make a homeschooling “blog” to plan and track our schedule, scan and photograph our paper files, and invite my kids into my world at the same time I’m engaging with theirs.
So. I am pleased and proud and happy to announce that today the Sauers have established Wimsey School for the formal education of our kids. I suddenly think this year might could be fun!
FILED UNDER: Behind the Lens, Pip & Squiggy, This is Us, Wimsey School
Yey! Love the name! We are on our second year of home schooling…and still researching whether we want to attach our lives to a charter school situation. it’s so difficult to decide. English is my second language…but yes I did grow up in the US…but I just don’t want to lead my kids to fail in that area. My biggest concern, am I going to lead them to follow after the Lord’s heart as we battle through parenting, teacher/student relationship, and etc. Need the Lord to move through this.
It’s lovely! Perfect. I did the same thing a few weeks ago. You can check out what I came up with on my blog. :)
Love it! Sounds like a school I would want to attend!
Ah! It fits so well. And that image is sure purty, too. We named our school a few years ago… A Sling and a Stone. Not a big surprise with a testosterone imbalanced house!
Miss Kelly, at this age of your little miss, you are probably already doing “school” way more than you realize. It’ll be easy as pie for you, especially since she’ll be a 2nd generation homeschooler. Imagine how it was for me? A public school girl who has a degree in public school teaching. If I can do it (and love it!), so can you. Yay!
Blessings on your school year.
Lora Lynn – EXACTLY! ;-)
Darlene, I had just enough “real” school to know how to psyche myself out over everything – so it doesn’t feel easy. But Pip is smart as a whip, and she’s taught herself to read AND write already, mostly on her own. I am very lucky.
I LOVE IT!!!! So excited for you and SO happy that you are looking forward to it! I loved being homeschooled and will hopefully homeschool my own kids one day :)
Perfect. You will be able to do this! I have no doubt. And just like with everything else you do, the more you make this you (and the kids) the better it will be.
OOh, I love it!! I need to come up with a name for our homeschool now… :)
Congratulations! And that’s such a beautiful photo (of course). Our homeschool had a name too until it kind of dissolved into unschooling.
I do have one question … how do you pronounce Bredon? Is it “Bread on” or “Bree don”?
Sarah, we pronounce it “BREE don” – but he really does answer to Squiggy. ;-)
We’ve been homeschooling for five years now and learning more and more to make it fit us, rather than try to fit any kind of preconceived mold. And it is a challenge trying to fit it around an art career, or even a dream of an art career! Best wishes to you for keeping that dread at bay and enjoying the process – it keeps getting better for us and we have great hopes for this year.
Love the name!
Yay, we’ll be starting our homeschooling adventure together!! :) This week it has felt “official” as I turned in the paperwork to the state and when to my first “homeschool meeting” with my umbrella group. I feel a bit freaked out too–although excited–I have such a great homeschool community here. But everyone says, “Chill, it’s just kindergarten! You can’t really mess that up!” I know that, but still, how did I get to be old enough to be a homeschool MOM??!?!?
On a side note, I just checked a book out of the library called “Playful Learning” by Mariah Bruehl. You might like it. I do. It has lots of activities for 4-8 year olds. I really like her hands-on math projects. I’m so bad about coming up with stuff for the younger set. Throw me into the high schoolers, no problem. I feel out of my league with the little guys. :)
Love this friend! Huge step :) Proud of you and I LOVE the design!!
Very cool!
I like the way you talk about choosing names as a hobby. I’m working on naming a project, and finding it to be the most difficult part of the whole thing. It’s got me completely stumped. I need something no one else has, and that won’t lead to “questionable content” when googled. :)
Okay, I love that you named your son after Lord Peter’s son. It’s his middle name, too; Lord Peter’s, I mean; or one of them. But I expect you knew that. (I get to see a play version of Gaudy Night next month and am *so excited* about it!)
Anyhoo, I hope you won’t mind but I’m going to steal your idea here and give our homeschool a name. I may go even further and steal your idea of announcing it on my blog. I promise not to steal Wimsey, though :)