I started this blog in order to explore the idea of unschooling. Can a Catholic unschool? If so, how? How does it work day to day? Can an "unschool" still pursue and achieve goals of excellence?
Looking around at our house, seeing that we were all a bit burnt out and at the same time doing OK academically, I decided to call this period between August and January a "sabbatical". That would give us time to try new things on a trial basis without heading right over the abyss.
Well, there may have been "times we have wasted on the way", but I don't think we wasted time. That's one of the things I want to hold on to. Not all "down time", "white space time" is wasted time.
I got a chance to really work on things. Housework, my approach to life. I started learning to work on discomfort, to tolerate uneasiness without throwing an immediate solution at it. I want to hold on to that, too.
I want to hold on to my sense of the unique nature of our family and our individual selves. I had lost that a little in trying to keep us all up to the mark. I got a chance to see our family work itself into its own dynamic. Not perfect or effortlessly natural, not sinless, but real, not stereotyped.
Every day has been its own adventure. Some days were horrible and others were good, and many more were simply themselves. But I haven't been waking up feeling every day like I was getting back on a hamster wheel that just moves in circles. I work hard, but it's a different rhythm, somehow.
I really want to keep all that, whatever we do in the New Year. I want to add more things, include more, but not just because I "ought to" but because it is good. I hate feeling that poetry, or fine art, is a chore. Those things should be held on to carefully, because they are precious, not plowed through.
In this thread, look at Julie's post. It's a pretty fair statement of where I am going right now and as I responded to her, it seems to sum up the areas that classical, CM and unschooling have in common.
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