Getting ready for the new school year

I guess it was predictable that once we got back from Georgia, I would be quite busy with practical concerns for a while.  Not only did I need to take care of household business, but the co-op e-mails started pouring in while I was still away.  I have two co-op jobs this year:  To coordinate topical discussions, and to hire a science teacher for the junior high students.  It's the former that took a lot of time this week, but I think I've finally found someone who will work well all-around.  Now, for those discussions.

Notice that none of this has much to do with home.  That seems strange to me, partly because I've enjoyed this quiet summer so much, and maybe also because my only child enjoys learning most subjects on her own.  But it's not just co-op that seems an odd fit to me right now.  I think I have less interest than ever in "school" this year.  I've bought no curriculum, having enough on hand to cover any subjects that we might need to cover in a curricular sort of way.  More importantly, we just don't seem to need it.  C. Z. just gets interested in something and learns about it.   This afternoon it was southeast Asian cuisine, via Hot, Sour, Salty Sweet.  (She was looking for peeled peanuts for pad thai, and we stopped by an Asian mart and bought shrimp paste on the way back from violin.) She's obsessed with orchestral scores, especially Mahler.  She's plowing through Inklings literature (again), and even writing in her journal without being asked.  When were watching Teaching Company lectures on Mobius bands and Klein bottles this afternoon, I could see her stop and mentally try to envision their properties to predict what the lecturer was going to say next.  Sure, I'll have to assign Latin, and we'll probably go systematically through algebra this year, but basically, why should I stop an active learner from doing what she's doing already?  About the only way I could do that is by making her so busy that she didn't have time to follow her nose anymore, which is precisely what planning out "school" would do.

Of course, she's dying to do orchestra again, and this year she'll add chamber music, so to her, that's "school," because it means other kids and following a fall to spring schedule.  She really couldn't care less about co-op, which I am so busy with right now.  Funny how that works.