naming our "homeschool"

Our state fair offers discounts and free admission to school groups and homeschoolers. Many of the attractions this year hit on some of our interests, like a drumming group, a butterfly tent, and the body exhibit. So earlier this week, I found myself sitting in front of the state fair's application to receive our field trip tickets.

The application has a blank for the name of the school. I had recently read Ann Zeise's article, "Naming Your Homeschool" over at A to Z Home's Cool website. Ann gives two reasons for naming your educational activities as a school- to receive discounts from suppliers, and to give your kids an entity to belong to.

Well, I could have just written "homeschool" in that blank.  However, my family loves to name things, so we took it upon ourselves to come up with something fun and creative.

First, I asked Daughter, Cavemomma's youngest.  Being the proud cave kid that she is , she came up with, "Cave Kid Imaginative School" She really liked how it was like an acronym- "CKIS" (sort of like "kiss")   Is that inventive spelling, or what???

Then I asked Son, the oldest, and a teenager, who prefers to keep his affectionate cave kid status within the family.   He came up with the acronym, "HOBO", and tried to fill in the words. He got "home" in there, and then left the task to go to bed.

The next day,  Cavedad emailed home a solution for "HOBO"- "Humans Observing Beneficial Open Societies"  Hmm....very positive, but perhaps a bit vague for an application of this sort.

I tried my hand at it.  I decided to pick a close geographical landmark for naming our "school".  Our street name isn't particularly impressive-sounding, but we have many pretty places nearby to name after.  I started with, "Garden Canyon Homeschool".  Nice, but a bit too benign.  I wanted to add some educational bulk to that name.  I ditched the word, "homeschool" for the word "academy".  Now we have "Garden Canyon Academy".  But that sounds too schooly for me, and doesn't really describe our relaxed, somewhat child-led, yet also somewhat academically-directed style.

So then I wrote, "Garden Canyon Academy of Semi-Self-Directed Learning".

There.

What did I ultimately write on the application?  "Garden Canyon Homeschool".
It filled the bill, I suppose.  (-:


Have you named your homeschool?  If you were to name yours, what name would you choose?