Which District?

I'm registered with a school district that formerly supported unschoolers. I'm so torn now. My 8 year old is now required to provide work samples in order to get your funding ($1000 per child). If I write for him, long interesting journal entries come from his mouth. If he has to write its as short as possible. I remember this feeling well. So now there's self design, a homeschooling philosophy and method that I'm coming to realize may fit us better. They give funding (more) and support in a more unschooly way - observational and in a more real manner. At this point I'm seriously thinking of faking it for the boys' work samples.....another mother registered in the same district gave me some of her son's "printing practice" for me to pass off as my son's!
So my oldest son, who wrote a "One to One Mystery" this summer (based loosely around AtoZ Mysteries") but "theoretically" is not up to "grade level" with his "writing", will have to provide some writing. The more I ask him to write, the more he hates it. I want him to WANT to write, I don't want it to be a chore. It will ruin it forever for him. In addition, (love puns) he's probably not up to grade level in school math either. But I know intellectually he is ahead.
Recent examples of his thought processes that would qualify under "Self Design" philosophy....

At Bedtime: A: Mummy, why is the closest star way past Pluto?
Well, our star is the sun, we orbit the sun, if there was another star we'd be messed up.
silence
Mummy, is there life way out there?
Well, scientists are working on that (trying to sound intelligent here) and you know, conditions had to be exactly right for life to form on Earth and we don't know if those conditions are possible anywhere else.
silence
Mummy, but the conditions don't have to be the same, life somewhere else might be different and might not need the same conditions as we do........
UH, umm, yes, that's right, huh....doh!

Reading "Little House in the Big Woods"
Laura and Mary each save 1/2 a cookie for Carrie, which doesn't seem fair, as Carrie then get's a whole cookie.
Mummy, they should eat 2/3 each.

Picking up groundfall apples for the pigs on our route:
Mummy, what's 5x4
20
Mummy, (why do they always say Mummy? and wait for a response ARGH) what's 4x5?
20
huh
Mummy, what's 4x3/
12
What's 3x4?
12
Huh, really? It's the same....huh...oh cool.....oh
Mummy now starts to build 4 rows of 3 with apples to demonstrate the principle.....
"Oh cool, I get it, neat" stops me....

Hay, if we each get 1/4 we'll have a whole!!!

You don't want to know what books we've consumed lately....

Self Design here we come..........

And this is my oldest....my middle boy is such a spark, fire, fireball, firestorm............................

It's a windy day. We're at a park at the beach. He stands there with his arms at his sides moving his body from side to side "LOOK! I'm dancing grass!"

Desperately seeking.....

It's funny, but I read often from homeschooling parents, mothers mostly, on forums etc. that they spend time desparately seeing the perfect curriculum....buying one after another after another, spending gazillions of dollars on curriculums that they ditch after a short while because they don't work. I started doing this while tutoring young chinese kids in Hong Kong. I ordered the perfect "phonics" program, bought book after book, workbook after workbook, each one a boring failure and the lightbulb slowly went on for me and I understood more and more. I still didn't know about homeschooling and unschooling at this point. I found that the best way to reach the kids was to read cool books with them and then design FUN activities around the books. I read Roald Dahl a lot with the kids, Captain Underpants too - a huge hit, and I learned. When I had kids, began my journey into attachment parenting, LLL, Continuum Concept, and finally homeschooling I started researching curriculums, finding free ones like Letteroftheweek.com, Five in a Row and Sonlight....FIAR's literature lists and ideas are great, I ordered the books and the guides, and did nothing but read the books over and over to my kids. I don't know that I did ONE thing from the guides. Activities to reinforce learning SNORE. Sonlight's literature idea is awesome but by now I knew I would never do everything....so ordered some of their reading list but stayed away from their IGs. I have purchased less than most people I think. I did a few lapbooks with my kids, but again, reinforcing learning isn't really necessary. Either they get it or not. Either they want to know about something or they don't. If anything, by doing the lapbooks I killed their interest in certain topics. (here's a whole nother blogpost i suspect) I haven't completely given up on them, maybe when they are older they may enjoy the project aspect of lapbooks....but for now I have let them fall by the wayside. I have fallen for a couple of Math programs, but spent relatively little money. And I know with my kids its all about living and reading about real life stuff, and doing real life stuff every day, like catching mosquito larvae to put into your fish tank. You know the whole circle of life thing. You know Charlotte Mason's twaddle free literature, and living books, and living history???? Yep, she knew what she was talking about. Are all these parents desparately seeking the perfect curriculum wasting their time and money? Yep. It's right in front of their noses. Great books! LIFE LEARNING. SELF DIRECTED. Let the kids free to explore their own interests...and as a parent watch....and feed....spend all that money feeding the passion......and of course READ READ READ to them.....

All this just hit me today.

I figured out what August said. His loose tooth is driving him batty....it's been almost out for a week now, he finally said....."Maybe tonight I'll just put my whole head under the pillow and the tooth fairy can just take my tooth!" Ok, well *I* thought it was funny.