Leaping From The Box

Even die-hard unschoolers have occasional doubts about unschooling as an educational (learning) method. I will confess I have had my share of those doubts over the years. As my children have progressed from the teen years into adulthood, it has become more difficult to see the daily workings and successes of unschooling. I am no longer the principal participant in their unschooling lives. Usually I feel more like a visitor standing on the sidelines, only vaguely cognizant of what they are learning or even what their current interests are. Every now and again, though, I am reminded that unschooling really is in action here and this past weekend was one of those times.

From youngest to oldest, our unschooling weekend activities:

Charles has taken a great interest in the current presidential campaign, possibly because he will be able to vote this year. So he watched the Presidential Debates held in New Hampshire on Saturday, occasionally emerging from his room to make comments about the different candidates. And he is obviously going through a Celtic music fest, as he wanted all of my Celtic CDs, disappearing with them to his room. I believe that they are all being loaded on to his computer.

David was preparing for the beginning of the Spring semester at Tallahassee Community College by sleeping late, doing laundry, and spending as much time online as possible. At least, that is what it looked like to me! As long as he does as well this coming semester as he did this last semester, I will have no complaints.

Me, I had three projects going over the weekend, well, actually four. First, I am crocheting a doily, trying out a new pattern. So while watching football games, I crocheted like a crazy woman. Second, I have been concerned about our electric bill, so I spent quite a bit of time comparing our current December bill with our December bill from last year at our old place. I found some great online resources that help you figure out your usage and the cost of individual appliances, etc. Look later in the week for a blog post about all that I learned, including the online links I used. Third, I have been studying ways to improve my website, both traffic and income. So I spent quite a bit of time reading and making a plan of attack for the New Year. And fourth, I have been requiring (yes, unschoolers sometimes do have requirements!) that the boys assist me more in preparing meals, so Saturday evening David helped me prepare a new recipe I found at Divine Domesticity, Pizza Pasta Casserole. Three out of four taste testers gave it a thumbs up, so I guess it’s a keeper!

And last, but not least (we WERE going from youngest to oldest), Bill spent the weekend studying for another certification test. He has just one more update certification test to take and then hopefully he can back off from the intense studying and enjoy his weeknights and weekends. Bill has many certifications, which are needed for his career choice, and all of them he has acquired through self-study. I wrote about how he has accomplished this in my article “Unschooling Adult-Style.”

So, how did your unschooling weekend go?

Each year for Christmas I try to find one board game (or other type of game) that the whole family will enjoy playing. I have had some successes or many failures. It seems like each member of the family likes something different in a board game. One year Kat preferred Mancala to all other games. Charles always wants to play Risk. David usually prefers PC games to board games. Fluxx is a card game that all the children love to play and has been a popular one to take along when visiting friends and relatives, easy to learn and a fast moving game. My favorite board game is Pente. Well, actually it is Scrabble, but rarely will anyone play that with me, so my second favorite is Pente. Bill has never really cared for board games; he much prefers playing the card game Euchre.

This year my board game choice was Cashflow 101, produced by Robert Kiyosaki of Rich Dad fame. I have looked longingly at this game for the past two Christmases, but the price always made me turn away and purchase something else. I have no clue what games I did buy those two years, as no one played them, therefore making them bad investments. Cashflow 101, though, has proven to be an excellent investment, even with its hefty price tag. The only one who has not played it at least twice so far is Bill. My son-in-law has even taken to driving a four-hour round trip on his days off to play the game. I am not sure that is a good investment on his part, given the price of gas. But it was nice to see my four children (three children, one son-in-law) all around the dining room table playing at getting out of the rat race.

Escaping the rat race is the main goal of Cashflow 101. In order to accomplish this, the game forces you to begin thinking differently about your money. A big screen TV is not an asset, nor is a boat, not a true money-earning asset. By delaying purchasing things you want in the game and actually putting your money to work in a money-making asset, like a rental home or dividend paying stock, then you can begin to use the money your assets are earning you to finance those things you want to buy. The key is to see those moneymaking possibilities, to recognize them as opportunities rather than throwing up your hands and declaring that you cannot afford them.

Each person in the game begins with a career and an accompanying income and expense sheet. You quickly see that while some careers pay more, there are also more expenses (college loans, etc.) and it seems that those who make more always have higher expenses (bigger house, more toys, etc.). Having a child greatly increases your monthly expenses. Along the way you have the opportunity to buy stocks, invest in real estate, buy boats, give to charity, all real-life possibilities. In order to get out of the rat race you must grow your passive income (income earned from investments) to the point where it is higher than your expenses, thus allowing you to quit your day job.

Once you have played the game successfully a few times, escaped the rat race, then you are encouraged to make up your own “career” cards, using your current, present-day career and expenses. This enables you to see how you can actually implement the ideas of the game into your own life, using your own finances.

Not only is this a great game for beginning to view your finances in a more opportunistic way, but it is also a great game for honing your math skills. Each roll of the dice causes you to have to refigure your balance sheet, make decisions based upon ROI (return on investment), bank loan repayments, percentages, etc. Lots of math involved here!

Final analysis? Even though this game has a pretty hefty initial investment, it’s ROI appears to be very good. Only time will tell whether the game truly makes a difference in our financial lives. But its entertainment value is high and it is a great learning tool for reinforcing ones math skills. That makes it a better investment than many other games I have purchased in the past. I definitely recommend it for your family.

I recently read a topic on Amy’s Live, Learn, Knit blog titled What Brings You Joy? In her post Amy mentioned a book she had read, Let Your Life Speak by Parker J. Palmer, which I have added to my “must read” list. During this past week’s marathon NaNo writing, I found myself often distracted from my story and thinking about joy. I began to wonder what the difference was between joy and pleasure, since I could easily think of many things that brought pleasure to my world, but not so many things that seemed to bring joy. So today I looked up the words “pleasure” and “joy” online and found an explanation that suited me at Dictonary.com.

Pleasure, enjoyment, delight, joy refer to the feeling of being pleased and happy. Pleasure is the general term: to take pleasure in beautiful scenery. Enjoyment is a quiet sense of well-being and pleasurable satisfaction: enjoyment at sitting in the shade on a warm day. Delight is a high degree of pleasure, usually leading to active expression of it: delight at receiving a hoped-for letter. Joy is a feeling of delight so deep and so lasting that one radiates happiness and expresses it spontaneously: joy at unexpected good news.

So what does bring me joy?

My first thought was writing, but writing is not always joyful or even pleasurable. It can be difficult, painful and emotionally revealing, none of which brings me joy. Writing is something that I have to do, like breathing and eating. It is a rare day that I do not write something, whether a blog post, an email or a letter to a friend (sometimes those are even handwritten!). It does not matter to me whether anyone reads what I write or not. The possibility of an audience is not why I choose write.

Reading also comes to mind, but again, it is more of a need I have, like an addiction to caffeine or nicotine. A day is not complete if I have not had my daily fix of word input and output, reading and writing.

Crocheting gives me pleasure and satisfaction. I find it relaxing, soothing. But crocheting does not give me joy. The act of giving a crocheted item away, knowing that it will be used and appreciated by the recipient, that gives me joy. I never really understood why we needed to save an item that someone had made, pass it down from generation to generation, never to be used. To me, the value of the item is in knowing the person who created that item. If I did not personally know great-grandma Tilly, I am not going to value something made by her nearly as much as I am going to value something made by my Grammy. And so it brings me joy to know that items I have made and given to others are actually being used. That was the reason I made them in the first place!

Here is a picture of the baby afghan I made for my niece’s new baby boy:

Knowing that Aiden’s older brother loved his afghan and carried it around with him for several years gave me great joy. I hope Aiden enjoys his half as much.

Here is another thing that gives me joy:

Copper has taken to sleeping on laptops and computers. When it was ninety degrees and better outside, she preferred sleeping out on our balcony all day long. But when cooler temperatures came in September, she ceased wanting to go out on the balcony and now sleeps away the day on top of laptops or any other computer she can find that is running and warm. Anyway, just seeing a cat gives me pleasure, but having one (or more) of my own that I can interact with gives me joy.

Photography brings me joy. Amy mentioned photography and art in her post, too. Unlike Amy, I have never been interested in the darkroom and developing of pictures. What I love is the hunt for a good subject, the art of framing the subject and the sense of accomplishment I feel when I capture a moment in time. That gives me joy, knowing that I have saved some essence of “now” that can easily be recaptured in the future simply be looking at the picture.

My children, of course, bring me moments of joy. Their individual births were three such moments. Add to that my granddaughter, Miss Munchkin; I was lucky enough to be present at her birth and one of the very first to hold her. Miss Munchkin brings me joy almost every time I see her. There is just something about a toddler who is happy and curious and loving that is joyful, especially when she is related to you.

I feel joy when we hit the road for a road trip, whether it is just a day’s jaunt somewhere or a vacation. There is something truly joyous about leaving behind the every day world for a bit and looking forward towards possible great adventures. And I feel joy every time I step onto a beach. Hearing the waves crashing onto shore and the cry of the gulls, feeling the heat of the sun through the sand on your bare feet, the smell of the salt spray, it all fills me with joy. Oh, and the skirl of bagpipes bring me joy. If ever I were to come across bagpipes being played on the beach while I was walking barefoot with my granddaughter, my heart would likely burst from experiencing too much joy all at once.

Amy’s post talks a lot about finding joy in your work or rather work that you find joyful. I know this is the goal of many unschoolers, to find a way to turn their passion into a career. That is a great goal, although I know few that have been able to truly realize it. The only possible work-related thing that brings me joy is being able to find answers and resources for others. I love to research; I love to hunt for the perfect gift, for the perfect book, for that needed quote or just the right word that will complete a project. I think that is why I continue with my website, since HTML and web design certainly does not bring me joy. On the contrary, many days it fills me with stress and frustration. But I love to know that a resource I have reviewed or something I have written has provided an answer to someone’s quest. That brings me joy.

So, what brings you joy?