Leaping From The Box

In my last post, Unschooling Cooking, I mentioned that David was cooking and we were trying new recipes. Wednesday’s meal was two South African dishes, Green Bean Salad and Bobotie (Beef Pie). Both were delicioius! If you would like the recipes, please visit my Musings, Mischief and Mayhem blog, where they are posted.

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I was recently updating some articles on my LeapingFromTheBox.com site and had to smile when I worked on my Chocolate Cake! article. In that article I share an afternoon that our youngest child Charles and I experienced in the kitchen, trying to bake a chocolate cake together. It was one that was not soon repeated. Cooking with my children just never seemed to pan out, no pun intended. I am not sure if it was the too small kitchen, our different learning styles (and subsequent communication issues), or just that I did not have enough patience, but cooking lessons were few and far between in our house. There were occasions when I would try to remedy this, but they were usually short-lived and everyone involved experienced a welcome sigh of relief when any lessons ended.

My step-mother must have been a good teacher, because when I left home I was able to cook meals for large numbers of people. In fact, my husband and I ate a lot of leftovers until I learned to cook for two (after cooking for eight for so long). She would have been sorely disappointed in me that I did not pass along to my children the cooking skills I learned from her, but the truth is, I did not. A homeschooling failure, right? Probably so, but maybe, just maybe, an unschooling success, at least for one of my children.

The Right Incentive?

After our daughter and granddaughter moved back in with us a couple of months ago, I asked our son David to help out a little bit more around the house, maybe cooking some meals or helping with Miss Munchkin’s care during the daytime. I had half thought that might prove to be the incentive needed for him to go get that part-time job, but instead, it seems to have been the incentive to get him cooking. Not quite what I had in mind, but I am not complaining. Well, not much. He still needs to get that job. But I am certainly enjoying the welcome break from meal planning and preparation. In the last two months, I have cooked maybe five suppertime meals! It is wonderful!

I am not completely off the hook, since David had had so little previous cooking experience. I have to be on hand while recipes are consulted, grocery lists are planned, and most especially during the actual cooking process. But I try to stay out of the process as much as possible, just nearby enough so that he can quickly ask a question or I can throw out a suggestion if I see an impending disaster. And amazingly enough, we have had some very good meals. David has been quite adventurous, choosing for one of his very first meals a Japanese fried rice recipe off the Internet, a dish that I have never attempted. After several meals of that, his sister decided he needed to branch out and she has been finding him recipes from other continents. Tuesday night we had Yabbie or Crayfish Fettuccine, an Australian dish. Only it was more shrimp fettuccine and while the shrimp and the fettuccine was great, the sweet potato based sauce was not a hit. Tonight we are doing Africa with some sort of baked meat pie and green bean salad.

What is truly remarkable, though, is how much easier, calmer, less stress-inducing the cooking experiences are now, versus what they were years ago. At that time my children really did not want to learn to cook, but I felt that it was something they ought to know how to do. The end result was a dread on my part and an avoidance of all things cooking on their parts. This time around, I rarely have to ask David what he’s making or if he is going to get started. He has truly taken it upon himself to have a meal served up at around the same time every evening (except for an evening here or there where we eat leftovers or order out pizza). Every now and again it is nice to have an unschooling success smack me upside the head and remind me just why I love unschooling so much!

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?