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?

David and Bill just left for Atlanta. David is signed up to participate in the Driver’s Edge program tomorrow afternoon. They will spend the night near Macon and be back late tomorrow night. For those of you not familiar with Driver’s Edge, it is a youth driver’s education program founded and developed by a professional race car driver. Here’s a quote from their website:

Young drivers are placed through this half day, four hour program at no cost, making the program accessible to young drivers from all economic backgrounds. With professional driving instructors at their side, the students … participate in customized behind the wheel driving exercises developed to address the most common driving situations that can lead to collision.

I’ll post next week to let you know how it went and whether David found it to be worthwhile.

So what have I been up to this week? Mostly playing with Miss Munchkin. I drove up to Albany Wednesday morning and brought Kat and Miss Munchkin here for a few days. They were getting housebound. Not sure yet when I’ll take them home: possibly either tomorrow (Saturday) or Monday. I could do it Sunday, but Sunday is race day and the four-hour round trip would cut into my race watching!

It appears like David is ready for Orientation on Tuesday at Tallahassee Community College He’s spent quite a bit of time online and on the phone and visiting the college, trying to get all the needed paperwork submitted. He plans to take an English Composition class this summer and then begin full-time classes in the fall. We are hoping that this works out better than Evansville did last year.

Oh, and I found a great natural foods place yesterday. New Leaf Market.It has a deli, organic and local produce, and best of all, it’s a co-op! I’ll be joining after we get next month’s paycheck!

There are also three different farmer’s markets in the area, on Monday, Wednesday and Saturday. The one on Monday is less than a mile from me! I hope to get there next week. Last Saturday we visited the one downtown and bought loads of fresh produce and some cut zinnias. It’s so nice to have fresh flowers!

I just checked when I last wrote here and can’t believe it was so long ago. Where did December go? It’s been a month of ups and downs and not one I’d like to repeat for a long time to come.

Mr. Algae-Eater seems to have recovered nicely. I bought some sort of aloe juice medicine that was supposed to be for sores on fish and added it each day for a week. It seemed to do the trick. He’s back to his old self.

We did take a trip to Tallahassee last week and Bill interviewed for a position with a company there. He liked the company, so now we are just waiting to see if they liked him enough to hire him. Or if they thought they needed his experience enough to hire him, as they have a huge mess to clean up. Hopefully we’ll hear soon. Bill and I really liked it there. The sunshine, the warmth, the beach, the seafood. It was very nice.

Christmas was a quiet day. Several of us have colds, others have been stressed and working too many hours. So we just watched movies and played with Miss Munchkin and tried to keep the wrapping paper out of her mouth. The best gift seemed to be the Flexible Flyer horse we got her. It didn’t take long for her to figure out how she could move to get the horse moving. It is going to be a while, though, before she’ll be able to ride it herself.

And I bought her a stocking that had the head of a cat at the top of it. I was going to make her a stocking. I got all of 4 rows done on it. I’ll have to finish it next year. But the cat stocking was a big hit. Miss Munchkin loves “fluffies” and all day long she’d carry that stocking around and put her face right down into the cat’s face and make her “kitty cat” noise, which is sort of a cross between a meow and a purr and a dinosaur growl. Very cute. That’s what she’s doing in these pictures, in addition to trying to eat the nose of the cat!