Do your work!

"I can't write. My hand is broken."

"James, focus."
"Get your face off the table."
"Do the next one."
"Can you do the next problem before I count to ten? 1, 2, 3..."

It took an hour and ten minutes. It's one page. One page of math problems where you write the number that comes before and the one that comes after. Not exactly rocket science.

He didn't have any trouble figuring it out. What he had trouble with was the sitting, the writing, the actual focusing on something that he hadn't decided himself that he wanted to do.

I decided it was going to happen anyway. The worksheet was getting done. So it did; it just took over an hour, but now it's finished.

Homeschoolers like myself hear other parents say things like "I could never homeschool" or "I don't have the patience for that." Me neither. Being patient is hard and today was no picnic. Most days my children are pretty good about getting their work done. For James, today wasn't one of those days, but we got through it. It was more an exercise in parenting than in homeschooling. I decided he needed to do something and I saw it through so that he would know that I really meant he had to finish it. We don't homeschool because I have an extraordinary amount of patience; we manage to homeschool despite my lack of it.

Linn County Fair



Patrick as Issac Newton



Yesterday the kids and I went to the Linn County Fair, since there was free admission until 3pm. They all liked the "Super Science" area, where there were lots of things to play with and signs explaining the physics behind it. Patrick sat through a whole cooking demonstration across from the science area, mostly so he could eat the samples at the end. 

We walked around inside the exhibit hall and looked at all of the booths. Patrick says that his favorite was the cooking booth and Delilah liked the Boys & Girls Club booth, where kids had to guess how many sugar cubes represented the amount of sugar in different foods.

There wasn't a lot of time to hang out at the fair, as Patrick had to get to his dog-sitting job by two, but we made sure to visit the petting zoo.

The fair is free admission for kids under 12 all weekend, so if you haven't been yet, it's something to do.

http://www.linncountyfair.com/



What if Latin were his primary language?

Patrick, looking at John (the 6 week old), asked me this morning, "What if I taught him Latin now? What if Latin were his primary language? Then it would be really easy for him to learn other languages."

It made me laugh, but Patrick had a point. Learning languages early helps you retain them, right? So what if I start folding the younger kids in with the older ones during their language study time? Maybe we'll try it. Mostly though, I was entertained that Patrick spends time thinking about what it would be like to teach his baby brother Latin.

We're lucky this year to finally have friends for whom Spanish is their primary language. Sure, it means that James comes to me and says, "My friend taught me a bad word in Spanish," but I'm hoping that they'll learn some regular words too.

Here are the sites/resources that we use for language learning:

www.classicalacademicpress.com

http://www.headventureland.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/

We've arrived in 1492

For the next two weeks in our history studies, we're learning about "explorers," circa 1492.

Today, we read the first section from Story of the World chapter 31, about Christopher Columbus. We also read p. 9-23 of Where do you think you're going, Christopher Columbus? Then Patrick read about Western Exploration in the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia and wrote a paragraph about it.

I took the kids to the Lebanon library today, where we found the "Drive Thru History" DVD. The first episode is about Christopher Columbus, the Khan-Polo Connection, Florence, Setting Sail in Spain and Amerigo Vespucci. The kids are going to watch it with the babysitter when I'm at the birth center on Wednesday.

We also checked out books about Ferdinand Magellan, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama. The plan is to read them together and have the older two write reports about what they learned.

If I can make it the the UPS store, I'll copy the student pages from the Story of the World activity guide for the kids. Delilah likes the coloring pages and that gives them something to do while we read aloud.

Teaching the Bears

Lately, I've been wanting to start another blog. I stopped doing the Syracusedoula blog for obvious reasons (not in Syracuse, not really a doula), but we still have cool things going on that I'd like to share.

Patrick helped pick the blog title, because we're learning and we're Baers'.

Everyone in the house is learning and growing. In the fall, I'll have four homeschooled students. They're officially going into Kindy, 1st, 4th and 6th grade. We have a new baby, born June 1st. I'm a student midwife, apprenticing and doing academic work through the National Midwifery Institute. Tim is working to pay our bills, helping out at church, playing board games & video games and hanging out with bands.

Aside from wanting to share what we're doing, I'm excited about starting a blog again because in the past, blogging about homeschooling has made me want to do cool things with the kids so I could post it. Kinda like how being in Weight Watchers makes you want to eat healthy foods.

So hopefully I'll manage to post about what the kids are doing in homeschooling, how the midwifery school is going and what we're all learning about.

Patrick and baby John

James and Ben

Delilah and baby John