The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

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First time visitor? We post a wide range of easy-to-use educational ideas and “little lessons” that will enrich your homeschooling schedule all through the year. Please add your name to our free mailing list! (Just one message a week, and no spam.) 😊

There’s a wealth of wonderful material here on our website — everything from homeschool astronomy to books and libraries to language and literature to geography, natural history, homeschool calendars, and more. The materials we’re developing are going to become the foundation for a new type of homeschool network made up of friendly local groups called “houses” (just like in Harry Potter). Make yourself at home! 😊

🖋 🌅 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): Turning Toward the Morning

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-bok

The overnight temperatures this weekend are expected to go down into the thirties in my neighborhood. The trees are at peak color, but brisk winds are beginning to take some of it down and there are a few bare branches showing through on the hills.

October’s growing thin, and the coming cold can make us uneasy. This has been quite a year. Will we be isolated all winter? Will the house be warm enough? Will the darkness drag us down? Will we get sick? Will we make it all the way to spring?

The great Maine folksinger and songwriter Gordon Bok offers us some reassurance as the seasons begin to change and the cold closes in around us with this lyrical translation of an astronomical observation.

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Read along with your students, or sing along, as Bok provides us with our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of October.

Turning Toward the Morning

When the deer has bedded down
And the bear has gone to ground,
And the northern goose has wandered off
To warmer bay and sound,
It’s so easy in the cold to feel
The darkness of the year
And the heart is growing lonely
For the morning.

Oh, my Joanie, don’t you know
That the stars are swinging slow,
And the seas are rolling easy
As they did so long ago?
And if I had a thing to give you,
I would tell you one more time
That the world is always turning
Toward the morning.

Now October’s growing thin
And November’s coming home;
You’ll be thinking of the season
And the sad things that you’ve seen,
And you hear that old wind walking,
Hear him singing high and thin,
You could swear he’s out there singing
Of your sorrow. (Chorus)

When the darkness falls around you
And the north wind comes to blow,
And you hear him call your name out
As he walks the brittle snow:
That old wind don’t mean you trouble,
He don’t care or even know,
He’s just walking down the darkness
Toward the morning. (Chorus)

It’s a pity we don’t know
What the little flowers know.
They can’t face the cold November,
They can’t take the wind and snow:
They put their glories all behind them,
Bow their heads and let it go,
But you know they’ll be there shining
In the morning. (Chorus)

Now, my Joanie, don’t you know
That the days are rolling slow,
And the winter’s walking easy,
As he did so long ago?
And if that wind should come and ask you,
“Why’s my Joanie weeping so?”
Won’t you tell him that you’re weeping
For the morning? (Chorus)

You can find more of Gordon Bok’s words and music at his website (gordonbok.com), and also at his publisher’s website, Timberhead Music (timberheadmusic.com).

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you studying in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ The world is always turning toward the morning: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 😊

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

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🌍 🇧🇫 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Ruins of Loropéni in Burkina Faso

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-burkina-faso

Burkina Faso in western Africa is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Burkina Faso’s World Heritage Sites: the Ruins of Loropéni.

“Remains of defensive walls at the Ruins of Loropéni (May 2016).” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The thousand-year-old Loropéni ruins were once a defensive fortress that protected gold mining and shipping operations in what is now Burkina Faso:

“The 11,130 m² property, the first [World Heritage Site] to be inscribed in the country, with its imposing stone walls is the best preserved of ten fortresses in the Lobi area and is part of a larger group of 100 stone enclosures that bear testimony to the power of the trans-Saharan gold trade. Situated near the borders of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo, the ruins have recently been shown to be at least 1,000 years old. The settlement was occupied by the Lohron or Koulango peoples, who controlled the extraction and transformation of gold in the region when it reached its apogee from the 14th to the 17th century. Much mystery surrounds this site, large parts of which have yet to be excavated. The settlement seems to have been abandoned during some periods during its long history. The property, which was finally deserted in the early 19th century, is expected to yield much more information.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1225)

Here’s a great two-minute video that introduces the Loropéni ruins — it’s just the thing to spark some good homeschool discussions of history and geography:

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You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Ruins of Loropéni on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

World Heritage Sites are cultural or natural landmarks of international significance, selected for recognition by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. More than 1000 such sites have been recognized in over 160 countries, and we feature one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list online at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.

The World Heritage Centre also has a free and comprehensive World Heritage education kit for teachers, as well as a wonderful full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites (riverhouses.org/2020-wh-map), available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures are you exploring in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books) for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found; the history encyclopedia includes national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read the WHC’s brief description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical, geographical, and cultural information. 🇧🇫

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring historical and natural sites of international importance. Download a copy of our River Houses World Heritage Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

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🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – October 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-10-research

On the third Tuesday of each month we post a quick roundup of some recent academic publications and news about homeschooling, offered for your interest. These are typically university research papers, and they may have a positive, negative, or neutral outlook on home education — and if they don’t seem appealing, just scroll on by. The title links generally point to the full text of each publication, which is often a printable pdf file. (Facebook readers should click to the attached blog post to find these links live.) In some cases, a paid subscription may be required to read the whole article. The article abstracts and introductions below are quoted in full whenever possible, without editing.

We have four items this month:

(1) Energetic Students, Stressed Parents, and Nervous Teachers: A Comprehensive Exploration of Inclusive Homeschooling During the COVID-19 Crisis — V. Letzel, M. Pozas, & C. Schneider (2020)

Abstract: March 2020 will be reminded as the time when schools around the world came to a shutdown. This resulted in a necessary and immediate redesign of teaching and learning. School-based instruction had to be replaced by a home-based instruction format. This required students, parents and teachers to adapt their daily routines to a new and unknown educational reality. Given this unprecedented situation, research into the impact of homeschooling during the COVID-19 crisis became urgent. This brief report introduces a nation-wide research project in Germany. Following a mixed-methods design, the SCHELLE project titled Student-Parents-Teachers in Homeschooling (abbreviated as SCHELLE following its German name Schüler-Eltern-Lehrer) was developed in order to comprehensively explore students’, parents’, and teachers’ experiences during homeschooling. Overall, the studies focused on collecting quantitative and qualitative data on how homeschooling was implemented, whether inclusive education was considered, and the well-being of all three perspectives. The main findings of the SCHELLE project revealed that the impact of homeschooling expanded not only into the educational domain, but as well into the social (e.g. social distancing), psychological (positive and negative activation), and educational equality matters (implementation of inclusive education).

(2) The Lived Experience of Homeschooling Families and the Transference of Faith Tradition: A Narrative Exploration — D.J. Pietersma (2020)

Abstract: The purpose of this research was to examine the lived experiences of Christian homeschooling families in relation to the desire to pass on the families’ faith tradition to their children. The researcher chose a qualitative approach to explore the various elements of Christian homeschooling that provided either a positive or negative impact to faith transference. To examine these experiences, the researcher interviewed five mothers who homeschooled at least one child through high school. The researcher also interviewed one homeschool student from each of these families who had graduated at least two, but not more than 7 years prior to the start of the research project. Participants discussed various aspects of the Christian homeschooling experience that played a role in the transference of the family’s faith tradition from parent to student. After coding, the researcher triangulated the data between corresponding pairs of parent and student, analyzed the data across the range of participants, and categorized results for thematic analysis. The results and discussion are presented in narrative format.

(3) A Phenomenological Study of the Experiences of African American Homeschooled Graduates’ Social Integration at a Post-Secondary Institution — S.J. St. Aude (2020)

Abstract: The educational outcomes of homeschooled students who pursue a college education suggest that students perform equally if not better than regular education students because they have a more flexible curriculum and access to extensive resources. This qualitative phenomenological study aimed to understand the social integration and social experiences of homeschooled African American students who currently attend or attended a post-secondary institution. The Social Identity Theory served as the theoretical foundation of the study. The problem addressed by this study was while a majority of research studies conducted on homeschooled students revealed the positive outcomes of academic, social, and emotional development of homeschooled Caucasian students who attend college, little was known about the social impacts of homeschooling on African American students who attend a post-secondary institution. A qualitative research design employing purposive sampling was conducted to assess the commonality of the lived experiences of participants utilizing interview data as method of collecting information. Eight participants were selected for the study and the population consisted of African American homeschooled students who attended or had attended a post-secondary institution. Interviews were conducted via video conferencing or by phone utilizing a set of ten interview questions that enabled the researcher to collect and transcribe data to compare information from each interviewee. The results from the study indicated that African Americans who receive a homeschool education yield positive outcomes of socialization in college when they are provided with familial support and a connection to culture that helps establish a strong identity and a sense of self. The findings of this study suggest the need for consistent and increased familial, cultural, and social influences for African American homeschooled students prior to attending college to help enhance their sense of self and promote favorable social integration in college.

(4) Homeschooling and Affective Well-Being of Parents and Children During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Daily Diary Study — A. Schmidt et al. (2020)

Abstract: To slow down the spread of the COVID-19 virus, schools around the world were closed in early 2020, transferring children’s scholastic activities to the homes and imposing a massive burden on parents and school-aged children. Using data of a 21-day diary study conducted between March and April 2020 in Germany, this work examined whether homeschooling (and parents’ involvement therein) was associated with negative parent-child interactions and affective well-being of both, parents and children, over and above the effect of daily stressors. On days when children were working on school tasks, parents (N = 562) reported more negative parent-child interactions as well as lower parental and child positive affect and higher child negative affect, but not higher parental negative affect. Moreover, days when parents were more heavily involved in learning (i.e., when children worked less independently on school tasks) were days with more negative parent-child interactions, lower parental and child positive affect, and higher parental and child negative affect. Negative parent-child interactions were also linked to lower affective well-being of parents and children, and partially accounted for the relation among daily stressors and affective well-being of parents and children. Furthermore, parent-child interactions generally were worse in families in which children worked on school tasks either very rarely or on approximately all days of the study. The present work illustrates the negative consequences of school closures on the parent-child dyad and highlights the need for measures to better support school-aged children and their parents in the learning process at home.

What interesting homeschool news and research have you come across this Cygnus Term? 👩🏻‍🎓

❡ Explore more: If you’d like to investigate the academic literature on homeschooling, the best place to start is Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), the special academic search engine from Google. Just enter a search term or phrase of interest (“homeschool,” “unschooling,” “classical homeschooling,” “deschooling,” etc.), and Google Scholar will return a list of academic publications that mention your topic. 🔎

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our regular Homeschool Research & News posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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🇺🇸 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Yorktown 1781

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-yorktown

Rochambeau, Washington, and de Grasse (1931)
On this day in 1781, the British army under General Lord Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, Virginia, effectively ending the six-year-long American Revolution.

Yorktown sits on the south bank of the York River at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, and Cornwallis had sensibly retreated there after his long Southern Campaign, expecting to be able to resupply and if necessary to evacuate his troops by sea. But our French allies under Admiral de Grasse had successfully blockaded the entrance to the Chesapeake to prevent any relief from arriving. Once the blockade was in place, Cornwallis’s fate was sealed. Surrounded and besieged by Washington’s Continental Army and the French under Rochambeau, Cornwallis and his army of 8000 were forced to surrender.

Here’s a great short summary of the Yorktown siege and surrender, perfect to read to your students this week, or to have one of them read to you:

Yorktown is today a national historical park under the jurisdiction of the National Park Service. It’s a place to put on your homeschool wish-list for a future visit:

The Library of Congress has a whole collection of resources on Yorktown, as well as an excellent contemporary map that shows many of the details of the siege:

What historical events and American anniversaries are you studying in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the American Revolution, turn to page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). It’s an ideal two-page refresher for teachers and a great introduction for students. You’ll find the Yorktown surrender on this date mentioned there, too. 📚

❡ A river at my garden’s end: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 18 October 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-10-18

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more!) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week, and visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Maryland, and our COUNTRIES are Brunei 🇧🇳, Bulgaria 🇧🇬, Burkina Faso 🇧🇫, and Burundi 🇧🇮. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌒 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waxing crescent — a good time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (18 October 2020) — Today is the 292nd day of 2020; there are 74 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different kinds of calendars on pages 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 The great American novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville was first published on this day in 1851 in London (sic). 🐳 And today is the birthday of the great rock-and-roll pioneer Chuck Berry (1926–2017). 🎸

Monday (19 October 2020) — Today is the birthday of Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), author of some of the most luminous prose in the English language. ⚱️ And on this day in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia, British forces under the command of Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau, effectively ending the American Revolution. 🕊

Tuesday (20 October 2020) — Today is the birthday of the architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1732), who rebuilt much of central London after the Great Fire of 1666. 🏛 And on this day in the year 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase. 🇺🇸

Wednesday (21 October 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). 🖋 And since we talked a lot about apples this past week, it’s only fitting to note that today is celebrated as Apple Day in the United Kingdom. 🍎 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Ruins of Loropéni in Burkina Faso. 🇧🇫

Thursday (22 October 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great Hungarian composer and pianist Franz Liszt (1811–1886). 🎹 On this day in 1879, Thomas Edison tested his design for first practical and long-lasting incandescent light bulb. 💡 And on this day in 1884, the International Meridian Conference declared a line passing from the north pole through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, to be our planet’s Prime Meridian (the line of 0º longitude). 🌐 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, as October grows thin, is a song for the coming cold by the great Maine folk artist Gordon Bok. 🌅 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Friday (23 October 2020) — On this day in 1739, England declared war on Spain in the conflict memorably known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. 👂 Today is the birthday of the popular naturalist and children’s author Neltje Blanchan (1865–1918). 🐦 And sometime between 6:02 a.m. and 6:02 p.m. today, chemistry students will want offer a toast in honor of International Mole Day (6.02 × 10²³). ⚗️ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Swifts and Hummingbirds, aerial acrobats all. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (24 October 2020) — One of the most famous buildings in the world, Chartres Cathedral, was consecrated on this day in the year 1260. 🇫🇷 Today is the birthday of the pioneering Dutch microscopist Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1732). 🔬 On this day in 1861, the first North American transcontinental telegraph line was completed. ⚡️ And, to-morrow is Saint Crispian. 🍻

Sunday (25 October 2020) — On this day in the year 285 (or perhaps 286), the early Christian saints Crispin and Crispinian, patrons of cobblers and leather workers, were executed in Rome by the emperor Diocletian. 👞 And on this day in 1415, the feast day of Saints Crispin and Crispinian, King Henry V of England, outnumbered, defeated the armies of France in the Battle of Agincourt. 🏹 And Crispin-Crispian shall ne’er go by, from this day to the ending of the world, but they in it shall be rememberèd. 🎭

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, to be offered this Saturday, and on the 24th of every October to the ending of the world, is from Shakespeare: “To-morrow is Saint Crispian.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌍 🇧🇮 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Burundi in central Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Ruzizi River, which forms part of the border between Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo and empties into Lake Tanganyika. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Ruzizi River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Ruzizi River in Burundi, complete with floating hippopotami. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ Daughters of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 691–693), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you. 🌍

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Lively springs: This is one of our regular “Quick Freshes” posts looking at the homeschool week ahead. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

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🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Maryland, Brunei, Burundi, and More

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-maryland

Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.

Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 420), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸 MARYLAND (the 7th state, 28 April 1788) — The Old Line State. Capital: Annapolis. Maryland can be found on page 573 in your almanac and on plates 43 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I of England” (almanac page 422). State bird: Baltimore Oriole (bird guide page 544). Website: maryland.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for just a few minutes each week and your little lesson is done. By the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a wealth of new geographical and historical information, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 😊

❡ Maps to color: National Geographic has a large blank United States map and a blank world map, complete with flags, printable in sections and ready to receive the colored pencils of your students. Why not give them a try this week. 🖍

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

  • 🇧🇳 BRUNEI in southeastern Asia. Population: 457,533. Capital: Bandar Seri Begawan. Government: Absolute monarchy or sultanate. Website: www.brunei.gov.bn (in English and Bahasa Melayu).
  • 🇧🇬 BULGARIA in eastern Europe. Population: 7,012,640. Capital: Sofia. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.government.bg (in Bulgarian and English).
  • 🇧🇫 BURKINA FASO in western Africa. Population: 20,288,052. Capital: Ouagadougou. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.gouvernement.gov.bf (in French).
  • 🇧🇮 BURUNDI in central Africa. Population: 12,232,823. Capital: Bujumbura. Government: Presidential republic. Website: burundi.gov.bi (in Kirundi, French, and English).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Read and think critically: The country links above go to official websites, which are not always in English and which may well be propagandistic in one way or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to exercise their critical reading and thinking skills. 🔍

❡ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — is one of the best educational gifts you can give them. Why not look up any one of our selected states or countries each week in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) and show your students how to locate rivers, lakes, marshes, water depths, mountains and their elevations, highway numbers, airports, oil fields, railroads, ruins, battle sites, small towns, big cities, regional capitals, national capitals, parks, deserts, glaciers, borders, grid references, lines of longitude and latitude, and much more. There is so much information packed into professional maps of this kind that a magnifying glass is always helpful, even for young folks with good eyesight. The endpapers of the atlas and the technical map-reading information on Plate 2 will guide you in your voyages of discovery. 🗺

❡ Plan an imaginary vacation: Here’s a fun exercise for your students: take one of the countries that we list each week and write out a family travel plan. How would you get there? How much will it cost? Will you need a passport? Where will you stay? Will you have to exchange your currency? How do you say hello the local language? What cities and attractions and landmarks will you visit? What foods will you eat? How will you get around (car, train, boat, mule)? Make a simple worksheet with blank spaces for the answers, have your students do the research, and start planning your world tour. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we take an educational tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the homeschool year. And don’t forget to add your name to our free mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🇺🇸 🌎

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🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Cuckoos, Roadrunners, Anis, and Goatsuckers

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-cuckoos

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide (riverhouses.org/books). It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.

This week’s birds (two different families) are the Cuckoos, Roadrunners, and Anis (pages 80–83) and the Goatsuckers (pages 84–87).

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

If you’re teaching younger children, just treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes looking at all the interesting birds in this family that they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here’s how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

“CUCKOOS · ROADRUNNERS · ANIS — Family Cuculidae. Of this large family, widespread in the Old World, only a few species are seen in N.A. [North America] Most are slender with long tails; two toes point forward, two back. Species: 142 World, 8 N.A.“

“GOATSUCKERS — Family Caprimulgidae. Wide mouth and rictal bristles help these night hunters snare flying insects. Most located and identified by distinctive calls. Species: 93 World, 10 N.A.“

When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about a new group — about the Cuckoo family, for example. How many species? (142 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only 8 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Slender with long tails, unusual arrangement of the toes, and so on.) (And for the Goatsuckers, take note of the cool word “rictal” — be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look that one up.) 🔎

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, for the Cuckoo family, why not investigate one of the two widespread cuckoos in North America: the Yellow-billed Cuckoo (page 80).

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is the Yellow-billed Cuckoo? (12 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Coccyzus americanus.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

The classic “cuckoo” call that we know from literature, music, and cuckoo-clocks isn’t really made by our North American cuckoos. It’s the call of the Common Cuckoo of Eurasia, a species that is not really North American although it does appear in your bird guide (page 82) because it occasionally strays across the Bering Strait from Siberia into western Alaska.

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

This week’s other family, the Goatsuckers, contains birds that are more often heard than seen — they are largely nocturnal and all are masters of camouflage. The one widespread species in the group that is sometimes visible in the daytime is the Common Nighthawk (page 84), which feeds at night but regularly migrates by day.

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

Many birds in the Goatsucker family are named for their distinctive calls, which are repetitive and haunting as they echo through the forest at night. The Eastern Whip-poor-will (page 86) is one of the best-known members of this group in the eastern half of the United States; it has a western counterpart called the Common Poorwill (also page 86), which is smaller in size and gives a shorter call.

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that lives near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations on the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (riverhouses.org/books) (pages 6–13) explains a little bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book — why not have your students study it as a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts of a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. 🦉

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) as a nature reference, but a comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning. 📖

❡ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things. 🌎

❡ Beep beep: One species covered this week is a United States state bird: the Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus), the state bird of New Mexico. (Did you know Roadrunners are cuckoos? It’s true!) 🇺🇸

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

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🗓 🦢 HAPPY CROSS-QUARTER DAY of Cygnus Term 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-cygnus-middle

The educational value of the calendar is one of our themes in the River Houses, and our own annual homeschool calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) divides the year into four three-month terms (quarters) that roughly correspond to the seasons. These terms are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:

  • 🦢 Fall or Cygnus Term (September–November)
  • 🗡 Winter or Orion Term (December–February)
  • 🦁 Spring or Leo Term (March–May)
  • 💪 Summer or Hercules Term (June–August)

Today, October 16th, is the midpoint of Cygnus Term — in many old calendar systems it would be called the cross-quarter day of Cygnus Term.

The cross-quarter day of each term is a good day to look around and see how things are going. Is your schedule working well? Did you have a plan for some task or project that didn’t turn out as expected and just needs to be dropped? Is there something new you need to add?

If you haven’t already, why not print out one or two of our simple one-page calendars and planners for this 2020–2021 homeschool year — they won’t constrain you, and they’ll help to give a light structure to your own homeschool year:

And also if you haven’t, why not sign up for our free once-a-week email newsletter and join our friendly Facebook group:

If you belong to other homeschool groups on the web or on Facebook, won’t you share our newsletter link with them? We’d be delighted to have more subscribers and followers!

What calendrical events have you been marking and what educational discoveries have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Quarter days and cross-quarter days: Dividing the year into quarters is an ancient and natural practice: the annual movement of the sun across the sky automatically gives us two equinoxes, two solstices, and four seasons. Our four terms are just a simple modification of that natural arrangement so that our River Houses calendar will align more conveniently with the ordinary months and with the more-or-less customary American school year. In many traditional calendrical systems, going back into the Middle Ages, the first day of each quarter is called a quarter day and the midpoint of each quarter is called a cross-quarter day. That means the quarter days of the River Houses year are 1 September, 1 December, 1 March, and 1 June, and the cross-quarter days are 16 October, 14 January (15 January in Leap Years), 15 April, and 16 July. (Fun fact: a vestige of the old system of quarter and cross-quarter days is Groundhog Day, also known as Candlemas on the Christian calendar: it’s the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.) Quarter days have for centuries been the traditional days on which school terms began, so homeschoolers who follow our four-term River Houses calendar are participating in a very ancient tradition indeed. 😊

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional posts about our Homeschool Terms & Calendars (riverhouses.org/topics/calendars). Print your own set of River Houses Calendars (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗓

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🖋 🍎 WONDERFUL WORDS: After Apple-Picking

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-apple-picking

The geese are flying and the woodchucks are preparing their winter burrows — it’s harvest season, so our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this third week of October is a dreamy story of orchard-labor from Robert Frost:

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

This poem is full of wonderful descriptive images — if you take your homescholars to a pick-your-own apple orchard this month they’ll understand them all. 🍎 And after an hour or two of farm labor, perhaps they’ll be ready for a nap — one that is like, or perhaps not like, the woodchuck’s long winter nap.

“There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, / Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.” (Image: National Apple Harvest Festival, Arendtsville, Pennsylvania.)

There isn’t as much formal structure in “After Apple-Picking” as there is in many of Frost’s other poems, but there is still quite a bit of rhyme and it often follows regular patterns. (ABBA in the first four lines, for example.) In keeping with its theme, the poem has a rather dream-like quality. How often is our daytime work the subject of our dreams? Do we sometimes get so much of a desired thing that it wears us out? (“Be careful what you wish for.”) Do animals dream? Even in their months-long winter hibernation? Every open-ended question you ask will exercise and expand the young minds in your charge.

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you studying in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 😊

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Robert Frost) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

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⛏ NATURE NOTES: It’s National Fossil Day!

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2019-fossils

Today is National Fossil Day! Since 2009, the U.S. National Park Service has celebrated National Fossil Day during international Earth Science Week “to highlight the scientific and educational value of paleontology and the importance of preserving fossils for future generations.”

“Skeleton of Megatherium cuvieri.” (Image: Smithsonian Libraries.)

Depending on where you live you may or may not be able to get out and examine fossils easily in the field, but thanks to the Smithsonian Institution and the wonderful online Biodiversity Heritage Library, you and your students can explore a wealth of books and other published materials on paleontology right from the comfort of your little home academy. Many of these materials are quite rare and valuable, and as recently as a few years ago they would have been accessible only to professional researchers in the largest institutions. Here’s an introduction to these online materials from the Smithsonian Libraries:

“In celebration of the opening of the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils opening at the National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Libraries has curated an online collection of important and beautiful selections from the Libraries’ Paleobiology literature titled Unearthed! The digitized books are hosted on the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. As part of this celebration, we have invited renowned scientists and librarians to discuss the collection and identify their favorite books in a series of blog posts that will be released throughout the year. (View the collection.)

“Our online volumes are drawn from a much larger collection of monographs and journals curated by Smithsonian Libraries. Smithsonian Libraries’ Vertebrate Paleontology Library (a collection under the Natural History Library) holds over 1,800 volumes focusing on physical geography, stratigraphy and systematic paleontology, and paleozoology of chordates and vertebrates of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Tertiary, and Quaternary periods. The Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History holds the Smithsonian’s collection of rare books in anthropology and the natural sciences. Its world-class collection contains approximately 10,000 volumes published before 1840 in the fields of physical and cultural anthropology, ethnology, Native American linguistics, and archeology; botany; ornithology, mammalogy, herpetology, ichthyology, entomology, malacology, and other zoological fields; paleontology; and geology and mineralogy.

“A gigantic horned dinosaur, Triceratops prorsus.” (Image: Smithsonian Libraries.)

“All Smithsonian Libraries make our books available to researchers on site. For the first time, many of these important paleontological works are now gathered digitally in one online collection for anyone with internet access, through our partnership with the Biodiversity Heritage Library.“ (Smithsonian Libraries)

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool — inside the library or out in the field — this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular posts on Homeschool Natural History (and Books & Libraries, and Holidays & Anniversaries, and Museums & Monuments). Add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦

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⚔️ 🧵 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: 1066 and All That

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-bayeux

Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1066, when William, Duke of Normandy, defeated King Harold II and began the Norman Conquest of England. (Which is why all of us speak a language that is half Norman French rather than all Anglo-Saxon.) In memory of that momentous event, why not spend some time this week learning about the Bayeux Tapestry, one of the most famous artifacts of the Middle Ages and an object that every good homeschool student should recognize.

“Detail from Bayeux Tapestry showing Bishop Odo rallying William the Conqueror’s troops at the Battle of Hastings.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Bayeux Tapestry is a linen embroidery more than 200 feet long, made in the 1070s and depicting the entire story of the Norman Conquest in a series of separate panels or scenes, almost like a modern graphic novel. You can visit the tapestry itself, online or in person, at its current home in Bayeux, France:

That something so fragile has survived in such good condition for nearly 1000 years is itself remarkable. Here’s a sideways-scrollable image of the entire object, with transcriptions of the Latin captions that appear along its length:

One of the most well-known scenes in the tapestry features a group of people gazing up at a comet — Halley’s Comet, as we now call it, which did indeed make an appearance in the year 1066, and which proved to be an evil omen indeed for King Harold (albeit a good one for William the Conqueror).

Detail from the Bayeux Tapestry, believed to be one of the earliest known representations of Halley’s Comet. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

For a great homeschool review of the Battle of Hastings and the Norman Conquest, including a vivid enlargement of another dramatic scene in the Bayeux Tapestry — a famous one that every kid who loves gory pictures loves, showing King Harold getting shot through the head with an arrow — turn to pages 191–193 in your recommended River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 🏹

And if you have any connoisseurs of the needle arts in your homeschool, you’ll find that there are quite a few videos online that will teach you how to do the type of embroidery found on the Bayeux Tapestry, and there are also ready-made kits that will let you create replica panels. Here are a couple of examples:

[See attached blog post for images and video]
[See attached blog post for images and video]

What historico-artistic discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Don’t miss a stitch: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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🌍 🇧🇦 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Sokolović Bridge in Bosnia and Herzegovina

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-bosnia

The southeastern European nation of Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s World Heritage Sites: the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge in Višegrad.

The 16th-century Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge across the Drina River. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Completed in 1577, the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge is considered one of the best examples of Ottoman civic architecture from the early Modern period:

“The Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge of Višegrad across the Drina River in the east of Bosnia and Herzegovina was built at the end of the 16th century by the court architect Mimar Koca Sinan on the orders of Grand Vizier Mehmed Paša Sokolović. Characteristic of the apogee of Ottoman monumental architecture and civil engineering, the bridge has 11 masonry arches with spans of 11 m to 15 m, and an access ramp at right angles with four arches on the left bank of the river. The 179.5 m long bridge is a representative masterpiece of Sinan, one of the greatest architects and engineers of the classical Ottoman period and a contemporary of the Italian Renaissance, with which his work may be compared. The unique elegance of proportion and monumental nobility of the whole site bear witness to the greatness of this style of architecture.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1260)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

World Heritage Sites are cultural or natural landmarks of international significance, selected for recognition by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. More than 1000 such sites have been recognized in over 160 countries, and we feature one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list online at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.

The World Heritage Centre also has a free and comprehensive World Heritage education kit for teachers, as well as a wonderful full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites (riverhouses.org/2020-wh-map), available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures are you exploring in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books) for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found; the history encyclopedia includes national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read the WHC’s brief description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical, geographical, and cultural information. 🇧🇦

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring historical and natural sites of international importance. Download a copy of our River Houses World Heritage Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

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