The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

12 December 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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.) 😊

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). 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. Make yourself at home! 😊

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 19 January 2020

19 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-01-19

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! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year. (And try our new printable weekly planner!)

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Illinois, and our COUNTRIES are Ireland 🇮🇪, Israel 🇮🇱, Italy 🇮🇹, and Jamaica 🇯🇲. (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 waning 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 (19 January 2020) — Today is the 19th day of 2020; there are 347 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 Today is the birthday of the polemical American lawyer and freedom-philosopher Lysander Spooner (1808–1887). ⚖️ It’s also the birthday of the spooky American poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). 👻

Monday (20 January 2020) — Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday in the United States. Lift every voice and sing! 🇺🇸 And one of the first two men to walk on the moon, American astronaut Buzz Aldrin, was born on this day in 1930 — and he’s still alive and kicking at age 90. Happy birthday, Buzz! 👨‍🚀

Tuesday (21 January 2020) — Today is St. Agnes Day, named for Agnes of Rome, a teenage Christian martyr of the 4th century and a favorite subject of artists and writers for hundreds of years. On this day, saith tradition, young girls will have their future husbands revealed to them in their dreams: “Agnes sweet, and Agnes fair, / Hither, hither, now repair; / Bonny Agnes, let me see / The lad who is to marry me.”

Wednesday (22 January 2020) — Today is the birthday of two great English poets: John Donne (1573–1631) and George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824). 🖋 And speaking of poets, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for last week of January is W.H. Auden’s “In Memory of W.B. Yeats,” for Yeats, who died 29 January 1939. ☘️ Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🗓

Thursday (23 January 2020) — Today is the birthday of John Hancock (1737–1793), president of the Continental Congress and the most flamboyant signer of the Declaration of Independence. 🖋 And on this day in 1849, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910), graduated from the Geneva Medical College in New York. 👩‍⚕️

Friday (24 January 2020) — On this day in 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, touching off the California Gold Rush. ⛏ And on this day in 1984, Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh, and 1984 wasn’t like 1984. 🍎 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the New World Vultures, Ospreys, Hawks, Kites, and Eagles. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (25 January 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–1796), aye. 🌹

Sunday (26 January 2020) — The world’s largest diamond, the Cullinan diamond, was found on this day in 1905 in the Premier mine near Pretoria, South Africa. 💎 And on this day in 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park was established by an act of the U.S. Congress. 🏞

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, in honor of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill this week in 1848, is a traditional miners’ toast from Yorkshire: “May all your labours be in vein.”

❡ 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 variety in toasting!”). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌍 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Israel is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Dan River, a tributary of the Jordan River that is named for the ancient Israelite city and tribe of Dan. (And it’s not to be confused with another Dan River which flows through the American state of Virginia.) You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Dan River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Dan River passing through the Tel Dan Nature Reserve in Israel. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ Let the river run: 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. 🗓

🇺🇸 🌎 SUNDAY STATES: Illinois, Ireland, Jamaica, and More

19 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-illinois

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 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 (page 420 in your brand new 2020 almanac), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Illinois State Bird and Flower
ILLINOIS (the 21st state, 3 December 1818) — The Prairie State. Capital: Springfield. Illinois can be found on page 569 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “French for Illini or ‘land of Illini,’ Algonquin word meaning ‘men’ or ‘warriors’” (almanac page 422). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: illinois.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. 😊

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning an extended unit-study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to look into the primary source materials for teachers available at the Library of Congress.

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

🇮🇪 IRELAND in western Europe. Population: 5,123,219. Capital: Dublin. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.ie (in English and Irish).
🇮🇱 ISRAEL in the Middle East. Population: 8,550,149. Capital: Jerusalem. Government: Parliamentary democracy. Website: www.gov.il (in Hebrew, English, and several other languages).
🇮🇹 ITALY in southern Europe. Population: 62,334,799. Capital: Rome. Government: Parliamentary Republic. Website: www.governo.it (in Italian).
🇯🇲 JAMAICA in the West Indies. Population: 2,810,520. Capital: Kingston. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: jis.gov.jm (in 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 explorations have you been making in your homeschool this Orion 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Herons, Bitterns, Ibises, and Spoonbills

17 January 2020 by Horace the Otter 🦦

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-herons

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 Herons and Bitterns (pages 258–265) and the Ibises and Spoonbills (pages 266–267).

[See attached blog post for images and video]

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds 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 dense information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here are the bird guide’s introductions to this week’s groups, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“HERONS · BITTERNS — Family Ardeidae. Wading birds; most have long legs, neck, and bill for stalking food in shallow water. Graceful crests and plumes adorn some species in breeding season. Soft-part colors also brighten on most species, especially at onset of breeding season. This plumage is referred to as ‘high breeding.’ On some species, these colors can become more intense suddenly, only to fade a few minutes later. Species: 63 World, 20 N.A. [North America]“

“IBISES · SPOONBILLS — Family Threskiornithidae. Gregarious, heronlike birds that feed with long, specialized bills: slender and decurved in ibises, wide and spatulate in spoonbills. Species: 34 World, 4 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 Ibises and Spoonbills, for example. How many species? (34 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only 4 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Gregarious, long-legged and long-necked, specialized bills, and so on.) (And “gregarious” and “spatulate” are certainly a wonderful words, aren’t they — be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look them 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 Heron family, why not investigate one of biggest and most widespread herons in North America: the Great Blue Heron (page 258).

[See attached blog post for images and video]

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 Great Blue Heron? (46 inches tall — nearly four feet — with a six-foot wingspan.) What is its scientific name? (Ardea herodias.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? (Probably, since it occurs across all of North America.) 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 Great Blue Heron is a magnificent bird, and one of the biggest birds the average person in the United States is ever likely to see. They are reasonably tolerant of humans and can be found on the banks of urban ponds and streams as well as in remoter areas. Like almost all herons, they generally feed by standing motionless in shallow water and darting their long necks out to grab unsuspecting fish, frogs, or invertebrates as they pass by. In flight, even at a distance, herons can easily be distinguished from other long-necked bird such as cranes because they fly with their necks pulled back rather than extended.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

For the Ibis and Spoonbill family, why not look at one of the most spectacular North American birds, the Roseate Spoonbill (page 266).

[See attached blog post for images and video]

Spoonbills are large heronlike birds with, as their name suggests, strange spoon-shaped (spatulate) bills. They’re mainly found in Central America but do occur up along the Gulf Coast and around into southern Florida. (Those of us in the northern tier are out of luck on this species.)

[See attached blog post for images and video]

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick a species that is near you, or one that looks striking, or one that has a strange name, and explore. You could look at, for example, one of the tiniest herons, the Least Bittern (page 258), only a foot long and very good at hiding deep in the marshes.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

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 made in your homeschool this Orion 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, 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. 🌎

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

📚 🦦 HORACE THE OTTER Has a New 2020 Almanac – Do You Have Yours?

16 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-almanac

Our mascot Horace the River Otter got his new 2020 World Almanac and Book of Facts just before Christmas. Do you have a new homeschool almanac for the new year?

Horace the Otter, our River Houses mascot, with his new 2020 *World Almanac and Book of Facts* (not to mention his bird guide, backyard astronomy guide, world atlas, and history encyclopedia).

We recommend six standard reference books (riverhouses.org/books) for every homeschool family — not children’s books but family books that will not only help your students learn but will also help make you a better teacher. Five of these are permanent references that will last for years, but the sixth, the World Almanac and Book of Facts, is one that has to be renewed annually. Here’s our Amazon link to this year’s edition:

➢ 2020 World Almanac and Book of Facts (amzn.to/2PlnWh9)

Modern almanacs are really one-volume desk encyclopedias, packed with information about everything from science and technology (did you know the top speed of a reindeer is 32 miles per hour?), to world history and geography (did you know the average depth of the Indian Ocean is 12,800 feet?), to artists, entertainers, and notable personalities (did you know Robert Penn Warren was the first Poet Laureate of the United States?), and much, much more.

If you have a fact-devouring student — and many young students go through a fact-devouring stage — there’s no better entertainment than the annual World Almanac. (Did you know the island-nation of Tuvalu in the Pacific Ocean has a population of only 11,244?) And for general reference questions on almost any subject, the World Almanac is usually the best place to start. (Did you know Kalamazoo College in Michigan was founded in 1833?)

To get the most out of your almanac, notice that the major sections are marked with black tabs along the book’s fore-edge, and that these tabs are labeled on the back cover: “Year in Review,” “Economy, Business, Energy,” “Health and Vital Statistics,” “Consumer Information,” “World History and Culture,” and so on. And while open-ended browsing of the almanac can be endlessly interesting, be sure that your students also know how to use the comprehensive alphabetical index at the end of the volume when they are trying to locate a specific piece of information.

We regularly refer to material from the World Almanac and Book of Facts on our River Houses website and in our Facebook postings, and as of this month our page references have changed over from the 2019 edition to the 2020 edition. Add a new 2020 almanac to your homeschool library and join us as we teach and learn our way through the new year.

What factual findings and informational investigations have you been making in your World Almanac this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Nota bene: The World Almanac and Book of Facts is available in both paperback and hardcover editions. The paperback is less expensive, but it’s also reduced in size making the type exceedingly small for grownup eyes, although your young scholars may have no trouble with it. I always use the hardcover edition.

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

🖋 🎵 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): Lift Every Voice and Sing

15 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-johnson

The American minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born on this day in 1929, and in his honor our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of January is “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938). (The Martin Luther King federal holiday this year will be observed on Monday the 20th, the third Monday in January.)

“Lift Every Voice” was written for a Lincoln’s Birthday celebration in the year 1900 at the then-segregated Stanton School in Jacksonville, Florida, where James Weldon Johnson was a teacher. Johnson’s brother, the composer J. Rosamond Johnson (1873–1954), set the words to music. “Lift Every Voice” became so popular that within a few years it came to be known as “the Negro National Hymn” — and now today, as a great patriotic song for all Americans:

Lift Every Voice and Sing

Lift every voice and sing
Till earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us.
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past, till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who hast by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in Thy path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand, may we forever stand,
True to our God, true to our native land.

Here’s a wonderful live performance of “Lift Every Voice,” arranged by musicologist Roland Carter and sung by the Winston Salem State University Choir in North Carolina, with Carter himself as conductor:

➢

I’d like to think Abraham Lincoln, James Weldon Johnson, and Martin Luther King Jr. would all agree with that well-earned round of applause.

What wonderful words and poetical productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Making a new friend: When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one in a traditional form, take your time, and be sure to show them the craftsmanship in the work. “Lift Every Voice” has three stanzas of ten lines each — that already looks quite carefully structured. What about the rhyme scheme? Look at how detailed, complex, and regular it is: I’d mark up the first stanza as AA BCCB DD EE. What about the second and third stanzas? Exactly the same — that’s quite a precise accomplishment. By investigating these details of structure your students will come to appreciate good poems as carefully crafted pieces of literary labor. 🖋

❡ Till earth and heaven ring: 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 James Weldon Johnson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the life and work of Martin Luther King Jr., turn to page 432 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 📚

❡ 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 forty-eight of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

🗓 🗡 HAPPY CROSS-QUARTER DAY of Orion Term 2019–2020

15 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-2020-orion-middle

The educational value of the calendar is one of our big themes in the River Houses. Our annual homeschool calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) divides the year into three-month terms (quarters) that roughly correspond to the seasons, and 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, January 15th, is the midpoint of Orion Term — in many old calendar systems it would be called the cross-quarter day of Orion 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 homeschool calendars for this 2019–2020 school year — they won’t constrain you, and they’ll help to give a light structure to your homeschool year:

➢ River Houses Homeschool Calendars (riverhouses.org/calendars)

And if you haven’t already, why not sign up for our free once-a-week email newsletter or follow our Facebook page:

➢ River Houses Homeschool Newsletter (riverhouses.org/newsletter)

➢ River Houses Facebook Page (facebook.com/TheRiverHouses/posts)

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 Orion 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. 🗓

🌏 🇮🇳 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Elephanta Caves in India

15 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-elephanta

India is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of India’s World Heritage Sites: the Elephanta Caves.

“Trimurti” (triune) representation of the Hindu god Shiva in the Elephanta Caves of India. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Elephanta Caves are an archeological site of great importance in the history of Hinduism:

“The Elephanta Caves are located in western India on Elephanta Island (otherwise known as the Island of Gharapuri), which features two hillocks separated by a narrow valley. The small island is dotted with numerous ancient archaeological remains that are the sole testimonies to its rich cultural past. These archaeological remains reveal evidence of occupation from as early as the 2nd century B.C. The rock-cut Elephanta Caves were constructed about the mid-5th to 6th centuries A.D. The most important among the caves is the great Cave 1, which measures 39 metres from the front entrance to the back. In plan, this cave in the western hill closely resembles Dumar Lena cave at Ellora, in India. The main body of the cave, excluding the porticos on the three open sides and the back aisle, is 27 metres square and is supported by rows of six columns each.

“The 7-metre-high masterpiece “Sadashiva” dominates the entrance to Cave 1. The sculpture represents three aspects of Shiva: the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer, identified, respectively, with Aghora or Bhairava (left half), Taptapurusha or Mahadeva (central full face), and Vamadeva or Uma (right half). Representations of Nataraja, Yogishvara, Andhakasuravadha, Ardhanarishwara, Kalyanasundaramurti, Gangadharamurti, and Ravanaanugrahamurti are also noteworthy for their forms, dimensions, themes, representations, content, alignment, and execution.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #244)

But aren’t these historical tidbits about remote places just useless trivia? What’s the point of teaching students about things they will never see or hear about again? The point is this: when you’re furnishing your students’ minds with “trivia” like this, what you’re actually doing is preparing them to understand in advance a wealth of historical, cultural, geographical, and literary references they will encounter later — even years later — over the course of their lives. For example, when they someday read one of the world’s great books, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851):

“Now, by all odds, the most ancient extant portrait anyways purporting to be the whale’s, is to be found in the famous cavern-pagoda of Elephanta, in India. The Brahmins maintain that in the almost endless sculptures of that immemorial pagoda, all the trades and pursuits, every conceivable avocation of man, were prefigured ages before any of them actually came into being. No wonder then, that in some sort our noble profession of whaling should have been there shadowed forth. The Hindoo whale referred to, occurs in a separate department of the wall, depicting the incarnation of Vishnu in the form of leviathan, learnedly known as the Matse Avatar. But though this sculpture is half man and half whale, so as only to give the tail of the latter, yet that small section of him is all wrong. It looks more like the tapering tail of an anaconda, than the broad palms of the true whale’s majestic flukes.“

Well-chosen educational “trivia” is never trivial — it’s the collection of building blocks we use to construct a culture and transmit it to future generations.

The exterior entrance to Elephanta Cave 3. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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/2019-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 Orion 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. 🌏

🦅 NATURE NOTES: The Great Backyard Bird Count is Coming!

13 January 2020 by Horace the Otter 🦦

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-gbbc

We love natural history in the River Houses, and we think bird study in particular is one of the best educational activities you can encourage in a homeschool environment. It can be as elementary or as advanced as you wish, it teaches a wide range of facts and skills, and it can be done at all times of year and just about anywhere. There’s no better way for beginners to get started with bird study than through a big annual event that coming up next month: the Great Backyard Bird Count, sponsored by Cornell University.

➢ The Great Backyard Bird Count Website (gbbc.birdcount.org)

➢ Beginner’s Guide to the Great Backyard Bird Count (gbbc.birdcount.org/get-started)

The idea is simple: just count the birds you see in your backyard (or another single location) for at least 15 minutes on one or more days during the count period (14–17 February 2020), and then submit your list to the GBBC website. Your counts will be combined with thousands of others to generate a snapshot of bird distribution around the world — in other words, your own homeschool observations will become part of a real international scientific project.

Please join in! On the GBBC website you can print out a beautiful bird-count poster — just the thing to display on your homeschool bulletin board.

How many birds will you find?

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History 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. 😊

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 12 January 2020

12 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-01-12

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Mississippi, and our COUNTRIES are India 🇮🇳, Indonesia 🇮🇩, Iran 🇮🇷, and Iraq 🇮🇶. (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 gibbous and waning — a good time for moon watching! 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 (12 January 2020) — Today is the 12th day of 2020; there are 354 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 Today is the birthday of the French author Charles Perrault (1628–1703), who gave the world Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and many other beloved fairy tales. 🛌 It’s also the birthday of the American writer Jack London (1876–1916). 🐺

Monday (13 January 2020) — The National Geographic Society was founded on this day in 1888 in Washington, D.C. 🗺

Tuesday (14 January 2020) — Today is Ratification Day. On this day in 1784 in Annapolis, Maryland, Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the American Revolutionary War. 🕊

Wednesday (15 January 2020) — Today is the midpoint of Orion Term and so one of the four cross-quarter days of the River Houses year. How are things going? 🗓 🗡 Queen Elizabeth I of England was crowned on this day in 1559. For an illustrated outline of the historical period named for her, turn to pages 260–261 in your homeschool history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 👑 And our poem-of-the-week for the third week of January is James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900), for American minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., born on this day in 1929. 🇺🇸 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Thursday (16 January 2020) — On this day in the year 27 B.C., the Roman Senate conferred the title “Augustus” on the general and de facto dictator Octavian, and the last remnants of the old republic were swept away. 👑

Friday (17 January 2020) — Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on this day in 1706. 🖨 One of the most important battles in the Southern Theater of the American Revolution, the Battle of Cowpens, took place on this day in 1781 near Cowpens, South Carolina. ⚔️ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to lots of long-legged and long-necked birds: the Herons and Bitterns, and the Ibises and Spoonbills. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (18 January 2020) — On this day in 1788, the first convict ships from Britain, now known as the First Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay, Australia. 🇦🇺 And today is the birthday of the Polish-British mathematician and historian of science Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974), creator of the pioneering documentary series “The Ascent of Man.” 📺

Sunday (19 January 2020) — Today is the birthday of the polemical American lawyer and freedom-philosopher Lysander Spooner (1808–1887). ⚖️ It’s also the birthday of the spooky American poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). 👻

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old humorist’s standard from the nineteenth century: “May Dame Fortune ever smile on you, but never her daughter, Miss Fortune.”

🌏 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Indonesia in southeastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Kapuas River, one of the principal rivers on the Indonesian portion of the island of Borneo. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Kapuas River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Kapuas River near Pontianak, the capital of the Indonesian portion of Borneo. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

🇺🇸 🌎 SUNDAY STATES: Mississippi, India, Iraq, and More

12 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-mississippi

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.

🇺🇸
Mississippi State Bird and Flower
MISSISSIPPI (the 20th state, 10 December 1817) — The Magnolia State. Capital: Jackson. Mississippi can be found on page 576 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Probably Chippewa mici zibi, meaning ‘great river’ or ‘gathering-in of all the waters.’ Also Algonquin word messipi” (almanac page 422). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: www.ms.gov.

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning an extended unit-study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to look into the primary source materials for teachers available at the Library of Congress.

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

🇮🇳 INDIA in southern Asia. Population: 1,311,559,204. Capital: New Delhi. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website: www.india.gov.in (in English and Hindi).
🇮🇩 INDONESIA in southeastern Asia. Population: 264,935,824. Capital: Jakarta. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.indonesia.go.id (in Indonesian and English).
🇮🇷 IRAN in southwestern Asia. Population: 83,993,282. Capital: Tehran. Government: Theocratic republic. Website: www.president.ir (in Persian, English, and Arabic).
🇮🇶 IRAQ in the Middle East. Population: 41,204,228. Capital: Baghdad. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website: www.pmo.iq (in Arabic and English).

What grand global geographical explorations have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Capella for January

11 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-capella

January is the middle month of Orion Term in the River Houses, and as our monthly star calendar will tell you, January’s Great Star is Capella, the brightest star in the constellation Auriga, the Charioteer. Its formal designation is α Aurigae — “alpha of Auriga.” Auriga and Capella are high in the northeast in the early evening this month, about half way between Orion and the Pole Star, and they pass over toward the west as the night goes on.

The constellation Auriga the Charioteer and its alpha star, **Capella**. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you want to introduce your students to Capella and Auriga, you can start with some basic astronomy and astronomical mythology from your backyard star guide (riverhouses.org/books):

“Auriga is an elegant constellation in the heart of the Milky Way. It is easily identified by its alpha star, Capella, which is the seventh brightest star in the sky [at magnitude 0.1]. Auriga is an ancient constellation, one of Ptolemy’s original 48. Epsilon Aurigae (ε), the star just southwest of Capella, is an eclipsing binary, veiled every 27 years by an unknown companion. The next eclipse will begin in 2036.

“There are a few stories associated with this constellation. The star Capella represents a mother goat that the charioteer carries on his back along with her three kids (the neighboring stars). Another story has it that the chariot and rider may represent Hephaestus, the crippled blacksmith god who built the vehicle to move about more easily.“ (Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, page 251)

That’s plenty for beginning students — your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Capella is packed with additional information on everything from astrometry to cultural history.

The apparently single star we see as Capella is actually a quadruple star system made up of two yellow giants designated Capella Aa and Capella Ab, both much larger than our sun, and two red dwarf stars designated Capella H and Capella L, all orbiting one another. The two yellow giants are too close to each other to be distinguished with a telescope — they are separated by about the same distance as our sun and Venus — but the existence of the pair was established in the 1890s through study of Capella’s regularly changing spectrum month by month. The existence of the second red-dwarf pair within the Capella system, orbiting the two yellow giants at a much greater distance, was confirmed in 1936.

Relative sizes of the four main stars in the Capella system: yellow giants Capella Aa and Capella Ab, and red dwarfs Capella H and Capella L, with our sun (Sol) for comparison. Note that this diagram is meant to show only the sizes of the respective stars, not their relative positions. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Capella is quite close to us in astronomical terms: only 43 light years away. When we look at Capella today, we’re actually seeing light that was emitted from the system in 1976. The age of the Capella system is estimated to be 500–600 million years — much younger than our sun, which is a very old 4.6 billion.

Sometime this month, take your homeschool students out at dusk and introduce them to this great system of stars, and teach them its name, and so give them a new friend for life.

What stellar observations have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular names — Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so on — as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572–1625) devised the formal system of star designations that is still in common use today. In Bayer’s system, the stars in each constellation, from brightest to dimmest, are assigned a lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet: α (alpha, brightest), β (beta, second brightest), γ (gamma, third brightest), δ (delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the Latin name of the constellation in its possessive (genitive) form: Lyra becomes Lyrae (“of Lyra”), Canis Major becomes Canis Majoris (“of Canis Major”), and so on. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the star Vega) thus becomes α Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes α Canis Majoris (“alpha of Canis Major”), and so on, through all 24 Greek letters and all 88 constellations. How bright would you expect, say, the σ (sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright — it’s far down the alphabet — but σ Orionis happens to mark the top of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still notable and easy to locate on a dark night. ✨

❡ Star bright: The brightness of a star as we see it in our night sky is its magnitude — or more properly, its apparent magnitude. The scale of star magnitudes was developed long before modern measuring instruments were invented, so it can be a little bit confusing for beginners. Originally, the brightest stars in the sky were called “first magnitude” and the less-bright stars “second magnitude,” “third magnitude,” and so on, down to the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye, which were called “sixth magnitude.” In the nineteenth century the star Vega (our August star) was chosen as the standard brightness reference and its value on the magnitude scale was defined to be zero (0.0). Five steps in magnitude (from 0.0 to 5.0 or from 1.0 to 6.0) was defined to be a change in brightness of 100 times: a star 100 times dimmer than Vega (0.0) was defined to be a magnitude 5.0 star. Vega is not quite the brightest star is the sky, however, so the scale also had to be extended into negative numbers: Sirius (our March star), for example, is magnitude –1.5, about three times brighter than Vega (at 0.0). The planet Venus at its brightest is about magnitude –4.2; the full moon is about magnitude –12.9; the sun is magnitude –26.7. By contrast, the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye in a populated, light-polluted area are about magnitude 3.0; the dimmest stars visible under very dark conditions are about magnitude 6.5. The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit around the earth has photographed distant stars and galaxies below magnitude 30, the dimmest celestial objects humans have seen so far. 🔭

❡ And all dishevelled wandering stars: How far away are the stars? Do they all occupy a single celestial “dome” that rotates through the heavens (as some ancient and medieval astronomers believed), or are they scattered through space at different individual distances? Astronomers had long suspected that the fixed stars existed at different distances from us, but early attempts to measure those distances failed. It was not until the early 1800s that instruments and measuring techniques became precise enough to allow the first stellar distances to be calculated using the technique of parallax. Parallax is the displacement in the apparent position of an object with respect to the background when an observer moves from side to side. It’s an ordinary phenomenon you experience every day — it’s how we judge distances as we move through the landscape. Stellar parallaxes are extremely small — fractions of an arc-second (one 3600th of a degree) — and they are calculated by measuring a star’s position against the background at opposite sides of the earth’s orbit, six months apart. (That’s the astronomical equivalent of taking one step to the side.) Vega, our August star, was one of the first stars to have its parallax measured; modern estimates put it at about 0.13 arc-seconds. Apply some trigonometry, and that yields a distance of about 25 light years. 🔭

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. We recommend the handy Backyard Guide to the Night Sky (riverhouses.org/books) as a general family reference — it will help you identify all the northern hemisphere constellations and will point out many highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Your recommended world atlas also has beautiful maps of the whole northern and southern hemisphere night skies on plates 121–122. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌌

❡ First star I see tonight: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts featuring twelve of the most notable stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. Download and print your own copy of our River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit a different Great Star each month — and make each one of them a homeschool friend for life. 🌟

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – January 2020

10 January 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-01-lunar

There’s a full moon tonight, so that means it’s time for a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses.

The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and to share their results with other homeschool families.

Here’s an outline of the idea, along with a list of some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:

➢ The Lunar Society of the River Houses (riverhouses.org/lunar)

Browse through that project list and find one or two that would be a good fit for your family and a good match for your interests. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be well on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. 🔬 🔭 🖥 🦋 🔍 ⚗️ ⛏ 📖 🌲 😊

Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their accomplishments.

As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past lunar month on the two types of projects I participate in: eBird monitoring of bird populations, and distributed computing research using the Berkeley open infrastructure application. You and your students can participate right now in these projects, and in many others too.

On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I’ve been tracking the birds in a small riverside park near me (eBird hotspot L6926932) and have so far contributed a total of 646 checklists (daily observation reports) for this locality — it’s a site that had never been documented before. When all the checklists are combined and charted automatically by eBird you can really get a sense of the seasonal distribution and migration patterns for the year — take a look:

➢ Seasonal Bar Chart for Nashua River Site L6926932

And here’s a sample checklist so you can see what they look like:

➢ Sample Checklist for Nashua River Site L6926932

You can start keeping a similar eBird list for a location near you — your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more useful results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website (ebird.org) and start exploring. (Note also that the Great Backyard Bird Count, coming up in February, is an associated project and a great way to get started.)

Distributed computing projects use idle time on your computer to perform scientific calculations on various kinds of complex data. The most popular distributed computing projects run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform (BOINC), and I contribute computer time (whenever my laptop is plugged in) to three of these: (1) the SETI@Home project, sponsored by the University of California, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (really!); (2) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; and (3) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy.

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, SETI@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually processed and how much your team has processed — they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. (And while they are running, both Einstein@Home and SETI@Home have cool screensavers that show you in real time what your computer is analyzing.) 📡

[For embedded images click to attached blog post]

And here’s another level of skill development for your high-school (or even advanced middle-school) students: once you’ve processed a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. Using Google Sheets, I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results, and this is what it looks like:

[For embedded images click to attached blog post]

That’s just a simple graphing exercise — nothing particularly profound. It’s something that can be refined, developed, and expanded in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in many different scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The examples above are just a few that happen to interest me — pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects in a great variety of areas that you and your family can join.

What scholarly and scientific explorations have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ The friends who made the future: You can learn more about the original Lunar Society of Birmingham in “The Lunar Men,” a fine short video from History West Midlands. 🌕

❡ Featured this month at Zooniverse: Looking for a good place to get started? Zooniverse.org is one of the biggest clearinghouses for citizen science projects, and each month on their front page they specially feature one of their many research projects you can join. This month’s featured project is the Galaxy Zoo Clump Scout — help to find regions where stars are being born!. (Yes, that’s something you and your students can really work on from your home computer.) If you’re looking for a project to get yourself started, this might be a good choice. 😊

❡ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. 📸

❡ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended backyard night-sky guide and world atlas (which has an astronomical section) will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. 🦉 🌠

❡ Whether they work together or apart: This is one of our regular Lunar Society Bulletins about the many cooperative research projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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