The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

1 July 2022 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.) 😊

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: A Star in a Stoneboat

8 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

The annual Perseid meteor shower is expected to peak over the next few days, but this year, alas, a full moon will make the sky so bright that most of the meteors will be washed out of our view. But they will still be falling whether we can see them or not this year, and that’s why our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of August is this wonderfully playful verse drawn from the world’s small store of meteor poems: Robert Frost’s “A Star in a Stoneboat.”

Usually we dive right into the text, but this week your students really do have to know first what a stoneboat is. It’s not a boat, and it’s not made of stone; it’s a piece of farm equipment like a sled or toboggan that’s used for dragging stones out of a field. Frost was a New England poet, and in New England if you wanted to plant an acre of corn, you first had to drag a few tons of rocks out of the way.

“Stone boats were the pick-up trucks of yesterday.” (Image: Stoneboat Farm, Hillsboro, Oregon.)

And since wise old farmers never let anything go to waste, those few tons of rocks were generally piled up along the edge of the field where they served pretty well to keep the pigs out of the corn, too.

Stone wall beside Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Old Manse” in Concord, Massachusetts. (Image: Robert Thorson via atlasobscura.com.)

With that background — that stoneboats were the pickup trucks of yesterday — we can proceed with the meteoric tale of “A Star in a Pickup Truck.”

A Star in a Stoneboat

Never tell me that not one star of all
That slip from heaven at night and softly fall
Has been picked up with stones to build a wall.

Some laborer found one faded and stone-cold,
And saving that its weight suggested gold
And tugged it from his first too certain hold,

He noticed nothing in it to remark.
He was not used to handling stars thrown dark
And lifeless from an interrupted arc.

He did not recognize in that smooth coal
The one thing palpable besides the soul
To penetrate the air in which we roll.

He did not see how like a flying thing
It brooded ant eggs, and had one large wing,
One not so large for flying in a ring,

And a long Bird of Paradise’s tail
(Though these when not in use to fly and trail
It drew back in its body like a snail);

Nor know that he might move it from the spot —
The harm was done: from having been star-shot
The very nature of the soil was hot

And burning to yield flowers instead of grain,
Flowers fanned and not put out by all the rain
Poured on them by his prayers prayed in vain.

He moved it roughly with an iron bar,
He loaded an old stoneboat with the star
And not, as you might think, a flying car,

Such as even poets would admit perforce
More practical than Pegasus the horse
If it could put a star back in its course.

He dragged it through the plowed ground at a pace
But faintly reminiscent of the race
Of jostling rock in interstellar space.

It went for building stone, and I, as though
Commanded in a dream, forever go
To right the wrong that this should have been so.

Yet ask where else it could have gone as well,
I do not know — I cannot stop to tell:
He might have left it lying where it fell.

From following walls I never lift my eye,
Except at night to places in the sky
Where showers of charted meteors let fly.

Some may know what they seek in school and church,
And why they seek it there; for what I search
I must go measuring stone walls, perch on perch;

Sure that though not a star of death and birth,
So not to be compared, perhaps, in worth
To such resorts of life as Mars and Earth —

Though not, I say, a star of death and sin,
It yet has poles, and only needs a spin
To show its worldly nature and begin

To chafe and shuffle in my calloused palm
And run off in strange tangents with my arm,
As fish do with the line in first alarm.

Such as it is, it promises the prize
Of the one world complete in any size
That I am like to compass, fool or wise.

This is an exceptionally clever poem — a long string of comparisons and contrasts — and you and your students can spend quite a bit of time trying to figure it out sentence by sentence. I won’t go through all the components here, but I encourage you to look first at the very tight structure. “A Star in a Stoneboat” is made up not of couplets (rhymed pairs) but of triplets, where all three line-ends rhyme: all–fall–wall, cold–gold–hold, remark–dark–arc, all through the entire poem. That’s fairly uncommon in English, and it’s very difficult to sustain through so many stanzas. Next, count syllables: you’ll find that every line has exactly ten. The constraints that Frost imposed on himself in adopting this compact form account for some of the complexities of the poem’s word-order, which admittedly can take a bit of effort to follow.

What the content of the poem generally does throughout is contrast (on the one hand) the “life” of this curious heavy stone once upon a time when it was flying through space, with (on the other hand) the stone’s “life” after its arc was interrupted and it ignominiously landed in some farmer’s field, got pried out of the ground by a workman (see the illustration above), and was dumped onto a stoneboat. Formerly it had raced past the planets; now it’s keeping pigs out of the corn. “Yet ask where else it could have gone as well, / I do not know.” See how many earthly–heavenly contrasts and comparisons your students can identify, all of them mediated by this imagined meteorite. And ask them if they’d like to be, like the narrator, a wanderer along the walls, mile on mile, searching for stones that had once been stars.

“From following walls I never lift my eye, / Except at night to places in the sky / Where showers of charted meteors fly.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What other wonderful words and poetical productions have you studied in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Print this little lesson: Down at the bottom of this page you’ll find a “Print” button and icon, along with several social-media share buttons. The Print button will let you create a neat easy-to-read copy of this little literary lesson, and it will even allow you edit and delete sections you don’t need or want (such as images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ Stars thrown dark: 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. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

🌠 PERSEID METEORS for August 2022

8 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

The annual Perseid meteor shower peaks each year around 12–13 August — that will be Friday night and Saturday morning of this week. The Perseids always arrive on schedule, but this year their arrival coincides with a full moon, and the bright moon will sadly wash out many of the dimmer meteors. Some of the brighter Perseids may still be visible, though, and any homeschool time spent out under the stars is always time well spent, so be sure to go out for a look.

Here are some Perseid facts and detailed observing recommendations from the International Meteor Organization:

➢ Viewing the Perseid Meteor Shower in 2022 (imo.net)

You can also get quick facts and local observing recommendations from the helpful timeanddate.com website:

➢ Perseid Meteor Shower – Observing Tips (timeanddate.com)

Individual Perseids may leave a short streak or may cross the entire sky, but they will all appear to radiate from the general direction of the constellation Perseus, which rises in the northeast about 11:00 p.m. at this time of year. Your Backyard Guide to the Night Sky has handy charts that will help you orient yourself to the sky overhead.

Meteor showers like the Perseids occur when the earth in its orbit around the sun intersects the trail of debris left behind by a comet making its orbit around the sun (that’s why they occur at the same time each year). In the case of the Perseids, the parent comet involved is Comet Swift–Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 133 years. (It last came through the inner solar system in 1992.) You and your students can learn all about meteors and meteor showers in general on the website of the American Meteor Society — here are some of their resources:

The AMS also has a printable color poster of basic meteor terminology — it’s just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board.

Meteor terminology, a free printable poster available from the American Meteor Society.

There is a remarkable interactive animation of the Perseid meteor shower and its parent comet available from the website meteorshowers.org. Until quite recently, interactive animations of this kind would have been available only on the most advanced computers, but now you can examine them in detail from the comfort of your little home academy.

Note that this animation is fully interactive: by dragging and scrolling across the screen you can tilt the plane of the solar system to view it from above or below, and you can zoom in on the earth’s or the comet’s orbit. (The animation begins in the outer reaches of the solar system, so you’ll have to start by zooming in to find our blue planet earth orbiting third from the sun.)

What celestial sights and astronomical apparitions have your students examined in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 🔭

❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students the major constellations and the names of the principal stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨

❡ Star bright: If you’d like some light and easy homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us month by month as we make twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟

❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages, posted each Tuesday, usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school astronomy students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and then narrate a summary back to you. 🌌

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭

🇺🇸 HAPPY BIRTHDAY to General Nathanael Greene, “The Fighting Quaker”

7 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

General Nathanael Greene, “The Fighting Quaker,” George Washington’s right-hand man, was born on this day in 1742 in Warwick, Rhode Island. Greene was one of the great military strategists of the American Revolution, and Washington told his advisors that if he himself should be killed in the war, Greene should take his place as commander of the Continental Army.

Washington–Greene commemorative issue (1936).

Wherever you live in the United States, there’s a good chance that there’s something named after Nathanael Greene near you. There are Greene Counties in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia; there are Greenes, Greensboros, Greensburgs, and Greenvilles in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Tennessee; and there are Greene High Schools, Middle Schools, Elementary Schools, and Academies scattered all across the American landscape — all named after Nathanael Greene.

Why not offer a special homeschool toast today in memory of good General Greene: “To peace and liberty forever.”

What historical anniversaries are you studying in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the American Revolution, turn to page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 📚

❡ Stay up to date: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Holidays & History. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 7 August 2022

7 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🌠 The PERSEID METEOR SHOWER is expected to reach its annual peak on Friday–Saturday night this week (12–13 August). It’s always worthwhile to go outside and take a look, but this month the full moon will likely wash out all but the brightest meteors, so it may not be the best year for viewing. The Perseids are debris from comet Swift–Tuttle.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Alaska, and our COUNTRIES are Vietnam 🇻🇳, Yemen 🇾🇪, Zambia 🇿🇲, and Zimbabwe 🇿🇼. (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 waxing — a good time for moon watching! (But maybe not meteor viewing.) 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 331–346 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (7 August 2022) — Today is the 219th day of 2022; there are 146 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 General Nathanael Greene, George Washington’s right-hand man and one of the great military strategists of the Revolution, was born on this day in 1742 in Warwick, Rhode Island. Wherever you live in the United States, from Mississippi to Maine, there’s a good chance there’s something named after General Greene near you. ⚔️ And speaking of George Washington, on this day in 1782 he established the first American military decoration, the Badge of Military Merit, for soldiers wounded during the American Revolution. The award is today called the Purple Heart and it bears Washington’s profile. 🎖 Today is also the birthday of famed paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey (1903–1972). 💀

Monday (8 August 2022) — The wreckage of the Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley, which sank in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, in 1864, was raised on this day in the year 2000. It contained the remains of eight Confederate sailors who went down with the vessel. ⚓️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of August is Robert Frost’s “A Star in a Stoneboat,” for this month’s Perseid meteor shower. (The meteors are still falling, whether the moon lets us see them or not.) Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌠

Tuesday (9 August 2022) — On this day in the year 1173, construction began on a new bell tower next to the cathedral in Pisa, Italy. Still standing (more or less), we know it today as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 🔔 And speaking of Italy, today is also the birthday of the Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856), beloved (or despised) by chemistry students the world over. ⚗️

Wednesday (10 August 2022) — This is an important day in museological history: the famous Louvre Museum in Paris opened on this day in 1793, and on this day in 1846 the Smithsonian Institution in Washington was chartered by Congress and named for its principal benefactor, the English chemist and mineralogist James Smithson, who had died seventeen years before and who had never even visited the United States. 🏛 On this day in 1990, NASA’s Magellan spacecraft entered orbit around the planet Venus. 🛰 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Khami Ruins National Monument in Zimbabwe. 🇿🇼

Thursday (11 August 2022) — According to the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, used by the Maya and several other pre-Columbian civilizations, the world was created on this day in the year 3114 B.C. (as reckoned by our own modern Gregorian Calendar). 🗓 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society. 🌕

Friday (12 August 2022) — Today is the birthday of poet and educator Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929), the author of the great anthem “America the Beautiful.” 🇺🇸 It’s also the birthday of Austrian physicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), one of the founders of quantum mechanics. 🐈 Our year-long series of Friday Bird Families posts that reviewed all the birds of North America is now complete! Take a look at all the wonderful avian friends we made this past year, and visit our main River Houses calendar page and print a new Calendar of American Birds for the new homeschool year that will begin in September. 🦅

Saturday (13 August 2022) — Today is the birthday of American abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucy Stone (1818–1893). ⚖️ It’s also the birthday of spooky British-American film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980). 🎬 And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra the Lyre and our last Great Star for this homeschool year. 🌟

Sunday (14 August 2022) — On this day in the year 1040, Scotland’s King Duncan I was killed by his rival Macbeth, probably in battle and not in his sleep as depicted in Shakespeare’s play. 🗡 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Hawaii 🇺🇸 and Antarctica 🇦🇶 (as the year approaches its close).

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “Worth in our hearts, wealth in our houses, and wisdom in our heads.”

❡ 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!”). Many of our current toasts are taken from an old anthology called The Royal Toast Master, Containing Many Thousands of the Best Toasts Old and New (London, 1793). What will you toast in your homeschool this week? 🥂

🌍 🇿🇲 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Zambia in central Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Kafue River, one of Zambia’s longest rivers. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Kafue River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Children 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 693–695), 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

🙀 AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Saturday this month!

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 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 and follow along with us. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Alaska, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, and More

7 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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 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 418), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Alaska State Seal
ALASKA (the 49th state, 3 January 1959) — The Last Frontier. Capital: Juneau. Alaska can be found on page 564 in your almanac and on plates 45 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Russian version of Aleutian (Eskimo) word alakshak for ‘peninsula,’ ‘great lands,’ or ‘land that is not an island.’” (almanac page 419). State bird: Willow Ptarmigan (bird guide page 64). Website: alaska.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week posts, using your reference library 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:

🇻🇳 VIETNAM in southeastern Asia. Population: 102,789,598. Capital: Hanoi. Government: Communist state. Website: vietnam.gov.vn (in Vietnamese, Chinese, and English).
🇾🇪 YEMEN in the Middle East. Population: 30,399,243. Capital: Sanaa. Government: “In transition” (almanac page 851). Website: www.yemen.gov.ye (in Arabic).
🇿🇲 ZAMBIA in southern Africa. Population: 19,077,816. Capital: Lusaka. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.parliament.gov.zm (in English).
🇿🇼 ZIMBABWE in southern Africa. Population: 14,829,988. Capital: Harare. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.zim.gov.zw (in English).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. 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 made in your homeschool this Hercules 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 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 (10th and 11th eds.) 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 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 to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🇺🇸 🌎

🔭 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – August 2022

6 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

On the first Saturday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. August is a special meteor month in the River Houses because the reliable Perseid meteor shower peaks each year around August 12th and 13th. We’ve already had one Meteor poem from Herman Melville, and we’ve got another one coming up Monday from Robert Frost; but as for real meteors this month, the show will sadly be disappointing. The 2022 Perseid peak will coincide with a full moon that will wash out all but the brightest meteors. That of course is a lesson in itself for your students, so if you can, do step outside for a while on the peak nights and get a sense of the brightness of the moon, and keep a lookout for any extra-bright meteors that may still be visible. You can get observing details for your location on the timeanddate.com website:

➢ Annual Perseid Meteor Shower (timeanddate.com)

Here’s the general monthly northern hemisphere night-sky review for August 2022 from the Hubble Space Telescope’s website — it features our August Great Star, Vega in the constellation Lyra the Lyre, and also next month’s Great Star, Deneb in the constellation Cygnus the Swan:

And here’s another August night-sky review, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California — it features August planets and constellations, as well as the probably poor Perseid show this year:

One of the easiest astronomical exercises you and your students can do each month is print out your own copy of the current two-page Evening Sky Map and monthly sky calendar available from skymaps.com:

➢ Evening Sky Maps – Northern Hemisphere Edition (updated monthly)

Each map includes a constellation chart for the month as well as a schedule of upcoming astronomical events and an astronomical glossary. Give a copy to your students and ask them to study it and report back to you on three notable things you can watch for this month. (And as they report to you, ask them questions about what they’re telling you.) Do that for a few minutes each month, and before you know it you’ll have a skywatching expert in your homeschool.

The best stargazing nights in August will be toward the end of the month: the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 27th. As always, you can look up the moon’s phases in your River Houses almanac and also on the timeanddate.com website. 🌑 🌓 🌕 🌗 🌑

August is the third month of Hercules Term, our summer term in the River Houses. As noted above, our Great Star for the month of August is Vega (alpha Lyrae), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us through the year as we learn about twelve of the high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky. 🌟

What celestial observations will you and your students be making in your homeschool this August? 😊

❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨

❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages, posted each Tuesday, usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school science students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and narrate a summary back to you. 🌌

❡ Worlds scoop their arcs: Where are the planets right now? Not as we see them in the sky, but rather where are they in their orbits around the sun? Find out at The Planets Today. 🪐

❡ Make friendship with the stars: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Accidental and Extinct Species

5 August 2022 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. 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.

The end of the homeschool year is approaching and this week we’ve reached the end of our grand ornithological tour! We’re going to wrap things up for the year by looking at the appendix in your bird guide, which covers Accidental and Extinct Species of North American birds (pages 546–563).

Accidentals are species that are not normally found in a given area but on rare occasions may turn up by accident. Extinct species are, well, extinct — dead and gone. Here’s the heading for these birds in your bird guide:

ACCIDENTALS · EXTINCT SPECIES. These 94 species have been recorded for N.A. [North America], but for most there are fewer than three records in the past two decades or five records in the last hundred years. Four species that have gone extinct in the past two centuries are also included.

“Accidentals” are of course only accidental with respect to a given location. Species that are accidental in North America (or more locally, in your state) may be perfectly common somewhere else. Consider the handsome Swallow-tailed Gull for example (bird guide page 551). This widespread species is native to the southeastern Pacific Ocean and the west coast of South America. But twice — in 1985 and in 1996 — an individual Swallow-tailed Gull turned up on the coast of California, very far from the species’ normal range.

Accidentals are much sought after by birders who like to keep “life lists” of the birds they’ve seen in a particular area. It’s always a thrill to see a rara avis in terris — a rare bird in the land — and to wonder how it got there. Scientifically, accidentals can be a leading indicator of a long-term range expansion. Cattle Egrets (page 260 in the main section of your bird guide) now occur regularly across much of the southern and central United States, but prior to the 1950s they were completely unknown outside of a few accidental records in Florida. Originally an African species, it’s thought that a few individuals somehow made their way across the Atlantic in the middle of the last century (or perhaps hitched a ride on a cargo ship). They hopped off in South America and have been expanding their range in our hemisphere ever since. Not all accidentals are signs of birds to come, however. Some are just accidental and remain so indefinitely.

Great Auk adult and juvenile, by J.G. Keulemans (1842–1912). Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Several species of birds have become extinct in North America since scientific observations began. Most people will recognize some of them by name: the Passenger Pigeon (page 547), the Great Auk (page 551), and the Carolina Parakeet (page 557). Less well known perhaps are the Labrador Duck (page 546), the Eskimo Curlew (page 550), and Bachman’s Warbler (page 563), the last of which is probably extinct, although some people hold out hope that a few individuals may still survive in the swamps of South Carolina.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest — and these accidental and extinct species in particular all have interesting stories behind them. Pick one that has occurred near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.

“One of four known photographs of a living Eskimo Curlew, taken by Don Bleitz on Galveston Island [Texas] in 1962.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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 Hercules 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 using 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 (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 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 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 to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE – August 2022: “Lake Islands” and “Insects”

4 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Calling all homeschool photographers! One of the independent projects we recommend to homeschool students is the monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. The August challenge is now open and the announced themes are “Islands in Freshwater Lakes” and “Insects.” You can see sample photos and learn how to submit your own entry here:

➢ Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge – Open Themes (updated monthly)

The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge encourages people to take and submit high-quality images for the public Wikimedia Commons database, the source from which Wikipedia and many other websites draw their images. Once you’ve registered and submitted an entry, you can also participate in the selection of future themes and in the voting for the monthly winners.

If you have enthusiastic young photographers in your home academy, why not encourage them to sign up and submit an entry. Working on a specific theme over a period of a few weeks is a great way for students to develop both their technical camera skills and their visual composition skills. And if you submit a number of entries over time you can assemble a personal portfolio page to show off your work — that would be good experience in how to create a professional presentation of yourself for future employment or college admissions.

You can find more ideas for independent homeschool projects in a wide range of scientific and scholarly fields on our River Houses Lunar Society page.

What photographic, artistic, and scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac has a long list of famous artists on pages 174–177, and that list includes famous photographers. Why not pick out a name or two to research each month, either online or on your next visit to your local library — it would be a great way to give your students a little extra photographic inspiration! 📸

❡ Whether they work together or apart: This is one of our regular “Lunar Society” posts about the many independent projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🌎 🇻🇪 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Historic Coro in Venezuela

3 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Venezuela in northern South America is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Venezuela’s World Heritage Sites: Historic Coro and its Port.

The historic port city of Coro is one of the oldest Spanish settlements on the mainland of South America:

Dating from the earliest years of Spanish colonisation of the Caribbean coast of South America, Coro and its Port with buildings of earthen construction in a rich fusion of local traditions and Spanish Mudéjar and Dutch architectural techniques, have maintained their original layout and urban landscape to a remarkable degree. Located in the coast of Falcón state, west Venezuela, between the mountain range of Sierra de San Luis and the Parque Nacional de los Médanos de Coro (Coro Dunes National Park), the two urban areas cover 18.40 ha; 7.85 ha in Coro, and 10.55 ha in the Port of La Vela. Established from 1527, the town’s domestic, monumental religious, and civil buildings all employed earthen building techniques that are still in use today. Coro was the first Capital of the Captaincy General of Venezuela and the first Bishopric of Continental America established in 1531. Its Port of La Vela was the first South American town to achieve independence from Spain. (World Heritage Centre #658)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Coro and its Port 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 of World Heritage Sites online at the 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, available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures have you explored in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 752–859; 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 and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌎 🌍 🌏

💰 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LINCOLN CENT, “Born” This Day in 1909

2 August 2022 by Bob O'Hara

The first Lincoln cents went into circulation on this day in 1909 — they were issued in honor of the centennial of Abraham Lincoln’s birth in 1809.

The Lincoln cent was the first regular U.S. coin to feature the image of an actual person, rather than an abstract personification of “Liberty” or something similar. And while past presidents have appeared on many U.S. coins since 1909, it is still federal law that no living person, president or otherwise, shall ever appear on circulating U.S. currency. Monarchies and dictatorships feature their rulers on coins, but the United States, as a republic, never has.

And did you know that there’s an original 1909 Lincoln penny on Mars? It’s true! It was sent there in 2012 with the Curiosity rover to serve as a familiar calibration target for the rover’s cameras. And from the way it looked, I’d say the cameras were working just fine. 📸

“The penny in this image is part of a camera calibration target on NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity. The Mars Hand Lens Imager (MAHLI) camera on the rover took this and other images of the MAHLI calibration target during the 34th Martian day, or sol, of Curiosity’s work on Mars (Sept. 10, 2012 UTC).” (Image: NASA via Wikimedia Commons.)

You and your students can find all sorts of additional information about the Lincoln Cent in its current form by going right to the source: the website of the U.S. Mint (usmint.gov).

What numismatical discoveries have you made in your homeschool (or on other planets) this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Lessons that make cents: The Mint has a remarkably comprehensive set of free lesson plans and games available on a wide range of topics for students of all ages — just the thing to get some educational treasure hunting under way! 🔎

❡ Homeschool history: For a quick illustrated review of the life of Abraham Lincoln, turn to page 316 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 📚

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not pick up a couple of rolls of circulated coins of any denomination at your local grocery store or bank each week and invite your students to go through it around the kitchen table. A whole world of historical, chronological, and geographical discovery awaits them! 💰

❡ Cabinets of wonder: This is one of our occasional posts on the educational value of Collections & Collecting. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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