The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

1 September 2021 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! 😊

📚 LIBRARY LESSONS: Getting to Know the Library of Congress

28 September 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Tuesday is our usual Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the several Tuesdays of September — the first month of the new school year — we (re)introduce some of the general library resources that we recommend to all homeschoolers. This week, why not get reacquainted with the Library of Congress, the national library of the United States and a rich and valuable resource for every homeschool parent and homeschool student.

The Library of Congress was established in 1800, specifically to serve the legislative research needs of the U.S. government (as its name suggests). In one of the great tragedies of the early Republic, the Library was burned in 1814 (along with the Capitol, the White House, and the Treasury) during the British sack of Washington in the War of 1812. The story of its recovery is one every American student should know: Thomas Jefferson sold his personal library, then the largest private library in the new nation, to the federal government as a replacement. Here’s a great five-minute video that tells the story of the Library of Congress from its founding to the present day:

The Library of Congress is located in Washington, D.C., right next to the U.S. Capitol, and you can pay a homeschool visit to it yourself in person some day on your homeschool travels. The main building is the Thomas Jefferson Building with its grand reading room. Across the street are the newer Adams and Madison Buildings.

The front page of the Library of Congress website will point you to a vast range of online resources, all of which can be put to use by homeschool teachers:

➢ The Library of Congress (loc.gov)

There is a specific section of the website for educators, with lesson plans, videos, primary source guides, and more, as well as a large selection of thematic blogs on the arts, music, literature, science, prints and photos, maps and geography, and many other subjects:

One blog, Minerva’s Kaleidoscope, is specifically designed for kids and families (and homeschool teachers):

➢ Minerva’s Kaleidoscope for Kids and Families (loc.gov)

The Library is also offers a range of crowd-sourced projects that members of the general public — like you and your students — can join and contribute to. We recommend them to homeschoolers as part of our own Lunar Society project in the River Houses:

➢ “By the People” Projects at the Library of Congress (loc.gov)

So here’s a universal homeschool assignment you can implement on any day of the week and at any time of year when you don’t know what to do. Just say this: “Go to the Library of Congress website and tell me all about one of the items featured there today.” Get your students talking, and ask them questions, and a brand new little lesson will be underway.

What educational discoveries have you been making in your favorite library this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 📖

❡ Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website has links to several wonderful online library collections that we like to explore. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (rather than a phone) and give them a browse. 🔍

❡ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries posts. 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 26 September 2021

26 September 2021 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.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Georgia, and our COUNTRIES are Bahrain 🇧🇭, Bangladesh 🇧🇩, Barbados 🇧🇧, and Belarus 🇧🇾. (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 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (26 September 2021) — Today is the 269th day of 2021; there are 96 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 On this day in 1687, during the Venetian siege of Athens, a bomb fell on the Parthenon, which was being used by the Ottoman Turks for munitions storage. The roof, parts of the frieze, and many of the columns, which had stood for more than two thousand years, were destroyed. 🏛 Today is the birthday of American nurseryman and folk hero John Chapman (1774–1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed. 🍎 It’s also the birthday of American poet and Nobel Prize laureate T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), author of (among other things) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a wonderful read-aloud book for children. 🐈

Monday (27 September 2021) — On this day in 1941, the S.S. Patrick Henry, the first of a fleet of nearly 3000 “Liberty Ships” that transported supplies and troops during World War II, was launched in Baltimore, Maryland. ⚓️

Tuesday (28 September 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great philologist Sir William Jones (1746–1794), who first recognized the extent of the vast Indo-European family of languages. 🗣 And on this day in 1928, Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming noticed that mold growing on some of his laboratory samples was killing colonies of bacteria. The result of this chance observation was the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin. 🔬

Wednesday (29 September 2021) — Today is the first day of the week you’ve all been waiting for: Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park! Vote for your favorite fat bear online! 🐻 Today is also the birthday of the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). 🇪🇸 And it’s also the birthday of the pioneering Austrian-American economic philosopher Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). 💵 And not only that, it’s also the birthday of the great Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi (1901–1954). ⚛️ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Historic Bridgetown in Barbados. 🇧🇧

Thursday (30 September 2021) — Today is the birthday of William Wrigley Jr. (1861–1932), founder of the Wrigley chewing gum company. 🍬 And the Hoover Dam on the Arizona–Nevada border was dedicated on this day in 1935. 🏗

Friday (1 October 2021) — The first Ford Model T automobile was put on sale on this day in 1908. The price was $825. 🚗 The George Washington Bridge linking New York and New Jersey across the Hudson River was opened on this day in 1931. 🌉 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of October is “To Autumn” by John Keats, perhaps the most famous fall poem in the English language and a work every student of literature should know. 🍂 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the the short-legged Grebes and the long-legged Flamingos. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦩

Saturday (2 October 2021) — Today is the birthday of Indian lawyer, philosopher, and political leader Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948). 🇮🇳 It’s also the birthday of American poet Wallace Stevens (1879–1955). 🖋 The comic strip Peanuts premiered on this day in 1950. 📰 And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (3 October 2021) — Today is the birthday of English veterinarian James Herriot (1916–1995), author of All Creatures Great and Small and other popular books about animals. 🐑 🐂 🐓 🐖 🐐

🥂 🍁 OUR WEEKLY TOAST and our weekly poem for upcoming October are one and the same: “To Autumn.”

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

🌏 🇧🇩 EVERYTHING FLOWS: The river-filled country of Bangladesh in southern Asia is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, and our Weekly World River is Bangladesh’s Dhaleshwari River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Dhaleshwari 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 699–701), 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 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: Georgia, Bahrain, Belarus, and More

26 September 2021 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 458), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Georgia State Seal
GEORGIA (the 4th state, 2 January 1788) — The Peach State. Capital: Atlanta. Georgia can be found on page 575 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Named by colonial administrator James Oglethorp for King George II of England in 1732” (almanac page 459). State bird: Brown Thrasher (bird guide page 418). Website: georgia.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:

🇧🇭 BAHRAIN in the Middle East. Population: 1,505,003. Capital: Manama. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.bahrain.bh (in Arabic and English).
🇧🇩 BANGLADESH in southern Asia. Population: 162,650,853. Capital: Dhaka. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: bangladesh.gov.bd (in Bengali and English).
🇧🇧 BARBADOS in the West Indies. Population: 294,560. Capital: Bridgetown. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gov.bb (in English).
🇧🇾 BELARUS in eastern Europe. Population: 9,477,918. Capital: Minsk. Government: Presidential republic in name. Website: www.president.gov.by (in Belarusian, Russian, and 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 752–859; 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) will you be making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

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

❡ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — is one of the best educational gifts you can give them. Why not look up any one of our selected states or countries each week in your recommended homeschool atlas 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦃 🐓 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: “Gallinaceous” Birds

24 September 2021 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. (This school-year’s tour began at the beginning of this month with an introduction to your bird guide.)

This week’s group of three families has a wonderful ten-dollar name: the “gallinaceous” birds, encompassing the New World Quail (bird guide pages 54–57); the Curassows and Guans (pages 58–59); and the Partridges, Grouse, Turkeys, and Old World Quail (pages 58–67). Gallus is the Latin word for chicken, so the gallinaceous birds are the chicken-like birds, with generally plump bodies, small heads, short beaks, and rounded wings.

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 information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here’s how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

NEW WORLD QUAIL — Family Odontophoridae. New World Quail are their own family. All have chunky bodies and crests or head plumes. In N.A. [North America], most live in the West. Species: 33 World, 6 N.A.

CURASSOWS · GUANS — Family Cracidae. These tropical-forest arboreal birds have short, rounded wings and long tails. Generally secretive but highly vocal. One species of this family is found in the United States. Species: 54 World, 1 N.A.

PARTRIDGES · GROUSE · TURKEYS · OLD WORLD QUAIL — Family Phasianidae. Ground dwellers with feathered nostrils; short, strong bills; and short, rounded wings. Flight is brief but strong. Males perform elaborate courting displays. In some species, courting birds gather in communal grounds, known as leks. Species: 178 World, 18 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 Currasow family, for example. How many species? (54 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only 1 species in North America, and the species map will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Forest dwellers, secretive, arboreal, long tailed, and so on.)

Many of the gallinaceous birds have played important roles in human culture for thousands of years. All the varieties of domestic chicken are descended from the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a member of the Phasianidae that is native to Asia. Different species of pheasants, quail, grouse, and partridges are raised or hunted for food and ornament all around the world.

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, why not investigate the state bird of Pennsylvania: the Ruffed Grouse (page 62).

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 Ruffed Grouse? (17 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Bonasa umbellus.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

The drumming courtship call of the male Ruffed Grouse is one of the characteristic sounds of northern North American forests.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that lives near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore. If you live in Alaska why not pick out the Willow Ptarmigan (the state bird), or if you’re in California, the California Quail (the state bird there). The domestic turkeys we eat are all descendants of the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) (page 60), the largest gallinaceous bird in North America, and the species that would have become the U.S. national bird had Ben Franklin had his way. 🦃

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 will you be making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations using the free eBird service 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. 🌎

❡ State birds: Six members of this week’s bird families are United States state birds: the Ruffed Grouse (Pennsylvania), California Quail (California), Willow Ptarmigan (Alaska), and Ring-necked Pheasant (South Dakota), and the Rhode Island Red Hen (Rhode Island) and Delaware Blue Hen (Delaware). The last two don’t appear in your bird guide, however, because it includes only wild, not domestic, species; try the eBird entry for the Red Junglefowl of Asia to learn more about the wild ancestor of these domestic chicken varieties. 🇺🇸

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🖋 🍃 WONDERFUL WORDS: “Our Summer made her light escape”

22 September 2021 by Bob O'Hara

The Chimney Swifts are gone. (That’s how it is in my neighborhood.) The Nighthawks and Kingbirds too. Did you notice? In the spring when new birds arrive their voices strike your ear like a fresh spark. But when they depart — have they departed? — most slip away silently in the night.

As we pass today’s equinox and enter into astronomical autumn, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) provides us with a pensive homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of September:

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away —
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy —

A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon —

The Dusk drew earlier in —
The Morning foreign shone —
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone —

And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

If your students are learning how to read poetry — and poetry requires a special kind of reading, different from prose reading — tell them not to go too quickly or to expect everything to be clear on the first pass through. Getting to know a poem is like getting to know a person: some things are apparent on the surface, but there are new things to discover over time with repeated engagement (and with expanded life experience). If you make the effort, however, you’ll often discover that good poems, like good people, can become friends for life.

[Emily Dickinson Homestead] — The Emily Dickinson Homestead, Amherst, Massachusetts. (Image: Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism.)

For traditionally styled poems like this one, the first thing to do as you make the poem’s acquaintance is not to think about meaning or abstract symbolism; instead, just count syllables. As imperceptibly as Grief (eight). The Summer lapsed away (six). Too imperceptible at last (eight). To seem like Perfidy (six). 8-6-8-6. The other three stanzas are shortened versions of that pattern: 6-6-8-6.

“Eights-and-sixes” is one of the most common hymn meters in the Protestant tradition, and Emily Dickinson learned her very precise prosody from the church hymns she grew up with. Compare the rhythm of the first stanza above with this familiar verse:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

A perfect match: 8-6-8-6. Whenever you encounter Emily Dickinson in your homeschool reading — and I hope that will be often — start by counting syllables and you’ll gain a new appreciation for the details of her craft.

So this is a metrically precise poem — but does it rhyme? Well, yes, but not perfectly. Emily Dickinson was almost completely unknown as a writer during her lifetime, and one reason for that was her frequent use of “slant” rhyme, in contrast to full or exact rhyme, which made her verse sound too irregular to her contemporaries. In exact rhyme, the vowel sounds match: sing/ring, time/chime, fray/stay. In this week’s poem, Dickinson does consistently rhyme the second and fourth lines in each stanza, but the rhymes are imperfect, depending usually on just a single consonant, and the sounds don’t quite correspond: away/perfidy, begun/afternoon, shone/gone, keel/beautiful. (It’s possible to read shone/gone as a perfect rhyme, depending on how one pronounces shone.) Imperfect rhyme often creates a prose-y feel, and to Dickinson’s contemporaries that was unpleasant. To our modern ears, however, this “irregularity” strikes us as linguistically more natural and less contrived, and so more in alignment with present-day aesthetic sensibilities.

There’s some wonderful vocabulary you can have your students look up this week in your family dictionary as they try to work out the poem’s meaning: imperceptibly, perfidy, distilled, sequestered, harrowing, keel, and lapsed. Send your students to the dictionary also for any poetical terminology they encounter this week and throughout the year in our literary explorations: stanza, couplet, quatrain, sonnet, pentameter, hexameter, iambic, dactylic, and more — wonderful words, every one!

What literary delights and poetical productions will you be studying in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Print or share this lesson: Down at the bottom of this page you should see 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 let you delete sections you don’t need or want (such as images). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ Pages to color: Did you know that the Emily Dickinson Museum has free printable coloring pages available? It’s true! 🖍

❡ Our summer made her light escape: 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 Emily Dickinson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and 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. 📖

🌍 🇦🇿 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Walled City of Baku in Azerbaijan

22 September 2021 by Bob O'Hara

(A new homeschool year has begun and so has a new tour of World Heritage Sites around the globe! Print your own River Houses World Heritage Calendar and follow along with us every Wednesday.)

Azerbaijan in western Asia is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Azerbaijan’s World Heritage Sites: the Walled City of Baku with the Shirvanshah’s Palace and Maiden Tower.

The old city-center of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, embodies the rich and complex history of west-central Asia:

Rising from the south shore of the Apsheron Peninsula at the western edge of the Caspian Sea, the Walled City of Baku was founded on a site inhabited since the Palaeolithic period. The city reveals, along with the dominant Azerbaijani element, evidence of Zoroastrian, Sassanian, Arabic, Persian, Shirvani, Ottoman, and Russian presence in cultural continuity. The inner city (Icherisheher) has preserved much of its 12th-century defensive walls, which define the character of the property. The most ancient monument of Icherisheher is the Maiden Tower — the symbol of the city of Baku. Some evidence suggests that the construction of the Tower might have been as early as the 7th–6th centuries BC. Another monument of universal value, one of the pearls of Azerbaijan’s architecture is the 12th- to 15th-century Shirvanshahs’ Palace, located at the highest point of Icherisheher. Within the Palace complex are the Divankhana (reception hall) or, as some researchers believe, the Tomb of Shah, the residential building of Shirvanshahs, the remains of Key-Kubad Mosque, the Tomb of Seyid Yahya Bakuvi, Murad’s Gate (the only monument of the 16th century), the Tomb of Shirvanshahs’ Family, the Shah Mosque and the Palace bath-house. Earlier monuments of Icherisheher include the Mohammed Mosque, together with the adjacent minaret built in 1078, and remains of the 9th- to 10th-century mosque near the Maiden Tower.

There are also numerous historical-architectural monuments of the medieval period such as caravanserais, hamams (bath-houses), mosques and residential buildings of the 18th to 20th centuries located within the property.

The magnificence of Icherisheher lies in the combination of its distinct architectural monuments and its historically composed architectural spatial planning with original street views, which have merged into a single entity to reflect its long history and the melding of cultures that have influenced its development over the past nine centuries. Icherisheher is still a living, vibrant city with residential areas housing local communities. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #958)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Walled City of Baku 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 will you be exploring in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia 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. 🌎

🗓 🍂 FALL IS ON ITS WAY! (Astronomically Speaking)

21 September 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Wednesday of this week (September 22nd) is the September equinox — we call it the autumnal or fall equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the vernal or spring equinox. The autumnal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of fall, just as the vernal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of spring.

❡ Little lessons: “‘Vernal’ and ‘autumnal’ are wonderful words. Let’s look them both up in our big dictionary.”

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

➢ The September Equinox (timeanddate.com)

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of its annual orbit around the sun (the axis is tilted by about 23º). The two solstices occur at the points in the annual orbit when the earth’s axis of rotation is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter) and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur when the earth’s axis of rotation is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so). Equi-nox means equal-night (and day).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary — solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website. And you can find many more technical facts and figures about solstices and equinoxes on page 385 in your recommended homeschool almanac.

What calendrical events and astronomical alignments will you be marking in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students about the seasons and the stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended River Houses astronomy guide has descriptions and maps of all the constellations that point out the seasonal highlights, and the astronomical section of your recommended world atlas has beautiful large charts of both celestial spheres. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🔭

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our regular posts on Homeschool Astronomy and also on Homeschool Terms & Calendars. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the homeschool year. 🍂 ⛄️ 🌷 ⛱

🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – September 2021

21 September 2021 by Bob O'Hara

On the third Tuesday of each month we post a quick roundup of some recent academic publications and news about homeschooling, offered for your interest. These are typically university research papers, and they may have a positive, negative, or neutral outlook on home education. The title links generally point to the full text of each publication, which is often a printable pdf file. In some cases, a paid subscription may be required to read the whole article. The article abstracts or introductions below are quoted in full whenever possible, without editing.

We have four items this month. The first is an interview with anti-homeschooling law professors Elizabeth Bartholet and James Dwyer, who have been featured in our posts a number of times before.

(1) A Q&A With Homeschooling Reform Advocates Elizabeth Bartholet and James Dwyer — E. Bartholet & J. Dwyer (2021)

Abstract: Elizabeth Bartholet, Morris Wasserstein Public Interest Professor and Faculty Director of the Child Advocacy Program (CAP), and James Dwyer, the Arthur B. Hanson Professor of Law at William & Mary Law School, were interviewed by Harvard Law Today about their virtual conference titled, Homeschool Summit: Problems, Politics, and Prospects for Reform. The June event was attended by leaders in education and child welfare policy, legislators and legislative staff, academics and policy advocates, medical professionals, homeschooling alumni, and others, to discuss children’s rights in connection with homeschooling in the United States.

(2) Homeschooling and Learners’ Academic Achievement: Evidence from the United States of America — A.R. Bosswell (2021)

Abstract: There is solid evidence that homeschooling has made notable gains in absolute numbers and percent of the school-age population in nations as diverse as Australia, Brazil, Canada, England, Japan, Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Scotland, and Russia. Home education’s rebirth after about a century of quiescence has surprised many educators, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and theologians, and has captured the imagination and engagement of hundreds of thousands of families. One of the most common and widely accepted ways to assess the learning of students and the effectiveness of their educational environments is via academic achievement as measured by standardized tests. Through literature review, through scholarly articles, interviews, and a survey, research reveals that homeschooling will continue to be on the rise. Thus, homeschooled children tend to score higher or similar compared to regular children attending public schools. Children become more responsible for themselves, and have control of their education. Homeschooling is an alternative to education for children who do not adjust well. While homeschooling allows students to focus only on what is important to them, it makes learning more enjoyable, since they are learning at their own pace, and at the same time affects their academic achievement in many ways. There were an estimated 4.5 to 5.0 million homeschool students in grades K–12 in the United States during March of 2021 (roughly 8% to 9% of school-age children). There were about 2.5 million homeschool students in spring 2019 (or 3% to 4% of school-age children). The homeschool population had been growing at an estimated 2% to 8% per annum over the past several years, but it grew drastically from 2019–2020 to 2020–2021. Studies have shed light on the extra sleep needed in teenage years, yet the conventional school system often requires students to stay up late finishing homework and get up early to rush to their morning classes. Homeschool offers some great advantages when it comes to scheduling: less rushing in the morning sets kids up for less stress overall in their day, longer sleep ins are important for mental and physical wellbeing as well as better focus and work ethic throughout the day and homeschooled children can take breaks throughout the day as needed and are less likely to burnout and form negative associations with school and learning. Homeschoolers are becoming sought-after for higher education. Many colleges and universities have begun to modify their admission practices to not only allow for, but to encourage, homeschoolers to apply for admission.

(3) Contemporary Homeschooling Arrangements: An Analysis of Three Waves of Nationally Representative Data — A. Cheng & D. Hamlin (2021)

Abstract: Homeschooling has increased dramatically in recent decades. During this period of expansion, scholars have reported on growing diversity in the ways that homeschool families educate their children. However, research tends to treat homeschooled children as a uniform group without accounting for differing homeschool arrangements. In this study, we examine the prevalence of four types of homeschool arrangements reported in prior literature as follows: (1) home education supplemented by the use of a private tutor or a homeschool cooperative, (2) home education supplemented by the use of online learning, (3) home education supplemented by part-time enrollment in a brick-and-mortar school, and (4) fully parent-delivered home education. For the analyses, three cross-sectional waves of nationally representative data on homeschool families (n = 1,468) from the National Household Education Survey (NHES: 2012, 2016, 2019) are examined. Results indicate that the four types of homeschool arrangements tested in this study are widespread and that the majority of homeschool families supplement home education with cooperatives and tutors, brick-and-mortar schools, and online education. Homeschool families who continue to perform conventional homeschooling without additional supplements are more likely to be white and less educated with elementary-aged children in the South region of the United States. Homeschool families whose children attend brick-and-mortar schools part-time are less likely to be white and more likely to have secondary school-aged children in urban areas. Use of online education is also higher at the secondary school level.

(4) The Pandemic’s Effect on Demand for Public Schools, Homeschooling, and Private Schools — T. Musaddiq et al. (2021)

Abstract: The Covid-19 pandemic drastically disrupted the functioning of U.S. public schools, potentially changing the relative appeal of alternatives such as homeschooling and private schools. Using longitudinal student-level administrative data from Michigan and nationally representative data from the Census Household Pulse Survey, we show how the pandemic affected families’ choices of school sector. We document four central facts. First, public school enrollment declined noticeably in fall 2020, with about 3 percent of Michigan students and 10 percent of kindergartners using other options. Second, most of this was driven by homeschooling rates jumping substantially, driven largely by families with children in elementary school. Third, homeschooling increased more where schools provided in-person instruction while private schooling increased more where instruction was remote, suggesting heterogeneity in parental concerns about children’s physical health and instructional quality. Fourth, kindergarten declines were highest among low income and Black families while declines in other grades were highest among higher income and White families, highlighting important heterogeneity by students’ existing attachment to public schools. Our results shed light on how families make schooling decisions and imply potential longer-run disruptions to public schools in the form of decreased enrollment and funding, changed composition of the student body, and increased size of the next kindergarten cohort.

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

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

❡ Explore more: For a comprehensive review of homeschooling research prior to 2020, see the paper by Kunzman & Gaither that is linked in our Research & News post for July 2020. 📖

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

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – September 2021

20 September 2021 by Bob O'Hara

(This is our first monthly “Lunar Society” report for the 2021–2022 homeschool year. Browse through our list of real scientific and scholarly projects, investigations, transcriptions, analyses, and computations that your students can work on from the comfort of your little home academy, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year.)

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 our list of just 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)

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 have been documenting the birds of a local college campus that I frequently visit. So far I’ve contributed a total of 307 checklists (observation reports) for this locality — it’s a site that has never been documented before. As more checklists are added, and as eBird combines them and charts them automatically, you can get a real sense of seasonal distribution and migration patterns at this location:

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

➢ Sample Checklist for Campus Site S75408328 (ebird.org)

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 and start exploring.

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 Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; (2) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy; and (3) the Asteroids@Home project, which calculates the shapes and orbits of poorly-known asteroids. (Yes, those are projects you and your students can really contribute to.)

❡ Note: Asteroids@Home is unfortunately down at present because of hardware problems. That’s a real-world lesson for students too: in actual scientific research, equipment sometimes breaks down.

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, Asteroids@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and you can 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 it’s running, Einstein@Home has a cool screensaver that shows you in real time what your computer is analyzing.) 📡

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. I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results using an online spreadsheet, and this is what it looks like — if you join one of these projects, your numbers will be included in these totals:

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 will you be making in your homeschool this Cygnus 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. 🌕

❡ 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 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 that we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 19 September 2021

19 September 2021 by Bob O'Hara

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is New Jersey, and our COUNTRIES are Australia 🇦🇺, Austria 🇦🇹, Azerbaijan 🇦🇿, and the Bahamas 🇧🇸. (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! 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 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (19 September 2021) — Today is the 262nd day of 2021; there are 103 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Arrrr! It be International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day, me hearties! ☠️ On this day in 1991, “Ötzi the Iceman,” a 5000-year-old naturally preserved mummy, was discovered frozen in the ice in the mountains along the Alpine border between Italy and Austria. 🏔

Monday (20 September 2021) — “On the 20th of September 1839, an English officer, residing in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, saw a quantity of live fish descend in a smart shower of rain. They were about three inches in length, and all of one kind. Some, falling on hard ground, were killed; some, which fell on soft grass, continued in life.” 🐟🐟 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll either have fish falling from the sky, or we’ll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society. 🌕

Tuesday (21 September 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great English composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934). 🎵 And on this day in 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor (b. 1930) was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice. 👩‍⚖️

Wednesday (22 September 2021) — Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Fall! 🍂 Today is the September Equinox, known as the autumnal or fall equinox in the northern hemisphere and the vernal or spring equinox in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of spring). 🗓 On this day in 1776, American spy Nathan Hale, age 21, was executed by the British in New York City. His final words were said to be, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of the great experimental physicist Michael Faraday (1791–1867). ⚡️ And it’s also Hobbit Day! 🌋 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Walled City of Baku and the Maiden Tower in Azerbaijan. 🇦🇿 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of September, as astronomical summer becomes fall, is a pensive equinoctial lyric by Emily Dickinson. 🍃 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the 2021–2022 homeschool year. 🖋

Thursday (23 September 2021) — Today is the birthday of Gaius Octavius Thurinus, better known as Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of the Roman Empire (63 B.C. – A.D. 14). For a great homeschool overview of the rise (and eventual fall) of Rome, turn to page 110 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🏛

Friday (24 September 2021) — On this day in 1789, the U.S. Congress, acting under the new Constitution, established the federal judiciary system and specified a structure for the Supreme Court (with six, not the current nine, justices). ⚖️ And … it’s Na·tion·al Punc·tu·a·tion Day!@*&(#)&*@!! ❣️ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Gallinaceous birds. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦃

Saturday (25 September 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945), who established the role of chromosomes in the process of inheritance. 🔬 It’s also the birthday of American poet and children’s author Shel Silverstein (1930–1999). 📚 And the great Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould was born on this day in 1932. 🎹

Sunday (26 September 2021) — On this day in 1687, during the Venetian siege of Athens, a bomb fell on the Parthenon, which was being used by the Ottoman Turks for munitions storage. The roof, parts of the frieze, and many of the columns, which had stood for more than two thousand years, were destroyed. 🏛 Today is the birthday of American nurseryman and folk hero John Chapman (1774–1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed. 🍎 It’s also the birthday of American poet and Nobel Prize laureate T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), author of (among other things) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a wonderful read-aloud book for children. 🐈

🥂 🍂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is our equinoctial traditional, for the disappearing daylight hours: “May the shadows of evening calm the excitement of the day.”

🌎 🇧🇸 EVERYTHING FLOWS: The Bahamas in the West Indies is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is Fresh Creek on Andros Island, one of the many small streams and tidal inlets that perforate the island’s coastline. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Fresh Creek entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

“Rays of sunlight burst through a cloud over Fresh Creek on Andros Island, the Bahamas.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

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