The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

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

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

📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE – March 2021: “Needlework” and “Electricity Production”

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

The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge encourages people to take and submit high-quality images for the public Wikimedia Commons database, the source from which most of the images in Wikipedia are drawn. 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.

A sample entry for the theme “Needlework” from this month’s Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you have talented 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 build up 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.

A sample entry for the theme “Electricity Production” from this month’s Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac has a long list of famous artists on pages 214–217, 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! 📸

❡ Follow along with us: 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: The Old City of Luxembourg

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The tiny European country of Luxembourg is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Luxembourg’s World Heritage Sites: the Old Quarters and Fortifications of Luxembourg City.

The Old City of Luxembourg. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Old City of Luxembourg is an important historic district that retains many of the elements of a classic medieval fortified city:

The Old City of Luxembourg is located at the confluence of the Alzette and Pétrusse Rivers, on a very steep rocky outcrop which is somewhat of a natural fortification that only needed to be completed on the west side. Due to its exceptional strategic position, the City of Luxembourg was one of the largest fortresses of modern Europe which was constantly strengthened and reinforced as it passed successively into the hands of the great European powers.

Originally, the City of Luxembourg comprised only a small fort (the castle) built shortly after the middle of the 10th century on an almost inaccessible rock. In the 12th century, the settlement that developed near the castle was protected by a stone fortification wall, which was extended in the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1443, the city was taken by the troops of Burgundy. Through inheritance it passed to the Habsburgs and became Spanish until 1684. During this period, the site was transformed into a veritable fortress. After the conquest by King Louis XIV, Vauban extended and reinforced the fortifications. In the 18th century, the Austrians continued his work and created the “Gibraltar of the North.” After the Congress of Vienna, the Prussians created new military structures until the dismantling was decided in 1867. Following the Treaty of London in 1867, the majority of the fortifications were demolished but many vestiges representative of all these eras remain, of which a number of gates, forts, bastions, redoubts and casemates.

The city also retains the layout of its streets and many public buildings, important testimony of its origins and its development since the 10th century. Inside and at the foot of the ramparts, quarters where people lived and engaged in trades or crafts developed. They also kept places of worship, such as the Church of St. Michel, now a veritable museum of sacred art, or the Church of St. Nicolas, subsequently transferred to the sanctuary of the Jesuits, the present cathedral. The ancient Abbey of Neumünster is a landmark in the borough of Grund. In the Upper Town, in the shadow of the walls, aristocratic families and the major religious communities built their mansions called “shelters” to be close to the administrations and official institutions. The old quarters still bear the imprint of their former inhabitants and their activities.

Despite the dismantling of the fortress, the fortifications and the old quarters, today the city is a historical ensemble of prime importance. It is an outstanding example of a fortified European city and host to an exceptional variety of military vestiges illustrating a long period of Western history. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #699)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Old City of Luxembourg 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 Leo 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. 🌍

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Scientific 500s

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Tuesday is our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your young scholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can adopt one major class each month and survey the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for March is the 500s, which covers Science. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 500s” means the numbers running from 500 to 599.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the Scientific 500s:

  • CLASS 500 – SCIENCE
    • 500 – Science (General)
    • 510 – Mathematics
    • 520 – Astronomy
    • 530 – Physics
    • 540 – Chemistry
    • 550 – Earth Sciences & Geology
    • 560 – Fossils & Prehistoric Life
    • 570 – Biology
    • 580 – Plants (Botany)
    • 590 – Animals (Zoology)

Each of these “tens” divisions is subdivided further of course. For example, in the 510s (Mathematics) you’ll find works on Algebra (512), Arithmetic (513), Topology (514), Geometry (516), and so on.

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, Astronomy, you’ll find it in the 520s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. If you have an opportunity to make field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to demonstrate that in practice and get your students accustomed to orienting themselves by reading the numbers aloud as you walk together down the ranges: “500 … 510 … 515 … here it is, 520.”

Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

What delightful decimals and textual treasures will you be searching for in your library this Leo Term? 📚

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 500s, one in the 510s, one in the 520s, one in the 530s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 500) and the very last book in the class (the highest 599). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your three favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this month-by-month, over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb and how many academic skills they will develop without even realizing it. 🔎

❡ 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. 😊

❡ 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. 📚

🖋 🏔 WONDERFUL WORDS: Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

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Although astronomical spring won’t arrive for another three weeks, the earliest signs of spring bird migration are all around us. That’s why our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of March is a playful poem that’s really a collection of photographs: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” by Wallace Stevens (1879–1955). Photograph XII captures our seasonal theme: “The river is moving. / The blackbird must be flying.”

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

Wallace Stevens was one of the most prominent American poets of the twentieth century — a Pulitzer Prize winner and a representative of the school called “Modernism.” The Modernists reacted against the structured formalities of late nineteenth century poetry and adopted looser styles that were often unrhymed and non-metrical. “Thirteen Ways” was influenced by Japanese haiku, and while its components aren’t in the standard haiku form — three lines and seventeen syllables — they share the gem-like, imagistic style of haiku.

When you share a poem like this with beginning students, don’t worry about deep meaning or symbolism. Stevens is having fun creating word-pictures, and you should have fun along with him. An ideal exercise for this poem is to ask your students to draw a picture to represent one (or all) of the thirteen ways of looking. I think the first stanza is wonderfully visual, like a master photograph: “Among twenty snowy mountains, / The only moving thing / Was the eye of the blackbird.”

Although Stevens was one of the most widely read and studied American poets of his generation, he spent his whole adult life working as an insurance company executive in Connecticut, and he wrote and published his poetry in his free time. (There are probably multiple homeschool career lessons embedded in those facts.)

Here is Wallace Stevens himself reading “Thirteen Ways” — why not have your students read along as they listen:

One of the reasons young people should study and know about famous poems like this one is that they turn up everywhere. “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” has been so popular that the phrase “Thirteen ways of looking at…” has become a standard hook for essay writers of all kinds, as any Internet search will demonstrate. (Be advised that not all results from such a search will necessarily be suitable for children.) One example that is suitable for children is the delightful poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Dragon” by Mari Ness:

I
Among twenty knight-blasted mountains
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the dragon.

And so on, through all thirteen. 🐉

What wonderful words and playful poetical productions will you be studying in your homeschool this (brand new!) Leo Term? 🦁

❡ The only moving thing: 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 Wallace Stevens) 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. 📖

🗓 🌱 🐰 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL MARCH from the River Houses!

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Happy March to all our readers and friends! Here are some things to look for in the homeschool month ahead. 🔍

March with 31 days is the first month of Leo Term, our spring term in the River Houses. Leo Term runs from March through May. Visit our main calendar page and print out some of our simple educational calendars and planners — they’ll help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. 🗓

The month of March (Latin mensis Martius) is named for the Roman god Mars, father of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. In the earliest Roman calendars, March was treated as the first month of the year — naturally enough, since it marks the beginning of spring. This practice continued in many Western countries well into the modern period, and Great Britain and her American colonies formally reckoned March 25th as the beginning of the year until 1752. (Genealogists are familiar with the puzzle of “double dating”: old records that bear dates like “February 23rd, 1731/32.” A date of that kind means February 23rd, 1732 by modern reckoning, which is equivalent to February 23rd at the end of the year 1731 when years are counted from March 25th.) You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚

A proverb:

March winds and April showers
Bring forth May flowers.

March is the month of the vernal (spring) equinox in the northern hemisphere — the astronomical beginning of spring — which falls this year on Saturday the 20th. (In the southern hemisphere the 20th will be the autumnal equinox — the astronomical beginning of autumn.) The vernal and autumnal equinoxes each year are the days of “equal night and light,” when the period of darkness and the period of daylight are very nearly the same. 🌚 🌞 🌷

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for March will be Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and our countries will run from Malawi to Mozambique. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and tour the United States and the whole world with us from Delaware to Hawaii and Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. 🇺🇸 🌎

We’ll be visiting World Heritage Sites in Luxembourg, Malawi, Malta, Mexico, and Montenegro this month — our River Houses World Heritage Calendar will point the way. 🗺

We’ll have homeschool poems this month from Wallace Stevens (for early migrants), Walt Whitman (for scientific birthdays), Constantine Cavafy (for the Ides of March), and Robert Frost (for early spring). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and join us as we visit with fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. ✒️

Our Friday Bird Families this month will include the Tyrant Flycatchers and Becards; the Shrikes and Vireos; and the Crows and Jays (twice over). Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds, get out your copy of our recommended homeschool bird guide, and follow the flyways with us. 🦅

Our monthly Great Star for March is Sirius (alpha Canis Majoris), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and join us as we visit twelve high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky and make them friends for life. 🌟

Our Dewey Decimal class for March is the Scientific 500s — follow along with us (on the first Tuesday of each month) and help your students learn the whole library over the course of the year! 📚

And watch for our monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge post, coming up in the next few days — it’s a great opportunity for all homeschool photographers. 📸

Also coming up this month:

 ⬩ 14 March (Su): Albert Einstein’s Birthday, 1879 ⚛️
 ⬩ 15 March (M): The Ides of March, 44 B.C. 🗡
 ⬩ 20 March (Sa): March (Vernal) Equinox 🌚🌞 First Day of Spring 🌷
 ⬩ 21 March (Su): Johann Sebastian Bach’s Birthday, 1685 🎵
 ⬩ 26 March (F): A.E. Housman’s Birthday, 1859 / Robert Frost’s Birthday, 1874 🖋
 ⬩ 28 March (Su): Lunar Society Report 🌕

And remember:

Eat leeks in March and garlic in May,
And all the year after physicians may play.

What calendrical events will you be marking in your homeschool this March? 😊

❡ Thirty days hath September: This is one of our regular Homeschool Terms & Calendars posts. Print your own set of River Houses Calendars to follow along with us, 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. 🗞

🗓 🦁 LEO TERM 2021 and the Homeschool Year

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Today is the beginning our spring term in the River Houses — Leo Term — named for the Great Lion of the Heavens. Leo Term runs from March through May.

We put great stock in the educational value of the calendar in the River Houses. The calendar is the framework on which we human beings hang most of the facts we know about the world: historical events, natural phenomena, personal reminiscences, the seasons, blooming flowers, migrating birds, the sun and moon, the planets, the stars. A key part of every student’s intellectual development is the development of “calendar sense” — a sense of time and history.

The constellation Leo, from A Celestial Atlas Comprising a Systematic Display of the Heavens in a Series of Thirty Maps by Alexander Jamieson (1822). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Our annual River Houses calendar divides the homeschool year into four three-month terms (quarters) that roughly correspond to the seasons, and these terms are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:

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

This calendrical division is an open-ended idea that we’ve developed for the River Houses, and we think has a great deal of educational potential. We’re looking forward to expanding upon it as time goes on.

As you think about your own homeschool year, think about how different parts of it — curricular, co-curricular, social, or recreational — might be informally arranged into these four terms. You could have a different decorating theme in your classroom each term, for example, or you could schedule a regular trip to a special place where you take a photo at the beginning of each term to track how the seasons change. You could group your curricular work by term, or bake a quarterly cake, or set goals at the beginning of each term that you want your students to have met by the end. You could have your students measure their height at the beginning of each term, or take their penny-jar to the bank for a quarterly deposit. At the end of each term you could assemble a portfolio of student accomplishments. With a little imagination you will be able to come up with a clever and comfortable arrangement and a new way to think about the structure of your educational year.

Star chart of the constellation Leo. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Leo Term is named for the Great Lion of the Heavens who is rising in the east in the early evening now and who will be passing overhead throughout the spring. Leo Term is home to the Spring Equinox (20 March); to Einstein’s Birthday (14 March), Leonardo da Vinci’s Birthday (15 April), and Shakespeare’s Birthday (23 April, more or less); to the Ides of March (15 March), the annual Swiss Spaghetti Harvest (1 April), the beginning of the American Revolution (19 April), Arbor Day (30 April), Mother’s Day (9 May), and Memorial Day (31 May); and to our River Houses Bird Migration Month (the whole of May) — not to mention countless other holidays, anniversaries, and events, local and global, public and private, that you may wish to mark on your own homeschool calendar.

If you want to make a special astronomical study this Leo Term, your River Houses reference library includes an excellent backyard guide to the night sky that will introduce you to Leo and its most prominent stars:

Leo is a large and easily recognized constellation that sits in a rather empty portion of the sky, just beyond Ursa Major and between its fellow zodiacal constellations Cancer and Virgo. A sickle-shaped asterism represents the lion’s head, mane, and chest. Shaped like a backward question mark, the period of this giant piece of celestial punctuation is marked by the brilliant star Regulus [our April Great Star], while the stars trailing to the east mark Leo’s hindquarters. This is one of the easier constellations to construct mentally, as it resembles the classic image of the Sphinx. (National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, page 200)

Why not spend a little time out after dark with your students over the next three months and watch the Great Lion as he makes his nightly passage to the west. Once you learn to spot him, you’ll have a friend for life.

What educational adventures do you and your homescholars have planned for this Leo Term? 😊

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

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended River Houses night-sky guide has descriptions and maps of each constellation that point out the highlights, and the astronomical section of your recommended world atlas has beautiful large charts of both celestial hemispheres. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this term and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🔭

❡ Choose something like a star: If you’d like some more 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. 🌟

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional posts about our Homeschool Terms & Calendars. Print your own set of River Houses Calendars to follow along with us, 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. 🗞

📖 🎉 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Dord Day!

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Happy Dord Day! On this day each year we celebrate dictionaries and the people who make them — and we remind ourselves that lexicographers are human, just like us. 😊

On the 28th of February in 1939, an editor working on the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary was examining the second edition (1934) to see what entries needed to be updated. He came across the word “dord,” a synonym (according to the dictionary) for the word “density” as used in physics and chemistry. The word had no associated etymology, so the editor decided to investigate.

The definition of the word ‘dord’ as it appeared in Webster’s New International Dictionary (1934).

Upon investigation, it turned out (amusingly and embarrassingly) that there is no such word as “dord,” even though it appeared in the big Webster’s New International Dictionary. A science specialist working on the previous edition had submitted a request to have the letters “D” and “d” added as abbreviations for “density,” but the request slip was written “D or d” — and through a series of minor editorial missteps this became “Dord” and it was added to the dictionary as a word meaning “density.”

In later editions, after it had been spotted, the error was removed, leaving the dictionary more accurate but less entertaining.

Today’s little lesson for your homeschool students: dictionaries are compiled by people just like you and me, and even though they try very hard to be accurate, sometimes they make mistakes just like we do.

What wonderful words — real or imaginary — have you discovered in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: The delightful Fun With Words website has the full story of “dord,” along with a host of other wild and woolly word-wonders to explore. 🔍

❡ Looking in the lexicon: Our recommended River Houses homeschool dictionary, the American Heritage Fifth, does not, alas, include the word “dord,” but you can send your students to search nevertheless. Where would it be if it were there? Right between Dorchester and Dordogne. 📖

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Language & Literature posts. Add your name to our free 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 28 February 2021

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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 Michigan, and our COUNTRIES are Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, and Madagascar 🇲🇬. (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 (28 February 2021) — Today is the 59th day of 2021; there are 306 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. 📚 And today is Dord Day! 🎉

🗓 🦁 Leo Term 2021 Begins 🦁 🗓

Monday (1 March 2021) — Today is the first day of Leo Term, our spring term in the River Houses, named for the Great Lion of the Heavens. 🦁 It’s also the birthday of the great Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). 🎹 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of March is a famously amusing collection of photographs from Wallace Stevens, for migrating Red-winged Blackbirds and the coming spring thaw. 💧 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Tuesday (2 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of Sam Houston (1793–1863), the first president of the Republic of Texas. 🌵 And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Scientific 500s. 📚

Wednesday (3 March 2021) — The Scottish-American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1847. 📞 And on this day in 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem. 🇺🇸 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Old Quarter and Fortifications of Luxembourg City. 🇱🇺

Thursday (4 March 2021) — The first session of the First United States Congress opened on this day in Federal Hall in New York in 1789, putting the new U.S. Constitution into effect. 📜 🇺🇸

Friday (5 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594). 🗺 And on this day in 1770, British troops shot and killed five protestors on the streets of Boston in what quickly came to be known as the Boston Massacre. ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the the Tyrant Flycatchers and Becards. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (6 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo (1475–1564). 🎨 It’s also the birthday of the great English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). 🖋 On this day in 1836 during the Texas Revolution, the Alamo fell. Remember! ⚔️ 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 (7 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great British astronomer and polymath John Herschel (1792–1871). 🔭 It’s also the birthday of the great American horticulturist Luther Burbank (1849–1926). 🥔

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is for the Texians of 1836: “Remember the Alamo!”

❡ 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 tiny country of Luxembourg in central Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the tiny Syre River, a Luxembourgish tributary of the great Rhine. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Syre River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Syre River near Schuttrange in Luxembourg. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ Daughters of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 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: Michigan, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, and More

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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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Michigan State Flag
    MICHIGAN (the 26th state, 26 January 1837) — The Great Lakes State. Capital: Lansing. Michigan can be found on page 581 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Chippewa mici gama, meaning ‘great water,’ after lake of the same name” (almanac page 459). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: www.michigan.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week, 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:

  • 🇱🇮 LIECHTENSTEIN in central Europe. Population: 39,137. Capital: Vaduz. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.liechtenstein.li (in German).
  • 🇱🇹 LITHUANIA in eastern Europe. Population: 2,731,464. Capital: Vilnius. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: lrvk.lrv.lt (in Lithuanian).
  • 🇱🇺 LUXEMBOURG in western Europe. Population: 628,381. Capital: Luxembourg. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: gouvernement.lu (in French, German, English, and Luxembourgish).
  • 🇲🇬 MADAGASCAR in the Indian Ocean. Population: 26,955,737. Capital: Antananarivo. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.primature.gov.mg (in French).

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) did you make in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

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

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

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

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – February 2021

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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:

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 a new site, a local college campus that I frequently visit. So far I’ve contributed a total of 120 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’ll be able to get a real sense of seasonal distribution and migration patterns at this location. Here’s a snippet of what that looks like in its early stages, with reports just since September:

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

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.)

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:

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 did you make in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

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

❡ 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. 🗞