The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

Welcome! (Pinned post)

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First time visitor? We post a rich assortment of educational ideas and informal “little lessons” that will help you enrich your homeschooling schedule all through the year. We’d be delighted to have you bookmark us or add your name to our mailing list (just one message a week, and no spam). 😊

The materials we’re developing are going to become the foundation for a new type of homeschool network made up of friendly local groups called “houses” (just like in Harry Potter). There’s lots of wonderful material here on our website — take a look around and make yourself at home. 😊

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

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(SIGN UP for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered to your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

If you’re looking for a simple homeschool science and nature project this winter, you won’t find anything better than the Great Backyard Bird Count scheduled for 15–18 February. Now’s the time to put it on your calendar.

The Great Backyard Bird Count is sponsored by Cornell University and several other organizations, and each year it produces a snapshot of birdlife across the United States and around the world:

Anyone who participates (like you and your students) is making a genuine contribution to our understanding of global bird populations:

“Launched in 1998 by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and National Audubon Society, the Great Backyard Bird Count was the first online citizen-science project to collect data on wild birds and to display results in near real-time.

“Now, more than 160,000 people of all ages and walks of life worldwide join the four-day count each February to create an annual snapshot of the distribution and abundance of birds.

“We invite you to participate! For at least 15 minutes on one or more days of the count, February 15-18, 2019, simply tally the numbers and kinds of birds you see. You can count from any location, anywhere in the world, for as long as you wish!“ (birdcount.org)

If you’re a beginner, the easiest way to get started is with a backyard feeder. Here are some selections at Amazon.com that you can explore — browse around and find one or two that would fit well in your own backyard setting:

Your participation in the GBBC doesn’t have to be just feeder-watching, of course, and it doesn’t literally have to be in a “backyard.” Just pick any nearby location of interest — a farm field, a city park, a local lake, a patch of woods, or your backyard — count the birds you see for at least 15 minutes, and then report your observations on birdcount.org. And then watch as thousands of other reports come in from all around the world. It’s homeschool science at its best. 😊

What outdoor discoveries have your students made lately?

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

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

❡ Find all our Birds & Natural History posts on Facebook at #RHnature.

📜 ON EXHIBIT: Tolkien – Maker of Middle-Earth

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(SIGN UP for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

If you have fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in your homeschool, you’ll want to look into the major Tolkien exhibit that will open this month at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Here’s a comprehensive illustrated write-up about the exhibit from the neighboring Metropolitan Museum:

The exhibit will feature many of Tolkien’s own drawings and illustrations of characters and scenes as he envisioned them.

“Conversation with Smaug.” (Image: mymodernmet.com.)

Can’t get to New York? (Me either!) Don’t despair: a beautifully illustrated companion book and exhibit catalog has just been published, and you can order your own or request it at your local library:

The exhibit in New York will run from 25 January to 12 May, and will include a wide range of on-site special events, some of which may be recorded and posted online. Keep an eye on the Morgan Library’s exhibit page for details as they develop.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❡ Find all our Books & Libraries posts on Facebook at #RHlibraries.

🖋 WONDERFUL WORDS: Lift Every Voice and Sing

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(SIGN UP for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

The American minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was born on this day in 1929, so in his honor our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of January is James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Written for a Lincoln’s Birthday celebration in 1900 and set to music by Johnson’s brother J. Rosamond Johnson, “Lift Every Voice” is today often referred to as the Black National Anthem:

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

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

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

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

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

What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

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

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

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including James Weldon Johnson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

❡ Find all our Language & Literature posts on Facebook at #RHwords.

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 13 January 2019

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(FOR RICHER ACCESS, just click on our attached blog post — it’s full of lovely links that don’t carry over to Facebook. You’ll like it!) 😊

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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Mississippi, and our COUNTRIES are Indonesia 🇮🇩, Iran 🇮🇷, Iraq 🇮🇶, and Ireland 🇮🇪. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a little while ago.)

🌒 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waxing crescent — a good time for both stargazing and moon watching! Dial up this week’s constellations with your recommended homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 13 January) — Today is the 13th day of 2019; there are 352 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ The National Geographic Society was founded on this day in 1888 in Washington, D.C.

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

TUESDAY (15 January) — Queen Elizabeth I of England was crowned on this day in 1559. For an illustrated outline of the historical period named for her, turn to pages 260–261 in your homeschool history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Our poem-of-the-week for the third week of January is James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900), for American minister and civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., born on this day in 1929. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us throughout the year.

WEDNESDAY (16 January) — On this day in the year 27 B.C., the Roman Senate conferred the title “Augustus” on the general and de facto dictator Octavian, thereby marking the end of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire.

THURSDAY (17 January) — Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on this day in 1706. ⬩ One of the most important battles in the Southern Theater of the American Revolution, the Battle of Cowpens, took place on this day in 1781 near Cowpens, South Carolina.

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

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

SUNDAY (20 January) — There will be a TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE tonight (20–21 January), visible across all of North and South America. It will be a homeschool event not to be missed! 🌕 And fittingly, one of the first two men to walk on the moon, American astronaut Buzz Aldrin, was born on this day in 1930.

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May you live all the days of your life.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Ireland is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the peaceful River Shannon, Ireland’s longest river. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the River Shannon entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The River Shannon passing by King John’s Castle in Limerick, Ireland. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

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

❡ Find all our weekly “Quick Freshes” posts on Facebook at #RHfreshes.

🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Mississippi, Indonesia, Ireland, and More 🌎

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(FOR RICHER ACCESS, just click on our attached blog post — it’s full of lovely links that don’t carry over to Facebook. You’ll like it!) 😊

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 your recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 429), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    Mississippi State Quarter
    MISSISSIPPI (the 20th state, 10 December 1817) — The Magnolia State. Capital: Jackson. Mississippi can be found on page 576 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Probably Chippewa mici zibi, meaning ‘great river’ or ‘gathering-in of all the waters.’ Also Algonquin word messipi” (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: www.ms.gov.

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

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning a comprehensive unit study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress.

This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

  • 🇮🇩 INDONESIA in southeastern Asia. Population: 262,787,403. Capital: Jakarta. Website: www.indonesia.go.id (in Indonesian).
  • 🇮🇷 IRAN in southwestern Asia. Population: 83,024,745. Capital: Tehran. Website: www.president.ir (in Persian, English, and Arabic).
  • 🇮🇶 IRAQ in the Middle East. Population: 40,194,216. Capital: Baghdad. Website: www.pmo.iq (in Arabic and English).
  • 🇮🇪 IRELAND in western Europe. Population: 5,068,050. Capital: Dublin. Website: www.gov.ie (in English and Irish).

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

What grand geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ 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 practice their critical reading and thinking skills.

❡ 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ Find all our weekly States & Countries posts on Facebook at #RHstates.

🌕 HOMESCHOOL ASTRONOMY: The Moon’s Far Side (and a Lunar Eclipse)

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(FOR RICHER ACCESS, just click on our attached blog post — it’s full of lovely links that don’t carry over to Facebook. You’ll like it!) 😊

The far side of the moon was completely unknown through most of human history. It wasn’t until 1959 that it was first photographed (by the Soviet Luna 3 probe), and it wasn’t until this month that a soft landing was accomplished. The Chinese lunar lander Chang’e 4 successfully touched down on January 3rd, and since then has been sending back the first-ever surface-level pictures of the moon’s far side.

The Chinese Chang’e 4 lunar lander on the far side of the moon, January 2019. (Image: Smithsonian magazine.)

Here’s a good report to share with your homeschool students this week on what Chang’e 4 is up to, from Smithsonian magazine:

The Chinese lander touched down inside the Von Kármán crater in the moon’s southern hemisphere. Where exactly is that landing site? If you pull out your homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) you can find it right there on plate 123. (Did you know your atlas has beautiful maps of the moon? It does!)

Our River Houses mascot Horace the Otter decided to investigate the far side of the moon himself, just to see what all the fuss was about.

Horace the River Otter explores the far side of the moon.

And he successfully put his own paw-print down right next to the Von Kármán crater — sure enough, there it is!

Horace the River Otter sets his paw down beside the landing site of the Chinese Chang’e 4 lunar probe.

If you want to teach a clever little lesson in the history of science, take out not just your atlas but also your homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books), which has biographical entries interfiled with the main alphabet, and look up the names of the craters surrounding the Von Kármán landing site: Leibniz, Leeuwenhoek, Oppenheimer, Boyle, Oresme, Thomson — famous scientists all! (See how all our educational schemes and tools fit together here in the River Houses?) 😊

And speaking of the moon, a timely reminder: there is a total lunar eclipse coming up later this month, on the night of 20–21 January. It’s marked on our annual River Houses calendar, and you should mark it on your homeschool calendar too! We’ll have more to say about it as the date approaches.

What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 🔭 🌌

❡ Find all our astronomical “Watchers of the Skies” posts on Facebook at #RHastronomy.

⛸ WONDERFUL WORDS: A Winter Poem for Homeschool Dads

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(SIGN UP for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

Here’s a wintertime poem-of-the-week to tug at your heartstrings: “Ice” by contemporary American poet Gail Mazur, for all homeschool fathers.

Ice

In the warming house, children lace their skates,
bending, choked, over their thick jackets.

A Franklin stove keeps the place so cozy
it’s hard to imagine why anyone would leave,

clumping across the frozen beach to the river.
December’s always the same at Ware’s Cove,

the first sheer ice, black, then white
and deep until the city sends trucks of men

with wooden barriers to put up the boys’
hockey rink. An hour of skating after school,

of trying wobbly figure-8’s, an hour
of distances moved backwards without falling,

then — twilight, the warming house steamy
with girls pulling on boots, their chafed legs

aching. Outside, the hockey players keep
playing, slamming the round black puck

until it’s dark, until supper. At night,
a shy girl comes to the cove with her father.

Although there isn’t music, they glide
arm in arm onto the blurred surface together,

braced like dancers. She thinks she’ll never
be so happy, for who else will find her graceful,

find her perfect, skate with her
in circles outside the emptied rink forever?

Most of our weekly poems are intended as examples for homeschool study, but a few are just for mom and dad (in particular) to enjoy. Here’s hoping you and your family are enjoying the special warmth that only winter brings.

What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many notable poets (including Gail Mazur) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

❡ Find all our Language & Literature posts on Facebook at #RHwords.

📚 LIBRARY TUESDAY: The 116th Congress at the Library of Congress

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(SIGN UP for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

The 116th Congress is now in session in Washington, and this is a good time to remind your students that they can find out what’s happening in Congress on any day of the week from one very special library — our national library — the Library of Congress itself:

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and its holdings encompass all of human endeavor, but its first purpose has always been to serve the operational needs of the United States Congress. At the Library’s Congress.gov website you can find the daily schedule of sessions, meetings, committees, and conferences; you can read the bills that have been introduced, passed, and rejected; you can look up your own senators and representatives and find out what their voting records are; you can even watch congressional debates live as they happen, without the attendant spin and sensationalism of the media.

The Library of Congress also has a wide variety of teaching materials and lesson plans about the work of the Congress — there’s something available for every grade level:

Why not make it a homeschool project this year to follow a particular bill through Congress, or follow the meetings of a particular committee, or the votes of a particular senator or representative. Helping the Congress do its work, and helping We the People to keep an eye on that work, is one of the main functions of the Library of Congress — a library every good homescholar should know.

What educational discoveries have you made at your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❡ Find all our Books & Libraries posts on Facebook at #RHlibraries.

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 6 January 2019

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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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Indiana, and our weekly COUNTRIES are Honduras 🇭🇳, Hungary 🇭🇺, Iceland 🇮🇸, and India 🇮🇳. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a little while ago.)

🌒 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a sliver of a waxing crescent — a very good time for stargazing! Dial up this week’s constellations with your homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 6 January) — Today is the 6th day of 2019; there are 359 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the American poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).

MONDAY (7 January) — On this day in 1610, Galileo Galilei first reported that he had discovered several previously unknown moons orbiting the planet Jupiter — we now called them the Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa. You can see them from your backyard with almost any small telescope. ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the African-American writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960).

TUESDAY (8 January) — Today is the birthday of two great British scientists: the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the principle of natural selection, and the physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018). ⬩ And in another sphere of human accomplishment: today is also the birthday of Elvis Presley (1935–1977). ⬩ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for second week of January is Gail Mazur’s “Ice,” for homeschool dads and all wintertime learners. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us throughout the year.

WEDNESDAY (9 January) — On this day in 1923, Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva made the first successful flight in an autogyro.

THURSDAY (10 January) — On this day in the year 49 B.C., Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river and approached the city of Rome with his army, touching off a civil war that led to the destruction of the Roman Republic and the eventual formation of the Roman Empire.

FRIDAY (11 January) — Today is the birthday of Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804), the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, whose portrait appears on our U.S. $10 bills. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of William James (1842–1910), one of the founders of the modern field of psychology.

SATURDAY (12 January) — Today is the birthday of the French author Charles Perrault (1628–1703), who gave the world Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and many other beloved fairy tales. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of the American journalist and author Jack London (1876–1916).

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

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May our laws guard our liberties, and liberty our laws.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Honduras is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Choluteca River, which flows through the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Choluteca River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Choluteca River near Choluteca, Honduras. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th will be coming on a Sunday this month! 🙀

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

❡ Find all our weekly “Quick Freshes” posts on Facebook at #RHfreshes.

🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Indiana, Honduras, India, and More 🌎

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(FOR RICHER ACCESS, just click on our attached blog post — it’s full of lovely links that don’t carry over to Facebook. You’ll like it!) 😊

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 your recommended River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union, which you’ll find on page 429 of your brand new 2019 almanac, so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    Indiana State Quarter
    INDIANA (the 19th state, 11 Dec 1816) — The Hoosier State. Capital: Indianapolis. Indiana can be found on page 570 in your new 2019 almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Means ‘land of the Indians’” (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: www.in.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your homeschool library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for 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 world of new geographical and historical information. 😊

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning a comprehensive unit study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress.

This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

  • 🇭🇳 HONDURAS in Central America. Population: 9,182,766. Capital: Tecucigalpa. Website: www.presidencia.gob.hn (in Spanish).
  • 🇭🇺 HUNGARY in east-central Europe. Population: 9,825,704. Capital: Budapest. Website: www.kormany.hu (in Hungarian and English).
  • 🇮🇸 ICELAND in the northern Atlantic Ocean. Population: 343,518. Capital: Reykjavik. Website: www.iceland.is (in English).
  • 🇮🇳 INDIA in southern Asia. Population: 1,296,834,042. Capital: New Delhi. Website: www.india.gov.in (in English and Hindi).

These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). Your new 2019 almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

What grand geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ 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 practice their critical reading and thinking skills.

❡ 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 😊

❡ Find all our weekly States & Countries posts on Facebook at #RHstates.

🎉 HAPPY TWELFTH NIGHT!

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(SIGN UP for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered to your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas, which means tonight is Twelfth Night, an evening traditionally given over to disorderly irreverence. Just as rowdy Halloween (All Hallows’ Evening) precedes the Christian holy day of All Hallows (All Saints’ Day), so rowdy Twelfth Night precedes the Christian holy day of Epiphany.

Shakespeare’s slapstick-ish comedy Twelfth Night was written as entertainment for a night such as this, when the world is upside-down and a woman disguised as a man falls in love with a man who is in love with a woman who is in love with the woman disguised as a man, and when, as usual, the Fool is the only one with any sense. For homeschool entertainment this evening, why not listen to the great countertenor Alfred Deller singing, in true Renaissance style, the Fool’s song “When that I was and a little tiny boy” from Twelfth Night:

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Alfred Deller (1912–1979) was a key figure in the twentieth-century revival of authentic early music performance. He sang naturally as a countertenor — the highest male vocal register, overlapping with the female contralto and mezzo-soprano registers — and he recreated for new audiences the popular singing styles of the Shakespearean era.

Why not sing along and learn a verse or two of this classic Shakespearean song in your homeschool this week:

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day.

With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came to a man’s estate,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
‘Gainst knave and thief men shut their gate,
For the rain, it raineth every day.

With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
For the rain it raineth every day.

But when I came, alas, to wife,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
By swaggering I could never thrive,
For the rain, it raineth every day.

With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
For the rain it raineth every day.

Long long ago the world begun,
With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain.
But that’s all one, our play is done,
And we’ll strive to please you every day.

With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
For the rain it raineth every day.

And in case you and your students have forgotten the plot of Twelfth Night (or never could figure it out in the first place), cartoon artists Mya Gosling has got you covered:

[Twelfth Night in three panels]
Twelfth Night in three panels. (Image: Good Tickle Brain, “the world’s foremost (and very possibly only) stick figure Shakespeare webcomic.”)

What special holidays have you celebrated and what musico-literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Find all our Holidays & Anniversaries posts on Facebook at #RHanniversaries.

🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: A Partridge in a 🍐 🌳

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Our Holiday Music Month comes to its grand conclusion today with two posts — one for the Twelfth Day (of Christmas) and one for Twelfth Night.

This spectacular arrangement of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” by David Chase (performed by the Boston Pops Orchestra) is a musically educational holiday masterpiece — why not turn it up to orchestral volume and invite your students to march around the house today:

January 5th is traditionally considered the last day of the Christmas season — the Twelfth Day of Christmas. In many Western cultures it’s treated as a day of revelry and celebration; it’s also often regarded as the traditional day when the Christmas tree and all the decorations come down until next year. The humorous “Twelve Days of Christmas” song, which can be traced in part as far back as the late 1700s, celebrates the day and has become a staple of radio broadcasts, shopping malls, and concert halls across the country.

Chase’s arrangement, which incorporates fragments from a great variety of other pieces of music, has become an especially popular performance piece. How many of its sources can you and your students identify? I can hear children’s songs, a Beethoven symphony, The Sound of Music, Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, some dance-hall cancan music, and Handel’s grand Messiah at the end — you may be able to recognize still more.

One of the deepest purposes of a liberal education is to enable people to get jokes, and this “Twelve Days” performance teaches that happy principle. See if your students notice how the entire audience laughs when the orchestra gets to Day 5, and see if they can tell why.

What artistic creations and musical discoveries are you making in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Just how much are those French hens? Did you know you can use “The Twelve Days of Christmas” to teach economics? It’s true! The PNC Financial Services Group, a Pittsburgh-based banking firm, has for many years been publishing a whimsical Christmas Price Index that charts the total cost of all the items in the song, from twelve drummers drumming to a partridge in a pear tree. They even have a kids’ activity book and twelve daily crafts you can make — why not give them a try!

❡ Find all our Arts & Music posts on Facebook at #RHartists.

🐦 NATURE NOTES: Free Beginner’s eBird Course Online

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(SIGN UP for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox every week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year.

If you’re interested but don’t know where to begin, here’s a wonderful free introduction to the online eBird service from Cornell University that you and your students can take together:

It’s a three-hour introductory course, all online with no materials to buy, and it will help you learn how to find birds in your local area, identify them, and record your observations in a way that will make them useful to others. The instructor is a K–12 education specialist, and you can even get a continuing education certificate (for a fee) if you’re so inclined.

I use eBird almost every day and so do thousands of other people around the world. Why not join us?

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

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

❡ Find all our Birds & Natural History posts on Facebook at #RHnature.

🌜 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – 2019 Lunar Eclipse Edition

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On the first Friday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. This month is special because there is a total lunar eclipse on the way, and it will be visible across all of North and South America on the night of 20–21 January (Sunday–Monday). This will be a homeschool event not to be missed! You can find all the details at timeanddate.com:

The partial-eclipse phase will begin on the evening of Sunday the 20th about 10:30 pm in the eastern US time zone, with the peak of totality arriving about 12:15 am on Monday the 21st. The timeanddate.com website will let you find the exact times for your own specific location.

Zone of visibility for the January 2019 total lunar eclipse. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

The lunar eclipse isn’t the only thing happening this month, of course. We usually post the monthly northern hemisphere review from the Hubble Space Telescope’s website here, but they seem to be a bit behind at the moment and their video isn’t up yet. Here’s their main page (still showing the December video at this writing) — you can check it from time to time for updates:

The monthly advanced summary from space.com is up to date, and it provides lots of details that are perfect for every serious young astronomy student:

The best stargazing nights in January will be toward the beginning of the month — the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 5th.

What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 🔭 🌌

❡ Find all our astronomical “Watchers of the Skies” posts on Facebook at #RHastronomy.

🌨 WONDERFUL WORDS: The Snow-Storm

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Snow-season has arrived in the northern states, and that’s a good time to introduce your students to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s frosty “Snow-Storm,” one of the most commonly anthologized poems of nineteenth-century America and our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of January:

The Snow-Storm

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farm-house at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveller stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

  Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer’s sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), says the Poetry Foundation, “was one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the nineteenth century in the United States,” so every good homescholar should be acquainted with his name and his work. “The Snow-Storm” doesn’t look very poetical at first glance — it has a prose-y feel, and what’s worse, it doesn’t even rhyme. How can it be a poem? Well, if you start counting — always a good practice when you’re making the acquaintance of a new poem — you’ll see some of Emerson’s crafty art at work: the poem has 28 lines, and all but three have exactly ten syllables. That’s a very hard thing to accomplish without effort. One of the three misfits is the opening line of the second section and it’s typographically indented; that’s a standard marker for a partial line in poetry and drama. As for the other two irregularities — can you find them? — one has one extra syllable and the other is one short. I can almost imagine Emerson at his desk thinking, “That’s a really good line, but it has an extra syllable. Well, I’ll take one off somewhere else and it’ll balance out.”

In its content, “The Snow-Storm” can almost be read as two poems that are only loosely joined together. The first nine lines could easily stand alone as a separate work, and it’s almost tempting to think the two parts were written at different times. The first section emphasizes the storm’s effect on us, while the second section presents the storm as a builder, mason, and architect, creating overnight what it takes mortal masons an age to construct.

There’s some wonderful homeschool vocabulary to explore here. Send your students to your family dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) to look up artificer, bastions, myriad, and maugre (that’s a rare one today). And what about those “Parian wreaths” that the storm mockingly hangs on coop and kennel? You can go off on a great historico-literary quest with that particular phrase. Your dictionary (page 1282) will tell you that “Parian” means “relating to the island of Paros” and also to “a type of white, semitranslucent marble quarried at Paros and highly valued in ancient times for making sculpture”; and so also in a more modern sense, to “a fine white porcelain” similar to Parian marble. (Send your students to plate 72 in your atlas to find the island of Paros.) What, then, is Emerson’s storm doing? Overnight it’s hanging finely sculpted white marble wreaths on … temples and grand statues? No, on the farmer’s chicken coop and dog kennel!

A nineteenth-century Parian ware bust in the classical style, complete with a snowy “Parian wreath.” (Offered for sale by rubylane.com.)

The next time you’re out in a storm this winter — or even watching the winter weather on TV around a radiant fireplace — why not take along Emerson’s “Snow-Storm” and contemplate the north wind’s masonry and the frolic architecture of the snow.

What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ The tumultuous privacy of storm: 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. 😊

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Emerson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

❡ Find all our Language & Literature posts on Facebook at #RHwords.

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Social 300s

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Here’s a great activity to get you back in the swing of things after the holidays. Tuesday is our Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month — even when it falls on New Year’s Day — we invite you and your homescholars 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 cover the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

[Dewey Decimal Classes]

The class for January is the 300s, which covers the Social Sciences. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 300s” means the numbers running from 300 to 399.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the 300s:

  • CLASS 300 – Social Sciences
    • 300 – Social Sciences (general), Sociology, & Anthropology
    • 310 – Statistics
    • 320 – Political Science
    • 330 – Economics
    • 340 – Law
    • 350 – Public Administration & Military Science
    • 360 – Social Problems & Social Services
    • 370 – Education
    • 380 – Commerce, Communications, & Transportation
    • 390 – Customs, Etiquette, & Folklore

Each of these divisions is subdivided further of course: in the 340s (Law), for example, you’ll find works on Constitutional Law (342), Criminal Law (345), Courts and Procedures (347), 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 special field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to really drive that point home.)

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.

(Next month: The Linguistic 400s.)

What delightful decimals and textual treasures have you found in your library lately? 😊

❡ 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 300s, one in the 310s, one in the 320s, one in the 330s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 300) and the very last book in the class (the highest 399). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your five favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb without even realizing it. 📚

❡ Explore more: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you find all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❡ Find all our Books & Libraries posts on Facebook at #RHlibraries.

🔔 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Sounds): Ring Out, Wild Bells!

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One of the most famous New Year poems in the English language is Alfred Tennyson’s “Ring Out, Wild Bells” (1850). What was the inspiration for that poem? It was something like this traditional New Year’s bell-ringing at Eckington Church in Derbyshire, England, shown here in a fine five-minute documentary you can share with your students tonight:

In this traditional New Year’s performance, the ringers start by ringing out the old year right up to midnight, and then they all stop as a single bell rings the twelve o’clock hour — and then all the bells begin again, more joyously, ringing in the New Year.

This performance is an example of “full-circle” ringing, with the bells turning through a complete 360º arc from upside-down on one side, to upside-down on the other. This makes it easier to control the full set or “ring” of bells as though it were a single instrument played by eight people.

Tennyson’s “Ring Out, Wild Bells” took this English tradition of church-bell ringing on New Year’s Eve and, through language, converted it into both an earthly wish for better times and also a Christian wish for the heavenly kingdom that will do away with all suffering. Tennyson was one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century, and this finely crafted piece (eight syllables per line) is one of his best known and most accessible works — a great one to read and analyze with your students:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
  The flying cloud, the frosty light:
  The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
  Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
  The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
  For those that here we see no more;
  Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
  And ancient forms of party strife;
  Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
  The faithless coldness of the times;
  Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
  The civic slander and the spite;
  Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
  Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
  Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
  The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
  Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Here’s wishing you and your family a peaceful, prosperous, healthy, and happy homeschool new year. 😊

❡ Ring out the thousand wars of old: 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.

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Tennyson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

❡ Find all our Language & Literature posts on Facebook at #RHwords.

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 30 December 2018

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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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Louisiana, and our COUNTRIES are Guinea 🇬🇳, Guinea-Bissau 🇬🇼, Guyana 🇬🇾, and Haiti 🇭🇹. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌘 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waning crescent — an increasingly good time for stargazing! Track the moon’s phases each month at timeanddate.com, and dial up this week’s constellations with your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 30 December) — Today is the 364th day of 2018; there is only one day remaining in the year! Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 351–357 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is the birthday of the Indian-English author and Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).

MONDAY (31 December) — It’s New Year’s Eve! Ring Out, Wild Bells! ⬩ It’s also the birthday of the great French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954).

TUESDAY (1 January 2019!) — HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🎉 The Julian Calendar came into effect on this day in the year 45 BC. It was the principal calendar system used in the Western world for more than 1500 years (before it was largely replaced by the Gregorian Calendar). ⬩ Today is the birthday of Betsy Ross (1752–1836), who, tradition says, sewed the first American flag. 🇺🇸 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of January is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s frosty “Snow-Storm.” Print your own River Houses poetry calendar at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us throughout the year.

WEDNESDAY (2 January) — On this day in 1860, French mathematician and astronomer Urbain Le Verrier announced the discovery of Vulcan, a planet orbiting the sun inside the orbit of Mercury. No subsequent research has been able to confirm the existence of this planet. ⬩ Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, today is also the birthday of the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920–1992).

THURSDAY (3 January) — Today is the birthday of the great Roman writer and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC). ⬩ It’s also the birthday of English writer J.R.R. Tolkein (1892–1973), author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

FRIDAY (4 January) — Today is the birthday of French educator Louis Braille (1809–1852), the inventor of the famous tactile writing system for the blind. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of James Bond.

SATURDAY (5 January) — Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas and the end of our Holiday Music Month, and you know what song we’ll be going out with. 🍐 🌳

SUNDAY (6 January) — Today is the birthday of the American poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST, for the New Year, is commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but as Abraham Lincoln famously said, you can’t always believe what you read on the Internet. Nevertheless, whatever it’s source, it’s a fine sentiment and a fine toast as the calendar changes: “May you always be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and may each New Year find you a better man.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Guinea-Bissau in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Cacheu River, one of the longest rivers of Guinea-Bissau. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Cacheu River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

Cacheu River near São Vicente, Guinea-Bissau. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week and in the grand new year? 😊

❡ Find all our weekly “Quick Freshes” posts on Facebook at #RHfreshes.

🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Louisiana, Guinea, Haiti, 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 your River Houses family reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 422), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    Louisiana State Quarter
    LOUISIANA (the 18th state, 30 April 1812) — The Pelican State. Capital: Baton Rouge. Louisiana can be found on page 573 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Part of territory called Louisiana by René-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle for French King Louis XIV” (almanac page 423). State bird: Brown Pelican (bird guide page 256). Website: louisiana.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your family reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for 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 world of new geographical and historical information. 😊

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning a comprehensive unit study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress.

This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

  • 🇬🇳 GUINEA on the west coast of Africa. Population: 12,413,867. Capital: Conakry. Website: gouvernement.gov.gn (in French).
  • 🇬🇼 GUINEA-BISSAU on the west coast of Africa. Population: 1,792,338. Capital: Bissau. Website: state.gov/p/af/ci/pu (U.S. State Department page, in English).
  • 🇬🇾 GUYANA in northern South America. Population: 737,718. Capital: Georgetown. Website: parliament.gov.gy (in English).
  • 🇭🇹 HAITI in the West Indies. Population: 10,646,714. Capital: Port-au-Prince. Website: primature.gouv.ht (in French).

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

What wondrous geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ 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 practice their critical reading and thinking skills.

❡ 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? 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 😊

❡ Find all our weekly States & Countries posts on Facebook at #RHstates.

🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Sussex Mummers Carol

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You’ve probably had a busy week. Ready to wind down? There’s no better way than with Percy Grainger’s beautiful piano arrangement of this old English carol:

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December is Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of our seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a variety of educational notes that will help you teach little homeschool lessons all along the way.

The Australian-born British and American composer Percy Grainger (1882–1961) was a key figure in the folk-music revival movement in the early 20th century, and he produced modern professional arrangements of many traditional melodies that folklorists had collected all through the British Isles. This piano composition is based on a folk carol known to have been sung in the county of Sussex at least as far back as the early 1800s, and probably much earlier.

Granger’s refined and peaceful arrangement is rather far removed from the original setting in which a carol like this would have been performed. All across Europe there are a great variety of carnival-like Christmas and New Year traditions that stretch back into the Middle Ages and beyond, and one of these is the British tradition of “Mummery.” In many villages around the New Year it was customary for the townsfolk to dress up in harlequin-like costumes and go from door to door acting out traditional pantomimes and begging for money and food. These troops of “Mummers” — a bit like rowdy Christmas trick-or-treaters — would sing carols and other songs to inspire generosity on the part of their hosts.

Here’s a grand and slightly irregular (i.e., realistic) performance of the original Sussex Mummer’s Carol by a winter festival group called the California Revels — it offers a glimpse of how such a performance might have once looked in the wild:

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You can perhaps see why we at the River Houses have a special fondness for the lyrics:

God bless the master of this house
   With happiness beside;
Where e’re his body rides or walks,
   His God must be his guide,
   His God must be his guide.

God bless the mistress of this house
   With gold chain round her breast;
Where e’re her body sleeps or wakes,
   Lord, send her soul to rest,
   Lord, send her soul to rest.

God bless your house, your children too,
   Your cattle and your store;
The Lord increase you day by day
   And send you more and more,
   And send you more and more.

What artistic creations and musical discoveries are you making in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds this month, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music station in New York City. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on almost all day. Won’t you join me? 😊 🎶 🎄

❡ Find all our Arts & Music posts on Facebook at #RHartists.