The River Houses Homeschool Network

Welcome! (Pinned post)

16 December 2018 by Bob O'Hara

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. 😊

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 16 June 2019

16 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-06-16

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Washington, and our COUNTRIES are Sudan 🇸🇩, Suriname 🇸🇷, Swaziland (Eswatini) 🇸🇿, and Sweden 🇸🇪. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing — a good time for moon watching! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 16 June) — HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads everywhere! 👨‍👧‍👦 Today is the 167th day of 2019; there are 198 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 the birthday of the American geneticist and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock (1902–1992). 👩‍🔬 And on this day in 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. 👩‍🚀

Monday (17 June) — The Battle of Bunker Hill, the first coordinated encounter between opposing armies during the American Revolution, took place on this day in 1775 across the river from Boston. (See page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia for a Revolutionary review.) ⚔️ And today is the birthday of one of the giants of American, nay, of world history, to wit, Ruth Graves Wakefield (1903–1977), the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie! 🍪 And not only that, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research projects from the River Houses Lunar Society (riverhouses.org/lunar). 🌕

Tuesday (18 June) — On this day in 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain. ⚔️ And on this day in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the presidential election of 1872. ✓

Wednesday (19 June) — On this day in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Union troops announced to slaves still living in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. The date is celebrated in Texas and many other states as Juneteenth Independence Day. 🎉

Thursday (20 June) — The University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, received its royal charter on this day in the year 1248. 👨‍🎓 And the United States Congress approved the design of the Great Seal of the United States on this day in 1782. (You may well have a copy of it in your pocket right now.) 💵

Friday (21 June) — Today is the northern hemisphere SUMMER SOLSTICE — the first day of (astronomical) summer! ⛱

Saturday (22 June) — On this day in 1633, the Catholic Church forced Italian scientist Galileo Galilei to “abjure, curse, and detest” the view he formerly supported, namely that the earth revolved around the sun and was not fixed at the center of the universe. 🔭 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of June is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Swing,” for summertime play. 🌞 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Sunday (23 June) — The great English mathematician Alan Turing was born on this day in 1912. His pioneering work in computer science and cryptanalysis was instrumental in the breaking of German codes during World War II. 🖥

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May honest men be great, and great men honest.”

❡ 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 Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: The South American country of Suriname is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Maroni River, which forms the border between Suriname on the west and French Guiana on the east. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Maroni River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Maroni River on the border between Suriname and French Guiana. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

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

❡ Lively springs: This is one of our regular “Quick Freshes” posts looking at the homeschool week ahead. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

🇺🇸 🌎 SUNDAY STATES: Washington, Sudan, Sweden, and More

16 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-washington

Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.

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

🇺🇸 WASHINGTON (the 42nd state, 11 November 1889) — The Evergreen State. Capital: Olympia. Washington can be found on page 588 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Named after George Washington” (almanac page 430). State bird: American Goldfinch (bird guide page 442). Website: access.wa.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, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 😊

❡ 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:

🇸🇩 SUDAN in eastern Africa. Population: 43,120,843. Capital: Khartoum. Website: www.presidency.gov.sd (in Arabic, French, and English).
🇸🇷 SURINAME in northern South America. Population: 597,927. Capital: Paramaribo. Website: www.gov.sr (in Dutch).
🇸🇿 SWAZILAND in southern Africa. Population: 1,087,200. Capitals: Mbabane and Lobamba. Website: www.gov.sz (in English). (The country of Swaziland has recently renamed itself Eswatini. Beginning with the 2019–2020 academic year this entry will be moved to the e section of the alphabet.)
🇸🇪 SWEDEN in northern Europe. Population: 10,040,995. Capital: Stockholm. Website: sweden.se (in Swedish, English, and several other languages).

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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we take a homeschool tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the year. 🇺🇸 🌎

👨‍👧‍👧 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL FATHER’S DAY from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

15 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-childrens-hour

Tomorrow (the third Sunday in June) is Father’s Day! Happy Father’s Day to all homeschool dads everywhere!

Edith, Alice, and Allegra Longfellow, by Thomas Read. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

In honor of this happy holiday, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of June is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour” (1863), which stars Henry’s three daughters, Alice Mary, Anne Allegra, and Edith. Longfellow was the most popular poet of nineteenth century America, and “The Children’s Hour” was once widely taught in American schools.

The scene of the poem is the study in Longfellow’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, now a National Historic Site that you can perhaps visit someday on your homeschool travels around the United States.

The Children’s Hour
Between the dark and the daylight,
When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
That is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
And voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
And Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
To take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
They enter my castle wall!
They climb up into my turret
O’er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
They seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
Is not a match for you all!
I have you fast in my fortress,
And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
In the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
And moulder in dust away!

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

❡ Till the walls shall crumble to ruin: 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 Longfellow) 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 (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends. 📖

🔎 HOMESCHOOL NEWS AND RESEARCH – June 2019

15 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-06-news

I’m going to try out a new feature today: a roundup of some recent news and academic research on homeschooling, offered for your interest. I like to monitor academic commentary on homeschooling, and if you do too, the links and summaries below will help you follow along. (And if the topic is not of interest, you can just skip on by.)

Any one of these publications may have a positive, negative, or neutral outlook on home education. The linked titles generally point to the full text of each work. (Facebook readers should click to the attached blog post to find these links live.) This month’s offerings follow. (The first one, by a high-profile author, is quite hostile; a charming way to begin, no?)

(1) Homeschooling: Parent Rights Absolutism vs. Child Rights to Education & Protection — Elizabeth Bartholet (“Elizabeth Bartholet is the Morris Wasserstein Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.”)
Abstract: This article describes the rapidly growing homeschooling phenomenon, and the threat it poses to children and society. Homeschooling activists have in recent decades largely succeeded in their deregulation campaign, overwhelming legislators with aggressive advocacy. As a result, parents can now keep their children at home in the name of homeschooling free from any real scrutiny as to whether or how they are educating their children. Many homeschool precisely because they want to isolate their children from ideas and values central to public education and to our democracy. Many promote racial segregation and female subservience. Many question science. Many are determined to keep their children from exposure to views that might enable autonomous choice about their future lives. This article calls for a radical transformation in the homeschooling regime, and a related rethinking of child rights and reframing of constitutional doctrine. It recommends a presumptive ban on homeschooling, with the burden on parents to demonstrate justification for permission to homeschool.

(2) John Holt: The Philosophy of Unschooling — Adam Dickerson
Abstract: This is the first-ever book to offer an analytical study of John Holt’s philosophy of education. It provides a clear analysis and critical evaluation of the key themes in his work, considers the main objections to his views, and discusses their relation to the contemporary homeschooling movement. The book examines Holt’s critique of compulsory education and his account of the relationships between learning, freedom, intelligence and character. It argues that Holt’s works contain a philosophically rich critique of instrumentalism in education, and thus continue to represent a significant challenge to many mainstream views on education today.

(3) Homeschooled children are far more socially engaged than you might think — Kate Burton and Eileen Slater
Abstract: Next time you meet someone who is homeschooling their child or children, instead of asking them about socialisation (they have heard that one before), consider acknowledging the enormous commitment made by their family and the fantastic opportunities they are providing for their children. Concerns about socialisation in the Australian homeschooling community are not grounded in reality.

(4) Homeschooling in Rural Northwest Arkansas: An Investigation of Parent Choices — Kyle West Mallet
Abstract: The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the reasons parents chose to homeschool their children in Boone and Newton Counties in Northwest Arkansas. Questions regarding the specific reasons driving these parents to homeschool and rationale behind a consortium or group approach rather than traditional stand-alone homeschooling was also considered. Data was collected through an anonymous survey and distributed to the homeschool community located in Boone and Newton County. The study revealed moral and religious reasons play the most integral part of the parents’ decision to homeschool. Social interaction with like-minded peers and curriculum were highly regarded as reasons to homeschool. The information gathered may be used to drive reform of public schools to fit the needs and wants all students and parents within these counties, state, and possibly America.

(5) Seven Persistent Myths About Homeschooling Debunked — Jeff Minick
Abstract: In the last 50 years, homeschooling in the United States has grown from a tiny movement composed primarily of conservative Christians and John Holt “unschoolers” to its present size of around 1.69 million students. Despite these numbers, and despite the fact that most Americans are familiar with the concept of homeschooling, some misconceptions continue to make the rounds. Let’s look at seven of these long-standing myths.

What interesting homeschool news and research have you come across lately? 👩🏻‍🎓

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

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

🇺🇸 HAPPY FLAG DAY!

14 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-flag-day

Flag Day, June 14th every year, celebrates the day in 1777 when Congress established the Stars & Stripes as the national flag of the new United States:

“Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation.“ (Journals of the Continental Congress)

Flag Day was first recognized nationally by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 through a presidential proclamation, and Wilson’s proclamation was later extended by legislation that was signed by President Harry Truman in 1949.

“The Birth of Old Glory” (1917), after a painting by Edward Percy Moran. (Image: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.)

The Library of Congress has a complete rundown on this history of Flag Day and a wide range of educational resources that you and your students can explore today:

➔ Flag Day History and Resources from the Library of Congress

What other holidays and anniversaries are you marking in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ The emblem of the land I love: Flags are wonderful subjects for students to investigate, and your recommended homeschool almanac and world atlas (riverhouses.org/books) both have many pages of flag illustrations — why not open them up today and explore! 🇦🇫 🇦🇱 🇩🇿 🇦🇸 🇦🇩 🇦🇴 🇦🇮 🇦🇬 🇦🇷 🇦🇲 🇦🇼 🇦🇺 🇦🇹 🇦🇿 🇺🇸

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

💰 FREE SUMMER LESSON PLANS from the U.S. Mint

13 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-mint-lessons

If you’re looking for some simple homeschool lessons to do over the summer, why not explore these ready-made lesson plans from the U.S. Mint:

Did you know that the Mint has over 400 free lesson plans for K-12 educators, including many that focus on aviation and space exploration? Check out some of our air and space-themed lesson plans.
Discovering Native American Contributions to the U.S. Space Program (Grades 3–8): Students will learn about the lives of Native Americans who have made significant impacts to the U.S. space program and other STEM fields.
Distinguished Discoveries (Grades 4–6): Students will analyze the importance of selected discoveries, research the history and impact of historical discoveries, and compare and contrast two discoveries.
Discovery, Ship to Shuttle (Grades 2–3): Students will explain the meaning of discovery.
Pioneers in Space (Grades K–1): Students will learn the meaning of the word “pioneer” and be introduced to some aviation pioneers.

This summer’s 50th anniversary of the first moon landing is one of their special themes at the moment, but the Mint’s educational resources cover a wide range of subjects, from geography and financial literacy, to the U.S. states, to historical anniversaries and more — and they’re available for all grade levels. They even have games!

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

❡ Cabinets of wonder: This is one of our occasional posts on the educational value of collections and collecting. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🇱🇰 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Golden Temple of Dambulla in Sri Lanka

12 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-dambulla

Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Sri Lanka’s World Heritage Sites, the Golden Temple of Dambulla.

Buddha statues in the Golden Temple of Dambulla, Sri Lanka. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The cave temple of Dambulla is believed to have been a religious pilgrimage site for more than 2000 years:

“Located in central Sri Lanka, the Golden Temple of Dambulla is a living Buddhist site that is focused on a series of five cave shrines. Inhabited by forest-dwelling Buddhist monks since the 3rd century BCE, these natural caves have been transformed continuously throughout the historical period into one of the largest and most outstanding Buddhist complexes in the Southern and South Eastern Asian region, showcasing innovative approaches to interior layout and decoration. In keeping with a longstanding tradition associated with living Buddhist ritual practices and continuous royal patronage, the cave shrines underwent several renovation and refurbishing programmes before assuming their present interior forms in the 18th century. The vast internal spaces of the cave shrines are not compartmentalized, but are spatially differentiated by a deliberate and subtle arrangement of polychrome sculpture of exceptional craftsmanship and decorated with brilliant compositions of mural paintings.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #561)

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 post one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list online at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.

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

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books) for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found; the history encyclopedia includes national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read UNESCO’s one-paragraph 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 and geographical information. 🇱🇰

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS: “O! say can you see”

11 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-fort-mchenry

This Friday (14 June) is Flag Day, the anniversary of the date in 1777 when Congress adopted the Stars & Stripes as the national flag of the United States. That means our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this second week of June is “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” much better known as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” by Francis Scott Key (1779–1843):

Defence of Fort M’Henry
O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
  What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
  O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
    And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
    Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there —
      O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
      O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
  Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep,
  As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
    Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
    In full glory reflected now shines on the stream —
      ‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
      O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
  That the havock of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
  Their blood has wash’d out their foul foot-steps’ pollution,
    No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
    From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
      And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
      O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
  Between their lov’d home, and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
  Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
    Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
    And this be our motto — “In God is our trust!”
      And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
      O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Key was a prominent Maryland lawyer who was involved in prisoner-exchange negotiations with the British during the too-little-remembered War of 1812, sometimes called the Second War for American Independence. In September of 1814, Key was meeting with British naval officers on board ship in Chesapeake Bay when the British began an artillery assault on Fort McHenry, the principal American defensive point at the entrance to Baltimore harbor.

Key was detained by the British for the duration of the attack so he wouldn’t be able to reveal any intelligence he had acquired about their plans, and he was thus left powerless with nothing to do but watch as his country’s fort was bombarded all through September 13th and overnight into the 14th. But as the sun rose on the 14th, by the dawn’s early light, he saw through a spyglass that the fort’s American defenders had survived the artillery bombardment with their flag still flying.

Key’s published poem commemorating the event, initially titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” was paired with a popular British club song of the day, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” and together they became known as “The Star-Spangled Banner” — and the rest is musical history:

➔

You can see the real Star-Spangled Banner — the actual flag that flew that morning over Fort McHenry — at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. That’s a field trip you should certainly take at some point during your homeschool career.

The original Star-Spangled Banner on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. (Image: Smithsonian Institution.)

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

❡ Gallantly streaming: 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: You can find a quick history of the national anthem (and all four of its verses) on page 492 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 🇺🇸

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 9 June 2019

9 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-06-09

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Montana, and our COUNTRIES are South Africa 🇿🇦, South Sudan 🇸🇸, Spain 🇪🇸, and Sri Lanka 🇱🇰. (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 waxing crescent — a good time for moon watching and still a good time for stargazing! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 9 June) — Today is the 160th day of 2019; there are 205 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 Roman emperor Nero died (by suicide) on this day in the year A.D. 68, sparking a civil war and “the year of four emperors.” 🏛 And today is the birthday of the great Russian emperor Peter the Great (1672–1725). 👑

Monday (10 June) — Today is the birthday of famed children’s book author Maurice Sendak (1928–2012). 📚

Tuesday (11 June) — Alexander the Great died on this day in the year 343 B.C. You can read more about him on page 97 of your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 🏛 On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence. 🖋

Wednesday (12 June) — Today is the birthday of the German-Jewish diarist and Holocaust victim Anne Frank (1929–1945). 📖 And the Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated on this day in 1939 in Cooperstown, New York. ⚾️

Thursday (13 June) — Today is the birthday of the great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1939). ⚛️ It’s also the birthday of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). 🖋

Friday (14 June) — Today is FLAG DAY! 🇺🇸 On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Army. ⚔️ And on this day in 1777, the United States Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the American national flag. 🇺🇸

Saturday (15 June) — Assyrian scribes recorded the occurrence of a total solar eclipse on this day in the year 763 B.C. The date of that eclipse serves a fixed reference point for much of ancient Mesopotamian chronology. 🌏🌑🌞 On this day in 1215, King John of England set his seal to Magna Carta, the Great Charter that is the historical foundation of English (and so American) law. ⚖️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of June is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour,” for Father’s Day. 👨‍👧‍👦 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Sunday (16 June) — HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads! 👨‍👧‍👦 Today is the birthday of the American geneticist and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock (1902–1992). 👩‍🔬 And on this day in 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. 👩‍🚀

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for Flag Day: “To the Star-spangled Banner: long may it wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

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

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

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

🇺🇸 🌎 SUNDAY STATES: Montana, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and More

9 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-montana 😊

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.

🇺🇸
Montana State Quarter
MONTANA (the 41st state, 8 November 1889) — The Treasure State. Capital: Helena. Montana can be found on page 577 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Latin or Spanish for ‘mountainous’” (almanac page 430). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website: mt.gov.

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

🇿🇦 SOUTH AFRICA in southern Africa. Population: 55,380,210. Capital: Pretoria/Cape Town. Website: www.gov.za (in English).
🇸🇸 SOUTH SUDAN in east-central Africa. Population: 10,204,581. Capital: Juba. Website: www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/od.html (CIA World Factbook entry, in English).
🇪🇸 SPAIN in southwestern Europe. Population: 49,331,076. Capital: Madrid. Website: www.lamoncloa.gob.es (in Spanish).
🇱🇰 SRI LANKA in the Indian Ocean. Population: 22,576,592. Capital: Colombo. Website: www.gov.lk (in English, Tamil, and Sinhala).

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

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Spica for June

8 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-spica 😊

June is the first month of Hercules Term in the River Houses, and as the River Houses Star Calendar will tell you, our great-star-of-the-month for June is Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo. Its formal designation is α Virginis — “alpha of Virgo.” Spica (in Latin) is the ear of grain — the spike — in the left hand of the harvest maiden Proserpina (Persephone in Greek).

The constellation Virgo, showing the location of its alpha star, Spica, representing the ear of grain in the harvest maiden’s hand. The dashed red line is the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets follow across the sky. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you want to introduce your students to Spica, you can start with some basic astronomy from your homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books):

“Virgo is both a zodiacal and equatorial constellation. Spica, its brightest star, is about 30º southwest of Arcturus in Boötes [next month’s great star] and forms the southernmost point of the Diamond of Virgo. Spica has a magnitude of 1.2 and it’s the 14th of the 20 brightest stars in the sky. The autumnal equinox, where the sun crosses the celestial equator on its journey south, is located close to the star η [eta] Virginis. In the rough square formed by Denebola in Leo [the lion’s tail] and ε [epsilon], γ [gamma] and β [beta] Virginis lies the so-called ‘Field of the Nebulae’ where Herschel discovered 323 nebulae; some of these are visible in a small telescope.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 7)

The planisphere on the front of your star atlas will help you locate Spica, and that’s plenty for beginning students — your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Spica is packed with additional information on everything from astrometrics to cultural history.

Spica is a blue-white giant about seven times the diameter of the sun. It has a small companion that is invisible to the eye (even with a telescope) but that can be detected spectroscopically. The Spica pair is about 250 light years distant — close in astronomical terms — and it’s also quite young: about 12.5 million years old.

Spica is very close to the ecliptic, the line followed by the moon, sun, and planets as they cross the earth’s sky, and so on rare occasions it is briefly covered by them — an event called an occultation. The last occultation of Spica by Venus occurred in the year 1783, and the next will occur in 2197.

Conjunction of Spica (left) and Venus on 21 November 2018. (Image: Marion Haligowski via Sky & Telescope.)

Measurements of Spica’s position are believed to have led the ancient astronomer Hipparchus to discover the precession of the equinoxes.

Spica has given its name to a World War II cargo ship, a teenage detective in a Japanese manga series, and (of course!) the South Korean pop group Spica:

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This month, why not take your homeschool students out at dusk and introduce them to this great nearby sun, and teach them its name, and so give them a new friend for life.

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

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

❡ 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, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Your general world atlas also has beautiful maps of the whole northern and southern hemisphere night skies on plates 121–122. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 🔭 🌌 🌟

❡ First star I see tonight: This is one of our monthly “great star” posts featuring twelve of the brightest stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. Download and print your own copy of our River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit a different great star each month. 🌟

🇫🇷 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Teaching About D-Day 1944

5 June 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-d-day

Tomorrow is the 75th anniversary of D-Day, one of the most momentous days in modern history. On that day in 1944, the armed forces of Britain, the United States, Canada, and their allies, landed on the beaches of Normandy in France and began the long struggle to retake the continent of Europe from the occupying armies of Nazi Germany.

If you have older homeschool students who are learning about World War II, one of the best approaches you can take to an event like D-Day is to listen together to some of the live news reports that were broadcast that day as the situation was unfolding.

Here are the very first tentative reports from CBS radio in New York, beginning just after midnight on 6 June 1944, made available by the Internet Archive. They are quite gripping, and you and your students can listen to them just as the American public would have listened to them in the early hours of D-Day morning. Note that the first reports were coming from German sources, and the announcers were cautioning people that they might be disinformation:

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You can listen to the whole day’s broadcasts — a true one-of-a-kind history lesson — on the Internet Archive’s D-Day index page here:

➔ Live D-Day News Broadcasts from the Internet Archive

Historical anniversary days like this are also days for geography. Every homeschool should have a good atlas or collection of maps — we recommend the National Geographic atlas (riverhouses.org/books), but there are many other excellent ones available. In the National Geographic atlas, plates 61 and 63 will show you the English Channel and the location of the invasion beaches. Keep those maps in view as you listen to the news broadcasts above and you will be able to locate the places being mentioned by the reporters in real time.

The English Channel between Britain and France. The Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944 took place along the coastline between Cherbourg on the west and Le Havre on the east.

Help your students to understand how news would have traveled in 1944 as well. There was no Internet, of course, and no cell phones. Television was very limited. News reports came in (as you can hear in the broadcast) over teletype machines, and announcers would read and comment on the teletype reports. It was wartime, so there was censorship and disinformation all around. Today we can read simplified historical summaries of major events like D-Day, but as they were happening those events were often unclear and their outcomes uncertain.

What other historical anniversaries will you be remembering in your homeschool this month?

❡ Explore more: For a quick overview of the D-Day invasion and its place in the history of World War II, turn to page 399 (and the surrounding pages) in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 📚