The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

1 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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

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

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 17 October 2021

17 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more!) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Maryland, and our COUNTRIES are Brunei 🇧🇳, Bulgaria 🇧🇬, Burkina Faso 🇧🇫, and Burundi 🇧🇮. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing — a good time for moon watching! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (17 October 2021) — Today is the 290th day of 2021; there are 75 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 On this day in 1777, one of the most important days in the course of the American Revolution, British General John Burgoyne surrendered his entire army at Saratoga, New York. 🇺🇸

Monday (18 October 2021) — The great American novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville was first published on this day in 1851 in London (sic). 🐳 And today is the birthday of the great rock-and-roll pioneer Chuck Berry (1926–2017). 🎸

Tuesday (19 October 2021) — Today is the birthday of Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682), author of some of the most luminous prose in the English language. ⚱️ And on this day in 1781 at Yorktown, Virginia, British forces under the command of Lord Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington and Comte de Rochambeau, effectively ending the American Revolution. 🕊

Wednesday (20 October 2021) — Today is the birthday of the architect Sir Christopher Wren (1632–1732), who rebuilt much of central London after the Great Fire of 1666. 🏛 And on this day in the year 1803, the United States Senate ratified the Louisiana Purchase. 🇺🇸 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Rila Monastery in Bulgaria. 🇧🇬 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society. 🌕

Thursday (21 October 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834). 🖋 And since we talked a lot about apples last week, it’s only fitting to note that today is celebrated as Apple Day in the United Kingdom. 🍎

Friday (22 October 2021) — On this day in 1879, Thomas Edison tested his design for first practical and long-lasting incandescent light bulb. 💡 And on this day in 1884, the International Meridian Conference declared a line passing from the north pole through the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, to be our planet’s Prime Meridian (the line of 0º longitude). 🌐 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the fast-flying Swifts and Hummingbirds. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week, as October grows thin, is a song for the coming cold by the great Maine folk artist Gordon Bok. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along. 🌅

Saturday (23 October 2021) — On this day in 1739, England declared war on Spain in the conflict memorably known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. 👂 Today is the birthday of the popular naturalist and children’s author Neltje Blanchan (1865–1918). 🐦 And sometime between 6:02 a.m. and 6:02 p.m. today, chemistry students will want offer a toast in honor of International Mole Day (6.02 × 10²³). ⚗️

Sunday (24 October 2021) — One of the most famous buildings in the world, Chartres Cathedral, was consecrated on this day in the year 1260. 🇫🇷 Today is the birthday of the pioneering Dutch microscopist Anton van Leeuwenhoek (1632–1732). 🔬 On this day in 1861, the first North American transcontinental telegraph line was completed. ⚡️ And, to-morrow is Saint Crispian. 🍻

🥂 🕊 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is for the anniversary of Yorktown: “May the miseries of war never more have existence amongst enlightened nations.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To unpredictability in toasting!”). Many of our current toasts are taken from an old anthology called The Royal Toast Master, Containing Many Thousands of the Best Toasts Old and New (London, 1793). What will you toast in your homeschool this week? 🥂

🌍 🇧🇫 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Burkina Faso in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Béli River, a largely seasonal tributary of the great Niger. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Béli River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Children of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 699–701), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you. 🌍

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

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

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Maryland, Brunei, Burundi, and More

17 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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

Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and our recommended homeschool reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 458), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Maryland State Seal
MARYLAND (the 7th state, 28 April 1788) — The Old Line State. Capital: Annapolis. Maryland can be found on page 580 in your almanac and on plates 43 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “From Queen Henrietta Maria, wife of Charles I of England” (almanac page 459). State bird: Baltimore Oriole (bird guide page 544). Website: maryland.gov.

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

❡ Maps to color: National Geographic has a large blank United States map and a blank world map, complete with flags, printable in sections and ready to receive the colored pencils of your students. Why not give them a try this week. 🖍

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇧🇳 BRUNEI in southeastern Asia. Population: 464,479. Capital: Bandar Seri Begawan. Government: Absolute monarchy or sultanate. Website: www.gov.bn (in English).
🇧🇬 BULGARIA in eastern Europe. Population: 6,966,899. Capital: Sofia. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.government.bg (in Bulgarian and English).
🇧🇫 BURKINA FASO in western Africa. Population: 20,835,401. Capital: Ouagadougou. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.gouvernement.gov.bf (in French).
🇧🇮 BURUNDI in central Africa. Population: 11,865,821. Capital: Bujumbura. Government: Presidential republic. Website: burundi.gov.bi (in Kirundi, French, and English).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 752–859; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

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

❡ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — is one of the best educational gifts you can give them. Why not look up any one of our selected states or countries each week in your recommended homeschool atlas and show your students how to locate rivers, lakes, marshes, water depths, mountains and their elevations, highway numbers, airports, oil fields, railroads, ruins, battle sites, small towns, big cities, regional capitals, national capitals, parks, deserts, glaciers, borders, grid references, lines of longitude and latitude, and much more. There is so much information packed into professional maps of this kind that a magnifying glass is always helpful, even for young folks with good eyesight. The endpapers of the atlas and the technical map-reading information on Plate 2 (10th and 11th eds.) will guide you in your voyages of discovery. 🗺

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

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and follow along with us as we take an educational tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the homeschool year. And don’t forget to add your name to our free mailing list to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🇺🇸 🌎

🗓 🦢 HAPPY CROSS-QUARTER DAY of Cygnus Term 2021

16 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

The educational value of the calendar is one of our themes in the River Houses, and we divide the homeschool year into four three-month terms (quarters) that are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:

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

Today, October 16th, is the midpoint of Cygnus Term — in many old calendrical systems it would be called the cross-quarter day of Cygnus Term.

Third-century Roman calendar mosaic from Tunisia, featuring our Cygnus Term. (Image: Ad Meskens/Wikimedia Commons.)

Cygnus Term 2021 as it appears in our annual River Houses homeschool calendar.
October 16th is underlined as the cross-quarter day of Cygnus Term.

The cross-quarter day of each term is a good day to look around and see how things are going. Is your schedule working well? Did you have a plan for some task or project that didn’t turn out as expected and just needs to be dropped? Is there something new you need to add?

If you haven’t done so already, why not print out some of our simple one-page educational calendars and planners for this 2021–2022 homeschool year — they won’t constrain you, and they’ll help you create a light structure for your own homeschool year:

➢ River Houses Homeschool Calendars and Planners

And also if you haven’t yet, why not sign up for our free once-a-week email newsletter — it’s just one message a week, all educational, with no politics and no spam:

➢ Weekly River Houses Homeschool Newsletter

If you belong to other online or offline homeschool groups, won’t you share our newsletter link with them? We’d be delighted to have more subscribers!

What calendrical events have you been marking and what educational discoveries have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

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

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional posts about our Homeschool Terms & Calendars. Print your own set of River Houses Calendars to follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschooling ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🍏 🍎 WONDERFUL WORDS: After Apple-Picking

15 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

The geese are flying and the woodchucks are preparing their winter burrows — it’s harvest season, so our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this third week of October is a dreamy story of orchard-labor from Robert Frost:

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

This poem is full of wonderful descriptive images — if you take your homescholars to a pick-your-own apple orchard this month they’ll understand them all. 🍎 And after an hour or two of farm labor, perhaps they’ll be ready for a nap — one that is like, or perhaps not like, the woodchuck’s long winter nap.

“There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, / Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.” (Image: National Apple Harvest Festival, Biglerville, Pennsylvania.)

There isn’t as much formal structure in “After Apple-Picking” as there is in many of Frost’s other poems, but there is still quite a bit of rhyme and it often follows regular patterns. (ABBA in the first four lines, for example.) In keeping with its theme, the poem has a rather dream-like quality. How often is our daytime work the subject of our dreams? Do we sometimes get so much of a desired thing that it wears us out? (“Be careful what you wish for.”) Do animals dream? Even in their months-long winter hibernation? Every open-ended question you ask will exercise and expand the young minds in your charge.

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you studying in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ I am overtired of the great harvest I myself desired: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 🍏

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Robert Frost) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Cuckoos, Roadrunners, Anis, and Goatsuckers

15 October 2021 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.

This week’s birds (two different families) are the Cuckoos, Roadrunners, and Anis (pages 80–83) and the Goatsuckers (pages 84–87).

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here’s how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

CUCKOOS · ROADRUNNERS · ANIS — Family Cuculidae. Of this large family, widespread in the Old World, only a few species are seen in N.A. [North America] Most are slender with long tails; two toes point forward, two back. Species: 142 World, 8 N.A.

GOATSUCKERS — Family Caprimulgidae. Wide mouth and rictal bristles help these night hunters snare flying insects. Most located and identified by distinctive calls. Species: 93 World, 10 N.A.

When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about a new group — about the Cuckoo family, for example. How many species? (142 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only 8 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Slender with long tails, unusual arrangement of the toes, and so on.) (And for the Goatsuckers, take note of the wonderful word “rictal” — be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look that one up.) 🔎

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, for the Cuckoo family, why not investigate one of the two widespread cuckoos in North America: the Yellow-billed Cuckoo (page 80).

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is the Yellow-billed Cuckoo? (12 inches long, including a quite long tail.) What is its scientific name? (Coccyzus americanus.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

The classic “cuckoo” call that we know from literature, music, and cuckoo-clocks isn’t really made by our North American cuckoos. It’s the call of the Common Cuckoo of Eurasia, a species that is not really North American although it does appear in your bird guide (page 82) because it occasionally strays across the Bering Strait from Siberia into western Alaska.

This week’s other family, the Goatsuckers, contains birds that are more often heard than seen — they are largely nocturnal and all are masters of camouflage. The one widespread species in the group that is sometimes visible in the daytime is the Common Nighthawk (page 84), which feeds at night but regularly migrates by day.

Many birds in the Goatsucker family are named for their distinctive calls, which are repetitive and haunting as they echo through the forest at night. The Eastern Whip-poor-will (page 86) is one of the best-known members of this group in the eastern half of the United States; it has a western counterpart called the Common Poorwill (also page 86), which is smaller in size and gives a shorter call.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that lives near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations using the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (pages 6–13) explains a little bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book — why not have your students study it as a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts of a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. 🦉

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary as a nature reference, but a comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning. 📖

❡ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things. 🌎

❡ Beep beep: One species covered this week is a United States state bird: the Greater Roadrunner (Geococcyx californianus), the state bird of New Mexico. (Did you know Roadrunners are cuckoos? It’s true!) 🇺🇸

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

⛏ NATURE NOTES: It’s National Fossil Day!

13 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Today is National Fossil Day! Since 2009, the U.S. National Park Service has celebrated National Fossil Day during international Earth Science Week “to highlight the scientific and educational value of paleontology and the importance of preserving fossils for future generations.”

“Skeleton of *Megatherium cuvieri*.” (Image: Smithsonian Libraries.)

Depending on where you live you may or may not be able to get out and examine fossils easily in the field, but thanks to the Smithsonian Institution and the wonderful online Biodiversity Heritage Library, you and your students can explore a wealth of books and other published materials on paleontology right from the comfort of your little home academy. Many of these materials are quite rare and valuable, and as recently as a few years ago they would have been accessible only to professional researchers in the largest institutions. Here’s an introduction to these online materials from the Smithsonian Libraries:

In celebration of the opening of the David H. Koch Hall of Fossils opening at the National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Libraries has curated an online collection of important and beautiful selections from the Libraries’ Paleobiology literature titled Unearthed! The digitized books are hosted on the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), the world’s largest open access digital library for biodiversity literature and archives. As part of this celebration, we have invited renowned scientists and librarians to discuss the collection and identify their favorite books in a series of blog posts that will be released throughout the year. (Check out the more than 400 volumes here!)

Our online volumes are drawn from a much larger collection of monographs and journals curated by Smithsonian Libraries. Smithsonian Libraries’ Vertebrate Paleontology Library holds over 1,800 volumes focusing on physical geography, stratigraphy and systematic paleontology, and paleozoology of chordates and vertebrates of the Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Tertiary, and Quaternary periods. The Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History holds the Smithsonian’s collection of rare books in anthropology and the natural sciences. Its world-class collection contains approximately 20,000 volumes published before 1840 in fields that include physical and cultural anthropology, Native American linguistics, and archeology; botany; ornithology, mammalogy, herpetology, ichthyology, entomology, and other zoological fields; paleontology; and geology and mineralogy. View the collection now on BHL!

“A gigantic horned dinosaur, Triceratops prorsus.” (Image: Smithsonian Libraries.)

All Smithsonian Libraries make our books available to researchers on site. For the first time, many of these important paleontological works are now gathered digitally in one online collection for anyone with internet access, through our partnership with the Biodiversity Heritage Library. (Smithsonian Libraries)

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool — inside the library or out in the field — this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular posts on Homeschool Natural History (and Books & Libraries, and Holidays & Anniversaries, and Museums & Monuments). Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦

🌍 🇧🇼 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Rock Art of Tsodilo in Botswana

13 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Botswana in southern Africa is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Botswana’s World Heritage Sites: the Rock Art of the Tsodilo Hills.

The collection of animal art painted by the early inhabitants of the Tsodilo Hills is one of the largest assemblages of rock art in Africa:

Located in north-west Botswana near the Namibian Border in Okavango Sub-District, the Tsodilo Hills are a small area of massive quartzite rock formations that rise from ancient sand dunes to the east and a dry fossil lake bed to the west in the Kalahari Desert. The Hills have provided shelter and other resources to people for over 100,000 years. It now retains a remarkable record, in its archaeology, its rock art, and its continuing traditions, not only of this use but also of the development of human culture and of a symbiotic nature/human relationship over many thousands of years.

The archaeological record of the site gives a chronological account of human activities and environmental changes over at least 100,000 years, although not continuously.

Often large and imposing rock paintings exist in the shelters and caves, and although not accurately dated appear to span from the Stone Age right through to the 19th century. In addition, within the site sediments, there is considerable information pertaining to the paleo-environment. This combination provides an insight into early ways of human life, and how people interacted with their environment both through time and space.

The local communities revere Tsodilo as a place of worship and as a home for ancestral spirits. Its water holes and hills are revered as a sacred cultural landscape by the Hambukushu and San communities. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1021)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Rock Art of Tsodilo on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

World Heritage Sites are cultural or natural landmarks of international significance, selected for recognition by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. More than 1000 such sites have been recognized in over 160 countries, and we feature one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list of World Heritage Sites online at the World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.

The World Heritage Centre also has a free and comprehensive World Heritage education kit for teachers, as well as a wonderful full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites, available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures are you exploring in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 752–859; the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found; the history encyclopedia includes national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read the WHC’s brief description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical, geographical, and cultural information. 🇧🇼

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring historical and natural sites of international importance. Download a copy of our River Houses World Heritage Calendar and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

🎵 🍎 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “My Orchard in Linden Lea”

12 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

It’s apple season across much of the United States right now. Perhaps you have an apple tree in your backyard, or perhaps a homeschool pick-your-own expedition is one of your family traditions. Our next poem-of-the-week, coming up on Friday, is Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking,” a philosophical favorite for harvest time.

Today, however, happens to be the birthday of the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), and he wrote music to accompany another much-loved apple-time poem, William Barnes’ “My Orchard in Linden Lea.” So we’re going to have an extra poem (and song!) this week, in honor of Vaughn Williams and the apple harvest.

William Barnes (1801–1886) was from the county of Dorset in the southwest of England, and he was both a linguist and a poet. He wrote many of his verses in the Dorset dialect of his native county, and they often show a special appreciation for country life. “My Orchard in Linden Lea” (1859) is probably his best known work; it’s usually presented today in a slightly modernized form.

My Orchard in Linden Lea

Within the woodlands, flow’ry gladed,
By the oak tree’s mossy moot,
The shining grass-blades, timber-shaded,
Now do quiver under foot,
And birds do whistle overhead,
And water’s bubbling in its bed,
And there for me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

When leaves that lately were a-springing
Now do fade within the copse,
And painted birds do hush their singing
Up upon the timber tops,
And brown-leav’d fruit’s a-turning red
In cloudless sunshine overhead,
With fruit for me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

Let other folk make money faster
In the air of dark-roomed towns —
I don’t dread a peevish master,
Though no man may heed my frowns.
I be free to go abroad
Or take again my homeward road
To where for me the apple tree
Do lean down low in Linden Lea.

The stand-out Dorset dialect word in this “Common English” version of the poem is moot — a tree stump (“by the oak tree’s mossy stump”). And in fact, you already know one other rare Dorset dialect word, although you may not realize it — I guarantee you do: the Dorset word for Bumblebee is Dumbledore. 🐝 🧙

Barnes’ Dorset poem was beautifully set to music in 1902 by Vaughan Williams under the shortened title “Linden Lea,” and it has been much favored by classically-trained singers. Here’s a magnificent version by baritone Thomas Allen (b. 1944):

But it’s not just classical singers who have loved the song: choral settings of Vaughan Williams’ “Linden Lea” have become staples of school and college choirs around the world. Here’s a fine version from the Diocesan Boys’ School Choir of Hong Kong:

If you and your students like this music and want to learn more about “RVW” during his birthday week, why not go over and explore the website of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society.

What other pomologically oriented musico-literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 🍎

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including William Barnes) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ I be free to go abroad: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Arts & Music posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

📚 BOOKS & LIBRARIES: Classic Illustrated Children’s Books Online

12 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Tuesday is our regular Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses when we recommend book-related and library-related resources you can browse, save, and share with your students. Did you know that Read.gov and the Library of Congress have put together a large collection of classic illustrated children’s books that can be read online? It includes works for all age groups, and you can browse it right here:

➢ Classic Illustrated Children’s Books Online (read.gov)

Perhaps you and your students would like to study an apple-pie alphabet:

Or perhaps you’d like to learn the lessons of Aesop’s fables, all told in rhyme and richly illustrated:

These colorful volumes really need to be viewed on a large screen — a phone won’t work very well — and the large screen will make the experience more like reading the originals as you turn from one page to the next. I haven’t tried them on a large tablet, but I bet that would work well too.

For a regular homeschool story-time, why not pick ten titles from this wonderful collection and read one each week with your students for the rest of the year.

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

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

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

❡ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📚

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 10 October 2021

10 October 2021 by Bob O'Hara

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Massachusetts, and our COUNTRIES are Bolivia 🇧🇴, Bosnia and Herzegovina 🇧🇦, Botswana 🇧🇼, and Brazil 🇧🇷. (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 stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (10 October 2021) — Today is the 283rd day of 2021; there are 82 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is also the birthday of the great Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901). 🎼 And on this day in 1845 in Annapolis, Maryland, the United States Naval Academy opened with 50 students and seven professors. ⚓️

Monday (11 October 2021) — Today is Columbus Day in the United States, the federal holiday commemorating the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the Americas on the 12th of October in 1492. Italy, Spain, and almost all the countries in Latin America have an equivalent holiday. 🌎 And of speaking sailors and the navy, on this day in 1776, American naval forces on Lake Champlain under the command of Benedict Arnold (not yet a traitor) were defeated by the British in the Battle of Valcour Island. Although it was an American loss, the Battle of Valcour Island successfully delayed the British advance down the Hudson–Champlain corridor for nearly a year and may have saved the cause of the Revolution. ⚓️ 🇺🇸

Tuesday (12 October 2021) — The great Athenian orator Demosthenes died on this day in 322 B.C. 🏛 Today is also the birthday of the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). 🎼

Wednesday (13 October 2021) — It’s National Fossil Day! ⛏ One of the most beautiful objects in the night sky, the Whirlpool Galaxy, was discovered on this day in 1773 by French astronomer Charles Messier. 🌀 And speaking still further of the navy, the United States Navy itself was established on this day in 1775 by the Continental Congress, before there was even a United States! ⚓️ The cornerstone of the White House in Washington, D.C., was laid on this day in 1792. 🇺🇸 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will investigate the Tsodilo Rock Art in Botswana. 🇧🇼

Thursday (14 October 2021) — On this day in 1066, French forces commanded by William of Normandy defeated the English army of King Harold II in the Battle of Hastings. ⚔️ Today is the birthday of American poet E.E. Cummings (1894–1962). 🖋 And on this day in 1926, the much-loved children’s book Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne was published. 🐻

Friday (15 October 2021) — On this day in 1783 at Faubourg Saint-Antoine near Paris, Étienne Montgolfier (1745–1799) became the first human being to ascend from the surface of the earth in a hot-air balloon. 🎈 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Cuckoos, Roadrunners (beep! beep!), Anis, and Goatsuckers. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us. 🦅 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of October is Robert Frost’s “After Apple-Picking,” for the fall harvest. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along throughout the year. 🍎

Saturday (16 October 2021) — Today is the midpoint of Cygnus Term and thus one of the four cross-quarter days of the River Houses year. How are things going? 🦢 Today is also the birthday of American lexicographer and education pioneer Noah Webster (1758–1843), of dictionary fame. 📖 And it’s also the birthday of the Irish playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde (1854–1900). 🎭 On this day in 1859, in one of the precipitating events of the Civil War, the abolitionist John Brown (1800–1859) led an armed raid on the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. 🌠

Sunday (17 October 2021) — On this day in 1777, one of the most important days in the course of the American Revolution, British General John Burgoyne surrendered his entire army at Saratoga, New York. 🏳

🥂 ⚓️ OUR WEEKLY TOAST is one of our traditional offerings, for the birthday of the United States Navy: “To the wind that blows, and the ship that goes, and the lass that loves a sailor.” (Female sailors are welcome to substitute “lad” for “lass.”)

🌎 🇧🇴 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Bolivia in central South America is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Yata River, which is known to be infested with flesh-eating piranhas! You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Yata River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

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

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

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