The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

🗓 NEW PRINTABLE CALENDARS for the Upcoming Homeschool Year

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-2020-calendars

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Today is the midpoint of Hercules Term, our summer term in the River Houses. Our four terms — Cygnus, Orion, Leo, and Hercules — divide the homeschool year into four quarters that roughly correspond to the seasons. In many old calendar systems the first day of each term would be called a quarter day, and the mid-point of each term would be called a cross-quarter day.

On this cross-quarter day of Hercules Term we’re delighted to make available a new set of printable calendars for the upcoming 2019–2020 homeschool year that will begin in September:

The main calendar covers an assortment of major events and historical anniversaries throughout the year, and the four specialized calendars cover our annual schedules for poetry, astronomy, states and countries, and world historic sites. All five calendars are one-page pdf files, very simple to print and post on your family bulletin board.

These educational calendars are not designed for use with a specific curriculum — they are enrichment tools that can supplement any curriculum (even an open unschooling program), and they provide a light, comfortable, easy structure for your entire homeschool year. Pick one or two or three that strike your fancy, print them out, and follow along with us throughout the coming year.

Please share these calendars widely with all your homeschool groups and friends. When you and I have a calendar in common we have a range of shared experiences in common, and that’s what builds community, week by week, month by month, all through the year.

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

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Terms & Calendars 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. 🗞

Welcome! (Pinned post)

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First time visitor? We post a large assortment of easy 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 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. 😊

🚀 🌕 APOLLO 11 RESOURCES for Your Homeschool

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-apollo-11

As the whole world knows, this week is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. Here’s a roundup of some great Apollo resources you can use over the next few days with your homeschool students.

If you watch just one special thing this week as a family event, I highly recommend this new documentary called simply “Apollo 11,” produced almost entirely from rarely-seen footage kept by the National Archives in Washington. It’s a full-length film that is showing in selected theaters, and it’s also available online from services like Amazon Prime:

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NASA of course has a wide selection of special materials online this week (even a printable crossword puzzle for your students):

The website Space.com also has an excellent review of the whole series of Apollo missions with many video clips and links to additional information:

And for some tangible fun, be sure to stop by your local post office this week to pick up some of the dramatic new Apollo 11 anniversary stamps:

And I’d say your students should recognize the source of the astronaut image on those stamps as part of their cultural, historical, and scientific education. It’s one of the most famous images in history: Neil Armstrong’s photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing on the lunar surface, taken with the 70 mm Hasselblad cameras that were used on all the Apollo missions. (No digital photography back then, you know — the rolls of film had to come back to earth and get developed in a tank before anyone would know what the pictures looked like.)

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface, 20 July 1969, with his crewmate Neil Armstrong and the lunar module reflected in his visor. (Image: National Archives.)

How will you be celebrating and studying this historic, scientific, astronomic anniversary in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ The Eagle has landed: If you turn to plate 123 in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) you’ll be able to locate the Sea of Tranquility where the Apollo 11 lander touched down for the first time. (Did you know your atlas has maps of the moon? It does!) 🌕

❡ Stay in the loop: 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. 🚀

🇺🇬 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda

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

Uganda is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Uganda’s World Heritage Sites: Bwindi Impenetrable National Park.

Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in southwestern Uganda. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Bwindi Park is one of the richest areas of biological diversity in Africa:

“Bwindi Impenetrable National Park, covering 32,092 ha, is one of the largest areas in East Africa which still has Afromontane lowland forest extending to well within the montane forest belt. Located on the eastern edge of the Albertine Rift Valley and believed to be a Pleistocene refugium, the property is a biodiversity hotspot with possibly the greatest number of tree species for its altitude in East Africa. It is also host to a rich fauna including a number of endemic butterflies and one of the richest mammalian assemblages in Africa. Home to almost half of the world’s mountain gorilla population, the property represents a conservation frontline as an isolated forest of outstanding biological richness surrounded by an agricultural landscape supporting one of the highest rural population densities in tropical Africa. Community benefits arising from the mountain gorilla and other ecotourism may be the only hope for the future conservation of this unique site.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #682)

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. 🌍

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – July 2019

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/lunar-2019-07

There’s a full moon tonight, so that means it’s time for a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses.

The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and to share their results with other homeschool families.

Here’s an outline of the idea, along with a list of some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:

Browse through that big project list and find one or two that would be a good fit for your family and a good match for your interests. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be well on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. 🔬 🔭 🖥 🦋 🔍 ⚗️ ⛏ 📖 🌲 😊

Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their achievements.

As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past lunar month on the two types of projects I participate in: eBird monitoring of bird populations, and distributed computing research using the Berkeley open infrastructure application. You and your students can participate right now in these projects, and in many others too.

On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I’ve been tracking the birds in a small riverside park near me (eBird hotspot L6926932) and have now contributed a total of 529 checklists (daily observation reports) for this locality. When all the checklists are combined and charted you can really get a sense of the seasonal distribution and migration patterns for the year — take a look:

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

You can start keeping a similar eBird list for a location near you — your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more interesting results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website (ebird.org) and start exploring.

Distributed computing projects use idle time on your computer to perform scientific calculations on various kinds of complex data. The most popular distributed computing projects run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform (BOINC), and I contribute computer time to three of these: (1) the SETI@Home project, sponsored by the University of California, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (really!); (2) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; and (3) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy.

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, SETI@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually analyzed and how much your team has analyzed — they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. 😊 📡

And here’s another level of skill development for your high-school (or even advanced middle-school) students: once you’ve processed a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. Using Google Sheets, I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results, and this is what it looks like:

That’s just an elementary graphing exercise — it’s something that we can refine, develop, and expand in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in a variety of scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects that your family can join.

What scholarly and scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this month? 😊

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

❡ Featured this month at Zooniverse: Looking for a place to start? Zooniverse.org is one of the biggest clearinghouses for citizen science projects, and each month on their front page they specially feature one of their many research projects that you can join. This month’s featured project is “Galaxy Zoo.” (Yes, researching distant galaxies is something you and your students can really do from your home computer.) If you’re looking for a project to get yourself started, this might be a great choice. 😊

❡ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. 📸

❡ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended star atlas and world atlas (which has an astronomical section) will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. 🦉 🌠

❡ Whether they work together or apart: This is one of our regular Lunar Society Bulletins about the many cooperative research projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🔎 HOMESCHOOL NEWS AND RESEARCH – July 2019

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-research

This is a new feature we’re trying out here at the River Houses: a quick monthly roundup of some recent academic publications and news about homeschooling, offered for your interest. These items may have a positive, negative, or neutral outlook on home education — and if they don’t seem appealing, just scroll on by. The title links generally point to the full text of each publication (often a .pdf file). (Facebook readers should click to the attached blog post to find these links live.) This month’s offerings:

(1) At Home with Technology: Home Educators’ Perspectives on Teaching with Technology — Beverly Grace Pell

Abstract: The purpose of this research was to understand how and why home educators are schooling their children using technology. First, I explore how home educators use technology for homeschooling. Second, I investigate how home educators see themselves as teachers when using technology. Several themes emerged from the data revealing that home educators believe technology enables them to provide high quality curriculum and individualized instruction and to create a constructive and engaging learning environment for their children. Data were collected by convenience sampling with a survey of 316 (N = 316) home educators from 52 different territories, states, provinces, and countries across the globe, a nonrandom sample which is not representative of the entire homeschooling population. The quantitative data provide a specific picture of home education, reasons for homeschooling, and home educators’ perceptions of technology use in their homeschool. Qualitative data were obtained through open-ended questions on the questionnaire and through thirteen in-depth interviews with home educators from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Data analysis was inductive, using a constant comparative methodology to identify meanings and values held by homeschool parents providing an important part of the overall picture. The data in this study show that home educators use technology to evaluate and purchase curriculum, to deliver and supplement instruction, to offer what they see as an appropriate and personalized education, and to gain social, emotional, and professional support from other homeschoolers. Results of this study suggest that using technology to access a wide variety of curricula, to connect with and support fellow teachers, and to provide individualized instruction in an engaging environment might lead to better educational experiences for numerous students and teachers.

(2) Reasons Families Choose to Homeschool: A Study of Homeschooling Families in Minnesota — Laura R. Smetak

Abstract: During the spring of 2016, researchers for the U.S. Department of Education estimated there were 1,689,726 students ages 5–17 homeschooled nationwide, based on data gathered from the National Household Education Surveys program of 2016. Many families choose to homeschool their children in the state of Minnesota, but as far as empirical data is concerned, information on the specific homeschooling demographic in Minnesota is scant. This thesis seeks to identify the specific reasons Minnesota-based families choose to homeschool their children. Understanding the reasons for the decisions of individual families who choose to engage in homeschool, rather than enrolling their children in the public education setting, can help better inform our community, and academia, as to the depth and breadth of the many factors involved in families’ decisions in this regard. Parents of 126 homeschooled students completed an online survey regarding their primary reasons for homeschooling. The results of this Minnesota-based survey mirror some of the same percentages as those seen in the results of National Household Education Surveys program of 2016. The most cited primary reasons for homeschooling, reported by this sample population of Minnesota-based homeschooling families, were: religious/faith-based instruction; personalized instruction; concerns about negative school environment; and a desire for a non-traditional approach to education. Additional reasons included: more time together as a family; moral instruction and character values; dissatisfaction with the academic instruction at other schools; gifted and/or talented students; flexibility; physical or mental limitations of students; chronic illness/hospital visits in the family; and other special needs. When asked the main criterion each family used to evaluate homeschool curriculum/programs/resources, the most cited was that the curriculum needed to hold the child’s interest. Additional criteria included minimal lesson planning; hands-on activities; literature-based curriculums; ease of use; Biblical worldview content; and several other categories.

(3) Homeschooling as an Alternative Education in Indonesia: Case Study on Homeschoolers with Mothers’ Professional Differences — N. Purwaningsih and P.Y. Fauziah

Abstract: This study was intended to reveal the single homeschooling implementation of families with differences in maternal professions (career women and housewives) as primary educators. The research applied qualitative approach with the type of case study through interviews, observation, and documentation. The data analysis was completed through data collection, data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing. The results of the study indicated that single homeschool learning is based on the national education standard curriculum in Indonesia, but carried out in a family environment according to children autonomy. Homeschooling in Indonesia also follows an equivalent educational program to obtain a certificate so that the graduate competencies of homeschooling students are recognized as the same as those of formal schools. Equivalent educational programs are part of non-formal education consisting of “Package A” (equal to elementary school), “Package B” (equal to junior high school), and “Package C” (equal to senior high school). Homeschooling learning takes place more flexibly, familiarizing children to be independent and responsible for learning decisions. Homeschooling presents learning based on children’s talents and interests so that it can be an alternative education in Indonesia.

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 (scholar.google.com), 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. 🗞

🚀 WONDERFUL WORDS: “When Newton saw an apple fall”

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

This Saturday is the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing — a momentous day in human history — so our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this grand occasion is an old lunar prophecy from Lord Byron, written in 1822 or 1823.

Byron playfully opens the tenth canto of his long satirical epic Don Juan with the self-deprecating lines below. Poets like me are nothing, Byron says, compared to geniuses like Isaac Newton and the other great scientists and inventors of the age (the 1700s and 1800s) — these men work out the laws of nature, their telescopes reveal whole new worlds, and “full soon,” Byron says, their “steam-engines will conduct [mankind] to the moon.”

From Don Juan (Canto X)

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found
In that slight startle from his contemplation —
’T is said (for I’ll not answer above ground
For any sage’s creed or calculation) —
A mode of proving that the earth turn’d round
In a most natural whirl, called ‘gravitation’;
And this is the sole mortal who could grapple,
Since Adam, with a fall or with an apple.

Man fell with apples, and with apples rose,
If this be true; for we must deem the mode
In which Sir Isaac Newton could disclose
Through the then unpaved stars the turnpike road,
A thing to counterbalance human woes:
For ever since immortal man hath glow’d
With all kinds of mechanics, and full soon
Steam-engines will conduct him to the moon.

And wherefore this exordium? — Why, just now,
In taking up this paltry sheet of paper,
My bosom underwent a glorious glow,
And my internal spirit cut a caper:
And though so much inferior, as I know,
To those who, by the dint of glass and vapour,
Discover stars and sail in the wind’s eye,
I wish to do as much by poesy.

In the wind’s eye I have sail’d, and sail; but for
The stars, I own my telescope is dim:
But at least I have shunn’d the common shore,
And leaving land far out of sight, would skim
The ocean of eternity: the roar
Of breakers has not daunted my slight, trim,
But still sea-worthy skiff; and she may float
Where ships have founder’d, as doth many a boat.

The great men are greater than Byron himself — of that he is sure — but even so, in his little boat of paper, he thinks, there are still new worlds to explore.

What new worlds have you explored 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 don’t worry about “getting” everything right away. A good poem is a friend for life, and as with any friend, it takes several meetings to get acquainted. Before you even start to think about “meaning,” take a look at the poem’s structure. Are the lines grouped into stanzas? How many lines in each stanza? How many syllables in each line? Do the lines rhyme? What is the rhyme-scheme? Byron’s Don Juan has a very regular structure that is known in Italian as ottava rima (octave rhyme) — can you and your students map it out? It’s based on eight-line stanzas (“octaves”) that all follow the same rhyme-scheme: ABABABCC. By uncovering these details of structure your students will come to appreciate good poems as carefully crafted pieces of literary labor. 🖋

❡ The then-unpaved stars: 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 Lord Byron) 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. 📖

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 14 July 2019

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-14

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 Oklahoma, and our COUNTRIES are Turkmenistan 🇹🇲, Tuvalu 🇹🇻, Uganda 🇺🇬, and Ukraine 🇺🇦. (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, heading toward full on the 16th — 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, 14 July) — Today is the 195th day of 2019; there are 170 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 celebrated composer Gerald Finzi (1901–1956), known for his musical settings of many classic English lyric poems. 🎵 And on this day in 2015, the interplanetary space probe New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto (less than 8000 miles from the surface). 🚀 ♇

Monday (15 July) — Today is the midpoint of Hercules Term, our summer term in the River Houses — in many old calendrical systems it would be called a cross-quarter day. 🗓 On this day in 1799, near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in Egypt, a French captain in Napoleon’s army discovered a smooth black stone with a trilingual inscription in Hieroglyphics, Demotic Egyptian, and Greek. The Rosetta Stone, one of the world’s most famous archeological objects, made it possible to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time. 🇪🇬 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of July is an extract from Canto 10 of Lord Byron’s Don Juan, in which he prophesies the first moon landing (and has fun doing it). 🚀 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Tuesday (16 July) — The District of Columbia was established as the capital of the United States on this day in 1790. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872–1928), leader of the first expedition to reach the South Pole. 🇦🇶 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 (riverhouses.org/lunar). 🌕

Wednesday (17 July) — George Frideric Handel’s masterpiece “Water Music” premiered on this day in 1717, played by 50 musicians on a barge floating down the Thames River in London. 🎵 Today is also the birthday of the great Christian hymn writer and educator Isaac Watts (1674–1748). ⛪️ And … it’s World Emoji Day! 😎

Thursday (18 July) — The Great Fire of Rome broke out on this day in the year 64. Over the next six days it destroyed much of the city. Some reports (which may or may not be true) claimed that the Emperor Nero entertained himself by playing the lyre as he watched the city go up in flames. 🔥 On this day in 1863 during the American Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a regiment made up almost entirely of African-American soldiers, attempted unsuccessfully to capture Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina. Their story was dramatized in the 1989 film Glory. ⚔️

Friday (19 July) — The first national convention on women’s rights, the two-day Seneca Falls Convention, opened on this day in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. ♀

Saturday (20 July) — Today is the birthday of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), the father of modern genetics. 🌼 And on this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 lunar module set down on the Sea of Tranquility and American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings ever to walk on the moon. 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 🚀 🌕

Sunday (21 July) — The American novelist and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. 🖋 And the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, −128.6 ºF (−89.2 ºC), was measured on this day in 1983 at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica. ❄️

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, from Tennyson’s Ulysses, for the astronauts of Apollo 11: “To heroic hearts.”

❡ 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: Uganda is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Kagera River, which flows along the border between Uganda and Tanzania. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Kagera River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

Traders on the Kagera River along the Uganda–Tanzania border. (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: Oklahoma, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and More

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

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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Oklahoma State Quarter
    OKLAHOMA (the 46th state, 16 November 1907) — The Sooner State. Capital: Oklahoma City. Oklahoma can be found on page 582 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Choctaw word meaning ‘red man,’ proposed by Rev. Allen Wright, a Choctaw-speaking Indian” (almanac page 430). State bird: Scissor-tailed Flycatcher (bird guide page 352). Website: www.ok.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:

  • 🇹🇲 TURKMENISTAN in central Asia. Population: 5,411,012. Capital: Ashgabat. Government: Authoritarian presidential republic. Website: turkmenistan.gov.tm (in Turkmen, Russian, and English).
  • 🇹🇻 TUVALU in the southern Pacific Ocean. Population: 11,147. Capital: Funafuti. Government: Parliamentary democracy. Website: CIA World Factbook entry (in English).
  • 🇺🇬 UGANDA in eastern Africa. Population: 40,853,749. Capital: Kampala. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.statehouse.go.ug (in English).
  • 🇺🇦 UKRAINE in eastern Europe. Population: 43,952,299. Capital: Kiev. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.kmu.gov.ua (in Ukrainian and English).

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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Arcturus for July

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

July is the middle month of Hercules Term in the River Houses, and as our monthly star calendar will tell you, July’s great star is Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes the Herdsman. Its formal designation is α Boötis — “alpha of Boötes.” Boötes and Arcturus are already high overhead in the early evening this month, passing off to the west as the night goes on. With Regulus (our April star) and Spica (our June star), Arcturus forms “the Spring Triangle” (even though we’re now into summer).

The constellation Boötes the Herdsman and its alpha star, Arcturus. Note the handle of the Big Dipper in the upper right; follow back along the handle’s “arc to Arcturus” to locate this great northern hemisphere star. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

“Boötes is an easily recognized constellation resembling a huge kite. Arcturus, its brightest star, has a magnitude of –0.1 and is the 4th brightest star visible from Northern latitudes. Arcturus can be located by following backwards the curve of the Big Dipper handle; the curved line connecting these stars extended about 30º will lead your eye to Arcturus. It is a giant star about 80 times as bright as the sun and is 37 light years away.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 8)

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

Arcturus is an ancient orange-yellow giant about seven billion years old. It has roughly the same mass as our sun, but it has expanded to enormous size as its supply of hydrogen has become depleted. It’s also relatively close to us — current estimates of its distance put it at about 37 light years. It’s generally thought to be a single star, without any companions.

Optical image of Arcturus. To the naked eye it usually appears slightly yellowish — not bright white like Sirius, Spica, or Vega. The small bluish star at seven o’clock in this image is a random background star, not physically associated with Arcturus. (Image: NASA via Wikimedia Commons.)

The name Arcturus comes from the Greek and means “watcher of the bear” or “guardian of the bear” — a reference to its association with the constellation Ursa Major (the Great Bear, including the Big Dipper), which Boötes and Arcturus follow around the pole. Arcturus and the other stars of Boötes were well known to the Greeks, and as with any ancient celestial configuration they are surrounded by many different and sometimes contradictory mythological accounts of their origins.

This month, 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. ✨

❡ Star bright: The brightness of a star as we see it in our night sky is its magnitude — or more properly speaking, its apparent magnitude. The scale of star magnitudes was developed centuries ago, long before modern measuring instruments were invented, so it can be a little bit confusing for beginners. Originally, the brightest stars were called “first magnitude” and the less-bright stars “second magnitude,” “third magnitude,” and so on, down to the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye, which were called “sixth magnitude.” In the nineteenth century the star Vega (our August star) was chosen as the standard brightness reference and its value on the magnitude scale was defined to be zero (0.0). Five steps in magnitude (from 0.0 to 5.0 or 1.0 to 6.0) was defined to be a change in brightness of 100 times: a star 100 times dimmer than Vega (0.0) was defined to be a magnitude 5.0 star. Vega is not quite the brightest star is the sky, however, so the scale also had to be extended into negative numbers: Sirius, for example, is magnitude –1.5, about three times brighter than Vega (at 0.0). The planet Venus at its brightest is about magnitude –4.2; the full moon is about magnitude –12.9; the sun is magnitude –26.7. By contrast, the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye in a populated, light-polluted area are about magnitude 3.0; the dimmest stars visible under very dark conditions are about magnitude 6.5. The Hubble Space Telescope has imaged distant stars and galaxies below magnitude 30 — these are the dimmest objects seen so far.

❡ 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 most notable 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 — and make each one of them a homeschool friend for life. 🌟

📖 THOREAU’S BIRTHDAY and Homeschool Journaling

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

Happy birthday to the great American writer Henry David Thoreau, born on this day in 1817. Thoreau was a naturalist, poet, essayist, saunterer, and faithful lifelong journal-ist. If you use daily journaling as an educational tool in your homeschool, or if you’ve considered doing so, why not introduce your students to Thoreau-the-journal-writer this week as a source of inspiration.

The best way to get started is with the famous anthology The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals, which brings together a wonderful assortment of entries on natural history, philosophy, daily life, and more, extracted from Thoreau’s extensive (fourteen-volume) diary that he kept throughout his life. Here’s a link to find a library copy, and an Amazon link in case you want to add Henry’s reflections to your own homeschool collection:

Many a teenager has been captivated by Thoreau’s journals over the years, and the examples in this selected volume will show your students how they can construct journal entries of their own — to practice their writing, to keep track of the things that happen day to day, and to develop their thoughts by translating them into words.

If your local library doesn’t have that particular edition, I guarantee they will have other editions or anthologies that contain similar Thoreau selections:

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.“ (19 August 1851)

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back.“ (2 April 1852)

“The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.“ (14 July 1852)

“That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.“ (11 March 1856)

Happy birthday, Henry! You’re still a world favorite more than two hundred years on.

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

❡ The river over the meadows again: This is one of our occasional 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. 🗞

🌝 KNOW YOUR MOONS! 🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

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

There will be a lovely gibbous moon high up in the southern sky this evening. Can your homeschool students recognize the phases of the moon? Why not teach them the lunar cycle during this momentous month when we are remembering the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing.

Did you know there’s an emoji symbol for each phase of the moon? It’s true! Whenever we’re posting about the moon here at the River Houses we try to use the correct emoji, and you can do the same, illustrating the moon’s phases for your students, quizzing them with emojis, and inviting them to recite the northern-hemisphere formula, “fills in from the right, drains out to the left”:

🌑 NEW
🌒 WAXING CRESCENT
🌓 FIRST QUARTER
🌔 WAXING GIBBOUS ← tonight
🌕 FULL (second quarter)
🌖 WANING GIBBOUS
🌗 THIRD QUARTER
🌘 WANING CRESCENT
🌑 NEW (again)

A complete cycle, from new to new, is one (lunar) month — 29 days — and the word month and moon are in fact cognate words, having the same historical origin. (Compare the expression, “many moons ago,” meaning, “many months ago.”)

The time from one quarter to the next — from new to first quarter, from first quarter to full (second quarter), from full to third quarter, or from third quarter to new again — is about seven days, and that’s the basis for the week, which is a quarter of a month: four quarters in one “moon,” four weeks in one month. (This also explains why lunar terminology is sometimes confusing to beginners: the first and third “quarter” moons are half full, because “quarter” doesn’t refer to appearance but rather to a given point within the monthly lunar cycle.)

Commemorative 2019 stamp marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The landing site in the Sea of Tranquility, which you can locate on a clear night with binoculars, is indicated by a yellow dot. (Image: U.S. Postal Service.)

What celestial observations will you and your students be making in your homeschool this lunar month? 😊

❡ Crescent and gibbous and waxing and waning: The word crescent is common in English in many contexts, but the word gibbous — convex, bulging, humped, hunchbacked — is much less common and is rarely used today to describe anything other than the moon, which is a shame because it’s a wonderful word. Similarly, waxing (growing, increasing) and waning (shrinking, decreasing) are used most often now as paired terms in the context of the moon, but they do still survive in a few other contexts (to wax poetic; his interest waned). 🌔 🌘

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 😊

🇹🇳 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Archaeological Site of Carthage in Tunisia

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

Tunisia on the north coast of Africa is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Tunisia’s World Heritage Sites: the Archaeological Site of Carthage.

A portion of the archaeological excavations at Carthage in modern Tunisia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Carthage was one of the most important cities of the ancient Mediterranean:

“Founded by the Phoenicians, Carthage is an extensive archaeological site, located on a hill dominating the Gulf of Tunis and the surrounding plain. Metropolis of Punic civilization in Africa and capital of the province of Africa in Roman times, Carthage played a central role in Antiquity as a great commercial empire. During the lengthy Punic wars, Carthage occupied the territories that belonged to Rome, which then destroyed its rival in 146 A.D. The town was rebuilt by the Romans on the ruins of the ancient city.

“[An] exceptional place of mixing, diffusion and blossoming of several cultures that succeeded one another (Phoenico-Punic, Roman, Paleochristian and Arab), this metropolis and its ports have encouraged wide-scale exchanges in the Mediterranean. Founded at the end of the 9th century B.C. by Elyssa-Dido and having sheltered the mythical love of Dido and Aeneas, Carthage produced a warrior and strategy-genius in the person of Hannibal, the navigator-explorer Hannon, and a famous agronomist, Magon. Carthage has always nourished universal imagination through its historic and literary renown.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #37)

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. 🌍