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The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

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

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

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🦩 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Grebes and Flamingos

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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 school-year’s tour began at the beginning of this month with an introduction to your bird guide.)

This week’s birds (two different families) are the Grebes (pages 68–71) and the Flamingos (pages 70–71). The Grebes and Flamingos are both aquatic, but that’s about all they have in common. (And in case you’ve never encountered them before, the name “grebe” is pronounced greeb.)

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:

GREBES — Family Podicipedidae. A worldwide family of aquatic diving birds. Lobed toes make them strong swimmers. Grebes are infrequently seen on land or in flight. Species: 23 World, 7 N.A. [North America]

FLAMINGOS — Family Phoenicopteridae. Large waders with big, bent bills, used to strain food from the waters of shallow lakes and lagoons. Species: 6 World, 1 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 Grebe family, for example. How many species? (23 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (7 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Aquatic diving birds with lobed, not webbed, feet, and so on.)

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 Grebe family, why not investigate the Pied-billed Grebe (page 68), a rather cute aquatic bird found all across North America.

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 Pied-billed Grebe? (13½ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Podilymbus podiceps.) 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 average person who sees a grebe from a distance would probably mistake it for a duck, but grebes tend to ride a bit lower in the water than most ducks, they don’t have flat duck-like bills, and very importantly they don’t have webbed feet like all the ducks, geese and swans — instead they have feet with flap-like lobes that function like webbing but are anatomically different. (That’s not something you can usually see in the field, however.) All the grebes are divers, whereas only some duck species dive for their food.

One of the fun facts about grebes is that their downy young (grebelings) ride around on their parents’ backs — we can call it grebe-schooling. 😊

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. If you’re out in the West, for example. you might want to learn about the Western Grebe (page 70), or if you’re down in Florida why not take a look at the only North American member of our other bird family this week, the American Flamingo (also page 70).

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 solitary or social, it can be as elementary or as advanced as you wish, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations 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. 🐦

❡ Enchiridion: 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. 🌎

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🌍 🇧🇾 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Radziwill Castle Complex in Belarus

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Belarus in eastern Europe is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Belarus’ World Heritage Sites: the Architectural, Residential, and Cultural Complex of the Radziwill Family at Nesvizh.

The buildings of the Radziwill Castle Complex at Nesvizh in Belarus. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The many branches of the Radziwill family played prominent roles in the history of central and eastern Europe from the late Middle Ages onward:

The Architectural, Residential, and Cultural Complex of the Radziwill Family at Nesvizh in central Belarus exercised great influence in the sciences, arts, crafts, and architecture of Central and Eastern Europe. The efforts of the Radziwill dynasty, which built and kept this ensemble of buildings and their associated landscape from 1583 until 1939 and which included some of the most notable personalities in European history and culture who introduced novel concepts based on a synthesis of Western traditions, led to the establishment of a new Central European school of architecture. The Radziwill family complex – and in particular the domed basilica Corpus Christi mausoleum-church – represents an important stage in the development of building typology in 16th and 17th century Central European architecture.

The Radziwill family complex consists of a residential castle and the Corpus Christi mausoleum-church, along with their landscaped setting. The compact castle has ten interconnected buildings, including a palace, galleries, residence, family archive, and arsenal, all of which were developed as a single architectural ensemble around a six-sided courtyard. The buildings are set within the remains of 16th century fortifications comprised of four bastions and four curtain walls in a rectangular plan, surrounded by a moat. An earthen dam with a stone bridge connects the castle to Corpus Christi Church in the adjacent urban area of Nesvizh. The ensemble of buildings, interspersed by artificial reservoirs and canals of the river Usha, is in a picturesque 100 ha landscape that includes a series of thematic parks and ponds.

Over the centuries the Radziwills supported activities in various spheres of science and culture, and also invited important cultural personalities, architects, artists, and craftspersons to the small town of Nesvizh. These interactions introduced the latest architectural innovations from Southern and Western Europe and became seminal in synthesizing and transmitting these trends to Central and Eastern Europe. An architectural school emerged here that consisted of artists from Belarus, Poland, Italy, and Germany who developed sophisticated construction and building techniques. The buildings of the Radziwill family complex became important prototypes in Central Europe, and exercised considerable influence in this region. (World Heritage Centre #1196)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Radziwill Castle Complex on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

Portrait gallery in the Radziwill Castle. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

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

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

❡ This is a printable lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a custom “Print” button and icon, along with several social-media share buttons. The Print button will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you resize or delete elements that you may not want or need (such as images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ 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 cultural 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🗓 HOMESCHOOL CALENDARS: “Thirty days hath September . . .”

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April, June, and November.

This is the last week of September, and the last week of September is the perfect time to make sure your young scholars know the famous calendrical verse that helps us remember how many days there are in each month.

I learned this version:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
(Except February which has twenty-eight.)

I was an imperfect student.

The complete text that I apparently never quite got down is very old, and if you teach it to your students this week you’ll be welcoming them into an ancient inheritance. Here’s a version that was copied down about the year 1555:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

But even that isn’t the oldest English version. A manuscript dated to about the year 1425 contains this wording, which gives November rather than September pride of place in the first line:

Thirti dayes hath Novembir,
April, June, and Septembir;
Of xxviii is but oon,
And all the remenaunt xxx and i.

Or in modern orthography:

Thirty days hath November,
April, June, and September;
Of twenty-eight [there] is but one,
And all the remnant, thirty and one.

Versions exist in many other languages as well. Wherever the ancient Roman calendar has gone, this ancient verse, in one form or another, has trailed along behind.

What grand old calendrical traditions you be marking in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

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

❡ This is a printable lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a custom “Print” button and icon, along with several social-media share buttons. The Print button will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you resize or delete elements that you may not want or need (such as images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 25 September 2022

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Quick Freshes is our regular Sunday almanac for 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 Georgia, and our COUNTRIES are Bahrain 🇧🇭, Bangladesh 🇧🇩, Barbados 🇧🇧, and Belarus 🇧🇾. (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 new — that’s the best time of the month for dark-sky 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 331–346 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (25 September 2022) — Today is the 268th day of 2022; there are 97 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of the great American geneticist and Nobel laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945), who established the role of chromosomes in the process of inheritance. 🔬 It’s also the birthday of American poet and children’s author Shel Silverstein (1930–1999). 📚 And the great Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould was born on this day in 1932. 🎹

Monday (26 September 2022) — On this day in 1687, during the Venetian siege of Athens, a bomb fell on the Parthenon, which was being used by the Ottoman Turks for munitions storage. The roof, parts of the frieze, and many of the columns, which had stood for more than two thousand years, were destroyed. 🏛 Today is the birthday of American nurseryman and folk hero John Chapman (1774–1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed. 🍎 It’s also the birthday of American poet and Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), author of (among other things) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a wonderful read-aloud book for children. 🐈

Tuesday (27 September 2022) — On this day in 1941, the S.S. Patrick Henry, the first of a fleet of nearly 3000 “Liberty Ships” that transported supplies and troops during World War II, was launched in Baltimore, Maryland. ⚓️

Wednesday (28 September 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great philologist Sir William Jones (1746–1794), who first recognized the extent of the vast Indo-European family of languages that encompasses everything from Icelandic to Hindi. 🗣 On this day in 1928, Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming noticed that mold growing on some of his laboratory samples was killing colonies of bacteria. The result of this chance observation was the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin. 🔬 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Radziwill Castle in Belarus. 🇧🇾

Thursday (29 September 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). 🇪🇸 It’s also the birthday of the pioneering Austrian-American economic philosopher Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). 💵 And not only that, it’s also the birthday of the great Italian-American physicist and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi (1901–1954). ⚛️

Friday (30 September 2022) — Today is the birthday of William Wrigley Jr. (1861–1932), founder of the Wrigley chewing gum company. 🍬 And the Hoover Dam on the Arizona–Nevada border was dedicated on this day in 1935. 🏗 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Grebes and Flamingos. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦩

Saturday (1 October 2022) — The first Ford Model T automobile was put on sale on this day in 1908. The price was $825. 🚗 The George Washington Bridge linking New York and New Jersey across the Hudson River was opened on this day in 1931. 🌉 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of October is “To Autumn” by John Keats, perhaps the most famous fall poem in the English language and a work that every literature student should know. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🍂

Sunday (2 October 2022) — Today is the birthday of Indian lawyer, philosopher, and political leader Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948). 🇮🇳 It’s also the birthday of American poet Wallace Stevens (1879–1955). 🖋 The comic strip Peanuts premiered on this day in 1950. 🥜 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Connecticut 🇺🇸, Belgium 🇧🇪, Belize 🇧🇿, Benin 🇧🇯, and Bhutan 🇧🇹.

🥂 🍁 OUR WEEKLY TOAST and our weekly poem for the upcoming start of October are one and the same: “To Autumn.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast in your homeschool this week? 🥂

🌏 🇧🇩 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Bangladesh in southern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Chitra River in southwestern Bangladesh. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Chitra River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Chitra River in Bangladesh. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ 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 693–695), 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. 🗓

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Georgia, Bahrain, Belarus, and More

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

Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and our recommended homeschool reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 418), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    Georgia State Quarter (1999)
    GEORGIA (the 4th state, 2 January 1788) — The Peach State. Capital: Atlanta. Georgia can be found on page 568 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Named by colonial administrator James Oglethorp for King George II of England in 1732” (almanac page 419). State bird: Brown Thrasher (bird guide page 418). Website: georgia.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:

  • 🇧🇭 BAHRAIN in the Middle East. Population: 1,526,929. Capital: Manama. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.bahrain.bh (in Arabic and English).
  • 🇧🇩 BANGLADESH in southern Asia. Population: 164,098,818. Capital: Dhaka. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: bangladesh.gov.bd (in Bengali and English).
  • 🇧🇧 BARBADOS in the West Indies. Population: 301,865. Capital: Bridgetown. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gov.bb (in English).
  • 🇧🇾 BELARUS in eastern Europe. Population: 9,441,842. Capital: Minsk. Government: “Presidential republic in name; in fact a dictatorship” (almanac page 753). Website: www.president.gov.by (in Belarusian, Russian, 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 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 global geographical excursions (real or virtual) will you be 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🦃 🐓 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: “Gallinaceous” Birds

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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 school-year’s tour began at the beginning of this month with an introduction to your bird guide.)

This week’s group of three families has a wonderful ten-dollar name you can share with your students: they are the “gallinaceous” birds, encompassing the New World Quail (bird guide pages 54–57); the Curassows and Guans (pages 58–59); and the Partridges, Grouse, Turkeys, and Old World Quail (pages 58–67). Gallus is the Latin word for chicken, so the gallinaceous birds are the chicken-like birds, with generally plump bodies, small heads, short beaks, and rounded wings.

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:

NEW WORLD QUAIL — Family Odontophoridae. New World Quail are their own family. All have chunky bodies and crests or head plumes. In N.A. [North America], most live in the West. Species: 33 World, 6 N.A.

CURASSOWS · GUANS — Family Cracidae. These tropical-forest arboreal birds have short, rounded wings and long tails. Generally secretive but highly vocal. One species of this family is found in the United States. Species: 54 World, 1 N.A.

PARTRIDGES · GROUSE · TURKEYS · OLD WORLD QUAIL — Family Phasianidae. Ground dwellers with feathered nostrils; short, strong bills; and short, rounded wings. Flight is brief but strong. Males perform elaborate courting displays. In some species, courting birds gather in communal grounds, known as leks. Species: 178 World, 18 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 Curassow family, for example. How many species? (54 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only 1 species in North America, and the species map will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Forest dwellers, secretive, arboreal, long tailed, and so on.)

Many of the gallinaceous birds have played important roles in human culture for thousands of years. All the varieties of domestic chicken are descended from the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a member of the Phasianidae that is native to Asia. Different species of pheasants, quail, grouse, and partridges are raised or hunted for food and ornament all around the world.

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, why not investigate the state bird of Pennsylvania: the Ruffed Grouse (page 62).

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 Ruffed Grouse? (17 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Bonasa umbellus.) 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 drumming courtship call of the male Ruffed Grouse is one of the characteristic sounds of northern North American forests.

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. If you live in Alaska why not look at the Willow Ptarmigan (the state bird), or if you’re in California, the California Quail (the state bird there). The domestic turkeys we eat are all descendants of the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo) (page 60), the largest gallinaceous bird in North America, and the species that would have become the U.S. national bird had Ben Franklin had his way. 🦃

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 will you be 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 solitary or social, it can be as elementary or as advanced as you wish, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations 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. 🐦

❡ Enchiridion: 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. 🌎

❡ State birds: Six members of this week’s bird families are United States state birds: the Ruffed Grouse (Pennsylvania), California Quail (California), Willow Ptarmigan (Alaska), and Ring-necked Pheasant (South Dakota), and the Rhode Island Red Hen (Rhode Island) and Delaware Blue Hen (Delaware). The last two don’t appear in your bird guide, however, because it includes only wild species, not domestic varieties; try the eBird entry for the Red Junglefowl of Asia to learn more about the wild ancestor of these (and other) domestic chicken varieties. 🇺🇸

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🖋 🍃 WONDERFUL WORDS: “Our Summer made her light escape”

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The Chimney Swifts are gone. (That’s how it is in my neighborhood.) The Nighthawks and Kingbirds too. Did you notice? In the spring when new birds arrive their voices strike your ear like a fresh spark. But when they depart — have they departed? — most slip away silently in the night.

As we pass today’s equinox and enter into astronomical autumn, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) provides us with a pensive homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of September:

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away —
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy —

A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon —

The Dusk drew earlier in —
The Morning foreign shone —
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone —

And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

If your students are learning how to read poetry — and poetry requires a special kind of reading, different from prose reading — tell them not to go too quickly or to expect everything to be clear on the first pass through. Getting to know a poem is like getting to know a person: some things are apparent on the surface, but there are new things to discover over time with repeated engagement (and with expanded life experience). If you make the effort, however, you’ll often discover that good poems, like good people, can become friends for life.

[Emily Dickinson Homestead]
The Emily Dickinson Homestead, Amherst, Massachusetts. (Image: Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism.)

For traditionally styled poems like this one, the first thing to do as you make the poem’s acquaintance is not to think about meaning or abstract symbolism; instead, just count syllables. As imperceptibly as Grief (eight). The Summer lapsed away (six). Too imperceptible at last (eight). To seem like Perfidy (six). 8-6-8-6. The other three stanzas are shortened versions of that pattern: 6-6-8-6.

“Eights-and-sixes” is one of the most common hymn meters in the Protestant tradition, and Emily Dickinson learned her very precise prosody from the church hymns she grew up with. Compare the rhythm of the first stanza above with this familiar verse:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

A perfect match: 8-6-8-6. Whenever you encounter Emily Dickinson in your homeschool reading — and I hope that will be often — start by counting syllables and you’ll gain a new appreciation for the details of her craft.

So this is a metrically precise poem — but does it rhyme? Well, yes, but not perfectly. Emily Dickinson was almost completely unknown as a writer during her lifetime, and one reason for that was her frequent use of “slant” rhyme (rather than full or exact rhyme), which made her verse sound too irregular to her contemporaries. In exact rhyme, the vowel sounds match: sing/ring, time/chime, fray/stay. In this week’s poem, Dickinson does consistently rhyme the second and fourth lines in each stanza, but the rhymes are imperfect, depending usually on just a single consonant, and the sounds don’t quite correspond: away/perfidy, begun/afternoon, shone/gone, keel/beautiful. (It’s possible to read shone/gone as a perfect rhyme, depending on how one pronounces shone.) Imperfect rhyme often creates a prose-y feel, and to Dickinson’s contemporaries that was unpleasant. To our modern ears, however, this “irregularity” strikes us as linguistically more natural and less contrived, and so more in alignment with present-day aesthetic sensibilities.

There’s some wonderful vocabulary you can have your students look up this week in your family dictionary as they try to work out the poem’s meaning: imperceptibly, perfidy, distilled, sequestered, harrowing, keel, and lapsed. Send your students to the dictionary also for any poetical terminology they encounter this week and throughout the year in our literary explorations: stanza, couplet, quatrain, sonnet, pentameter, hexameter, iambic, dactylic, and more — wonderful words, every one!

What literary delights and poetical productions will you be studying in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ This is a printable lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a custom “Print” button and icon, along with several social-media share buttons. The Print button will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you resize or delete elements that you may not want or need (such as images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ Pages to color: Did you know that the Emily Dickinson Museum has free printable coloring pages available? It’s true! 🖍

❡ Our summer made her light escape: 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 Emily Dickinson) 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 to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📖

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🗓 🍂 FALL IS HERE! (Astronomically Speaking)

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Today (September 22nd) is the September equinox — we call it the autumnal or fall equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the vernal or spring equinox. The autumnal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of fall, just as the vernal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of spring.

❡ Little lessons: “‘Vernal’ and ‘autumnal’ are wonderful words. Let’s look them both up in our big dictionary.”

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23º). The two solstices occur at the points in the orbit when the axis of rotation is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter) and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in September and March, occur when the earth’s axis of rotation is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so). The word equi-nox means “equal night” (and day).

As the earth makes its annual circuit around the sun (counterclockwise in this diagram), the earth’s axis of daily rotation maintains a 23º tilt with respect to the plane of the earth’s orbit. The two solstices occur when the axis of rotation is pointing most directly away from the sun (in December) and most directly toward the sun (in June). The two equinoxes (in September and March) occur when the earth’s axis of rotation is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak). (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary — solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website. And you can find many more technical facts and figures about solstices and equinoxes on page 345 in your recommended homeschool almanac.

What calendrical events and astronomical alignments will you be marking in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

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

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our regular posts on Homeschool Astronomy and on Homeschool Terms & Calendars. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the homeschool year. 🍂 ⛄️ 🌷 ⛱

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🌏 🇦🇺 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Lord Howe Island Group in Australia

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(A new homeschool year has begun and so has a new tour of World Heritage Sites around the globe! Print your own River Houses World Heritage Calendar and follow along with us every Wednesday.)

Australia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Australia’s World Heritage Sites: the Lord Howe Island Group.

Lord Howe Island off the east coast of Australia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The isolated Lord Howe Island Group between Australia and New Zealand is renowned for its distinctive flora and fauna:

The Lord Howe Island Group is an outstanding example of oceanic islands of volcanic origin containing a unique biota of plants and animals, as well as the world’s most southerly true coral reef. It is an area of spectacular and scenic landscapes encapsulated within a small land area, and provides important breeding grounds for colonies of seabirds as well as significant natural habitat for the conservation of threatened species. Iconic species include endemics such as the flightless Lord Howe Woodhen (Gallirallis sylvestris), once regarded as one of the rarest birds in the world, and the Lord Howe Island Phasmid (Dryococelus australis), the world’s largest stick insect that was feared extinct until its rediscovery on Balls Pyramid.

About 75% of the terrestrial part of the property is managed as a Permanent Park Preserve, consisting of the northern and southern mountains of Lord Howe Island itself, plus the Admiralty Islands, Mutton Bird Islands, Balls Pyramid and surrounding islets. The property is located in the Tasman Sea, approximately 570 kilometres east of Port Macquarie. The entire property including the marine area and associated coral reefs covers 146,300 hectares, with the terrestrial area covering approximately 1,540 hectares. (World Heritage Centre #186)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Lord Howe Island Group on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

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

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

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

❡ This is a printable lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a custom “Print” button and icon, along with several social-media share buttons. The Print button will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you resize or delete elements that you may not want or need (such as images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ 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 cultural 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – September 2022

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On the third Tuesday of each month we post a quick roundup of some recent academic publications and news about homeschooling, offered for your interest. These are typically university research papers, and they may have a positive, negative, or neutral outlook on home education. The title links generally point to the full text of each publication, which is often a printable pdf file. In some cases, a paid subscription may be required to read the whole article. The article abstracts or introductions below are quoted in full whenever possible, without editing.

We have four items this month from a range of international authors:

(1) Experiences of Homeschool High School Students in the Development of Their Educational Plan: A Transcendental Phenomenological Study — N.S. Immings (2022)

Abstract: The purpose of this qualitative, transcendental phenomenological study was to describe the experiences of homeschool high school students in Georgia in the development of their educational plan of study. The theory guiding this study was Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory as it relates to learning and development and the interaction of the learner with the environment. Ten participants were identified from the Local Homeschool Association which serves families in 13 counties in the state of Georgia. The study sought to answer this central research question: What are the experiences of homeschool high school students in Georgia in the development of their educational plan of study? Sub-questions included: (a) What are the experiences of homeschool high school students in the development of their academic educational plan of study and their role in course selection? (b) What are the experiences of homeschool high school students in the process of choosing settings for learning academic content and their role in this process? (c) What are the experiences of homeschool high school students related to the impact of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities as part of their educational plan and their role in choosing these activities? Data collection involved questionnaires, individual interviews, and physical artifacts. Data were analyzed using the modified Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen method described by Moustakas, and five themes emerged through the data analysis process: abundant academic options, individualized and customized instruction, development of life skills, family relationships and values, and significant social opportunities. A discussion regarding implications of findings as well as recommendations for policy, practice, and future research were provided.

(2) Disability and Homeschooling: Parents Experiences in Kazakhstan — K. Mukashev & M. Somerton (2022)

Abstract: There are several special education provisions for children with disabilities in Kazakhstan, including home education which is characterized as an alternative model of education to mainstream and private educational organizations. Hence, parents become the central figure in managing the home education process as the meeting special needs of children depends on their knowledge and experience. The present study explores parents` experiences in home educating a child with special needs in one town outside the capital city of Nursultan. The data was collected through face-to-face interviews with six parents in a qualitative multiple case study design. The findings highlight the way the diagnosis of a child’s special needs impacts the psychological, social and financial dimensions of parents’ life. Moreover, the findings of the present study illustrate some of the challenges and opportunities parents experience in home-educating their children. These include teachers’ specialised knowledge and skills, social isolation, involvement in school activities, and the provision of educational resources for home education.

(3) Homeschooling – Methodical Interpretations — K.G. Nedkova & D. Zhelezova-Mindizova (2022)

Abstract: Homeschooling or home schooling, also known as home education or elective home education (EHE), is the education of school-aged children at home or a variety of places other than a school. Usually conducted by a parent, tutor, or an online teacher, many homeschool families use less formal, more personalized and individualized methods of learning that are not always found in schools. The actual practice of homeschooling can look very different. The spectrum ranges from highly structured forms based on traditional school lessons to more open, free forms such as unschooling, which is a lesson- and curriculum-free implementation of homeschooling. Some families who initially attended a school go through a deschool phase to break away from school habits and prepare for homeschooling. Homeschooling should not be confused with distance education, which generally refers to the arrangement where the student is educated by and conforms to the requirements of an online school, rather than being educated independently and unrestrictedly by their parents or by themselves. Today, homeschooling is a relatively widespread form of education and legal alternative to public and private schools in many countries.

(4) Demographics are Predictive of Child Abuse and Neglect but Homeschool Versus Conventional School is a Non-issue: Evidence from a Nationally Representative Survey — B.D. Ray & M.D. Shakeel (2022)

Abstract: Opponents of homeschooling associate it with unchecked and unreported abuse and neglect of children, often arguing for more regulation of or an outright ban of home education. Do homeschool students experience more maltreatment than those in schools and, if so, is it happening in or outside the home? Empirical evidence to answer this question is lacking, data collection during schooling age poses several constraints, and school-age children may under-report incidences due to fear. To address this gap in information and literature, we draw nationally representative data from 1,253 previously homeschooled and conventionally schooled (public and private schools) adults to anonymously report about their abuse and neglect experiences during school age. Cross-sectional findings suggest that school sector is a non-issue after considering the role played by demographics (e.g., family structure, years in foster care, large family size, and household poverty) in the maltreatment of children. The incidences of abuse and neglect for homeschool children are statistically significant only at community or some type of school, and the occurrence rates there are double or more than at family where the rate is not significant. Results suggest that policymakers should consider the larger role of demographics in framing policies to protect children from abuse and neglect.

What interesting homeschool news and academic research have you come across this Cygnus Term? 🎓

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

❡ Explore more: For a comprehensive review of homeschooling research prior to 2020, see the paper by Kunzman & Gaither that is linked in our Research & News post for July 2020. 📖

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

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

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