The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

by Bob O'Hara

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

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 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. Make yourself at home! 😊

🖋 ☔️ WONDERFUL WORDS: “Whan that Aprill…”

by Bob O'Hara

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

April showers are expected today here in New England, so it’s only natural that our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this first week of April should be the opening lines of the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. 1343–1400), one of the foundational texts of the English language and a staple of high school and college literature classes across the English-speaking world.

I can still recite these lines myself from high school — perhaps you can too, and you can pass that tradition on to your students this month. Here’s a quintessential “random Internet dude” giving us a Chaucer reading from his own memory of freshman English in college:

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The Canterbury Tales were written about the year 1390 and they are in Middle English. It’s conventional to divide the history of our language into three phases: Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Middle English (Chaucer, for example), and Modern English (Shakespeare to today). (That’s a great simplification of a vast subject, of course.) Old English is, to modern eyes and ears, a foreign language. But Middle English, although quite strange, is recognizably English, and with a little effort and help it can usually be worked out.

Here’s this week’s Chaucer passage in straight Middle English:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
And specially from every shires ende
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.

And here’s an interlinear translation. (That’s a good concept to teach!) Invite your students to compare Middle and Modern carefully and see how they are alike and different:

Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
 When April with its sweet-smelling showers
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,
 Has pierced the drought of March to the root,
And bathed every veyne in swich licour
 And bathed every vein [of the plants] in such liquid
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
 By which power the flower is created;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
 When the West Wind also with its sweet breath,
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
 In every wood and field has breathed life into
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
 The tender new leaves, and the young sun
Hath in the Ram his half cours yronne,
 Has run half its course in [the constellation] Aries,
And smale foweles maken melodye,
 And small fowls make melody,
That slepen al the nyght with open ye
 Those that sleep all the night with open eyes
(So priketh hem Nature in hir corages),
 (So Nature incites them in their hearts),
Thanne longen folk to goon on pilgrimages,
 Then folk long to go on pilgrimages,
And palmeres for to seken straunge strondes,
 And professional pilgrims to seek foreign shores,
To ferne halwes, kowthe in sondry londes;
 To distant shrines, known in various lands;
And specially from every shires ende
 And specially from every shire’s end
Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende,
 Of England to Canterbury they travel,
The hooly blisful martir for to seke,
 To seek the holy blessed martyr,
That hem hath holpen whan that they were seeke.
 Who helped them when they were sick.

It would be hard to overestimate the importance of Chaucer in the history of English literature. In fact, the first book printed in England in the English language was William Caxton’s 1476 edition of The Canterbury Tales. Why not drop Chaucer’s name this April in your homeschool and invite your students to learn more about his works, his life and times, and about the history of our language.

What literary discoveries — ancient or modern — have you made in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick review of the Medieval period, turn to page 188–197 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). You’ll even find a little picture of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims right there on page 196. 📚

❡ From every shires ende: 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. Tolkien fans will perhaps pluck out this little phrase — “from every shires ende” is Chaucer’s Middle English equivalent of something like “from sea to shining sea.” 😊

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

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

📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE – April 2020: “Interior Clocks” and “Home Cooking Videos”

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-04-photos

Calling all homeschool photographers! One of the independent projects we recommend to homeschool students is the monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. The April challenge is now open and the announced themes are “Interior Clocks” and “Home Cooking Videos.” You can see examples and learn how to submit an entry here:

The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge encourages people to take and submit high-quality images for the public Wikimedia Commons database — the source from which most of the images in Wikipedia are drawn. Once you’ve registered and submitted an entry, you can also participate in the selection of future themes and in the voting for the best entries each month.

A sample entry for the theme “Interior Clcoks” from this month’s Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you have talented young photographers in your home academy, why not encourage them to sign up and submit an entry. Working on a specific theme over a period of a few weeks is a great way for students to develop both their technical camera skills and their visual composition skills. And if you submit a number of entries over time you can build up a personal portfolio page to show off your work — that would be good experience in how to create a professional presentation of yourself for future employment or college admissions.

You can find more ideas for independent homeschool projects in a wide range of scientific and scholarly fields on our River Houses Lunar Society page (riverhouses.org/lunar).

What photographic, artistic, and scientific discoveries have you been making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac (riverhouses.org/books) has a long list of famous artists on pages 177–180, and that list includes famous photographers. Why not pick out a name or two to research each month, either online or on your next visit to your local library — it would be a great way to give your students a little extra photographic inspiration! 📸

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our regular “Lunar Society” posts about the many independent projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🍝 CELEBRATING the Annual Spaghetti Harvest in Ticino, Switzerland

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-ticino

Although most people tend to think of spaghetti as an Italian dish, some of the world’s finest spaghetti is actually grown just across the border in the mountainous cantons of Switzerland. The annual Swiss spaghetti harvest is getting underway this week, and it’s a wonderful cultural tradition that all homeschoolers should know about. Here’s a classic two-minute documentary produced by the BBC:

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Sadly, many of these traditional farming practices have declined in recent years under the pressure of modernization, but artisanal spaghetti growers are still keeping them alive, sometimes with subsidies from the Swiss government. 🇨🇭

Some of the world’s finest spaghetti is grown in the mountain valleys of the Canton of Ticino in Switzerland. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

You can find a beautiful map of the alpine nation of Switzerland on plate 69 in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can learn more about the annual Ticino spaghetti harvest on the helpful website of the Swiss Board of Tourism (tinyurl.com/74bkqu8).

What ancient and honorable cultural traditions are you celebrating in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😉

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

🌍 🇲🇿 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Island of Mozambique

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-mozambique

Mozambique on the east coast of Africa is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Mozambique’s World Heritage Sites: the Island of Mozambique.

The island and fort of Mozambique, from a 1598 atlas. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Island of Mozambique was the colonial capital of Portuguese East Africa for nearly 400 years and a focal point of trade throughout the Indian Ocean:

“The Island of Mozambique is a calcareous coral reef situated 4 km from the mainland coast in the entrance to the Mossuril Bay of the Indian Ocean in Nampula Province of the Republic of Mozambique. A bridge built in the 1960s joins the island to the mainland. The island forms an archipelago with two small uninhabited islands, the Islands of Goa and Sena to the east.

“The island communities are intimately associated with the history of navigation in the Indian Ocean as the island played a unique role in intercontinental trading links from the 10th century. Its international historic importance relates to the development and establishment of Portuguese maritime routes between Western Europe and the Indian subcontinent.

“The Island of Mozambique has two different types of dwellings and urban systems. The stone and lime town of Swahili, Arab and European influences in the north half, and the macuti town (city of roofed palm leaves) of traditional African architecture in the south. The stone and lime town, with its administrative and commercial properties, was the first seat of the Portuguese colonial government that lasted from 1507 to 1898. Thereafter the capital was transferred to Lourenço Marques now Maputo. The urban fabric and fortifications of Mozambique Island are exceptional examples of architecture and building techniques resulting from cultural diversity, and the interaction of people of Bantu, Swahili, Arab, Persian, Indian and European origin.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #599)

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which permitted direct travel from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean without having to round the Cape of Good Hope, led to a decline in the island’s commercial importance in the late nineteenth century.

Nineteenth-century Portuguese hospital complex on the Island of Mozambique. (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 online at the UNESCO 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 (riverhouses.org/2019-wh-map), available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

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

❡ 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 the WHC’s brief description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical, geographical, and cultural information. 🇲🇿

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

🗓 ☔️ 🌸 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL APRIL from the River Houses!

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-april

Happy April to all our readers and friends! Here are some things to look for in the homeschool month ahead. 🔍

Third-century Roman mosaic from Tunisia. (Image: Ad Meskens/Wikimedia Commons.)
April with 30 days is the middle month of Leo Term, our spring term in the River Houses. Leo Term runs from March through May. Visit our main calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print out some of our simple educational calendars and planners — they’ll help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. 🗓

The month of April (Latin Mensis Aprilis) was the second month of the year in the earliest Roman calendars, which treated the beginning of spring in March as the beginning of the new year. The origin of the month’s name is disputed, and it may be lost forever in the mists of time. Some have connected it to the Latin verb aperire (to open), while others associate it with variant name-forms of the goddess Aphrodite, but there is no sure consensus. Just as the Romans renamed their original fifth month Julius (July, after Julius Caesar) and their original sixth month Augustus (August, after Augustus Caesar), so did they briefly rename April Neronius after the emperor Nero — but following Nero’s disastrous reign and subsequent suicide, that short-lived change was reversed. You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚

Frostiana:

“You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.“

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for April will be Minnesota, Oregon, Kansas, and West Virginia, and our countries will run from Nepal to Poland. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and tour the United States and the whole world with us from Delaware to Hawaii and Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. 🇺🇸 🌎

We’ll be visiting World Heritage Sites in Mozambique, Nepal, Niger, Pakistan, and Paraguay this month — our River Houses World Heritage Calendar will point the way. 🗺

We’ll have homeschool poems this month from Geoffrey Chaucer (for April showers), Delmore Schwartz (for April days), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (for Paul Revere), Ralph Waldo Emerson (for the embattled farmers), and A.E. Housman (for the loveliest of trees). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and join us as we visit with forty-eight of our favorite friends over the course of the year. ✒️

Our Friday Bird Families this month will include the Larks, the Swallows, the Chickadees and Titmice, the Penduline Tits and Verdins, the Long-tailed Tits and Bushtits, the Nuthatches, the Creepers, the Wrens, the Gnatcatchers, the Dippers, and the Kinglets. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds, get out your copy of our recommended homeschool bird guide (riverhouses.org/books), and follow the flyways with us. 🦅

Our monthly Great Star for April is Regulus (alpha Leonis), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and join us as we visit twelve high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky and make them friends for life. 🌟

Our Dewey Decimal class for April is the Technological 600s — follow along with us (on the first Tuesday of each month) and help your students learn the whole library over the course of the year! 📚

And watch for our monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge post — it’s a great opportunity for all homeschool photographers. 📸

Also coming up this month:

⬩ 1 April (W): Annual Swiss Spaghetti Harvest 🍝
⬩ 7 April (Tu): Lunar Society Report 🌕
⬩ 15 April (W): Leonardo da Vinci’s Birthday, 1452 🎨
⬩ 19 April (Su): Lexington & Concord, 1775 ⚔️
⬩ 23 April (Th): William Shakespeare’s Birthday (more or less), 1564 🎭
⬩ 24 April (F): National Arbor Day 🌳

And remember that while you’re sleeping, or awake, or indoors, or out, “spring advances up the United States at the average rate of about fifteen miles a day. It ascends mountainsides at the rate of about a hundred feet a day. It sweeps ahead like a flood of water, racing down the long valleys, creeping up hillsides in a rising tide. Most of us, like the man who lives on the bank of a river and watches the stream flow by, see only one phase of the movement of spring. Each year the season advances toward us out of the south, sweeps around us, goes flooding away to the north.” 🌸

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

❡ Thirty days hath September: This is one of our regular Homeschool Terms & Calendars posts (riverhouses.org/topics/calendars). Print your own River Houses Calendars (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us throughout the year, and add your name to our mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

📜 NEW ONLINE CLASSES FOR KIDS at the National Archives

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-archives-online

The U.S. National Archives is hosting a steady supply of online programs for students at every grade level in the next two months — they’re just the thing for homeschoolers who are having to spend more time away from their usual library resources. Here’s the list:

  • March 30, Presidential Reading Program, Preschool–3rd Grade
  • April 1, Herbert Hoover and the Hoover Dam, Grades 4–7
  • April 3, Segregation and a Controversial White House Tea Party, Grades 9–12
  • April 6, Article II For Kids!, Preschool–3rd Grade
  • April 8, Reorganizing the Executive Branch, Grades 4–7
  • April 10, Herbert Hoover and the Bonus March: Presidential Blunder or Necessary Action?, Grades 9–12
  • April 14, World War II Propaganda, Grades 6–12
  • April 16, The Story Behind the Titanic, Grades 3–5
  • April 21, Decoding the Declaration, Grades 6–12
  • April 28, Ending the War in Japan, Grades 9–12
  • April 30, The Space Shuttle Challenger, Grades 8–12
  • May 12, Candy Bomber and the Berlin Airlift, Grades 3–8
  • May 14, President Reagan and the Cold War, Grades 11–12
  • May 19, The Constitution at Work: Elementary Edition, Grades 4–6
  • May 21, The Constitution at Work: Middle and High School Edition, Grades 7–12
  • May 28, Presidential Reading Program, Preschool–3rd Grade

You can find all the details on each one of these offerings, and learn how to register, right here on the Archives website:

We are truly fortunate to live in a time when so many wonderful educational opportunities are available!

What historical treasures have you discovered in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website (riverhouses.org) has links to several important online library collections that we like to explore, as well as permanent links to WorldCat and the WorldCat Library Finder. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (rather than a phone) and give them a browse. 😊

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

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 29 March 2020

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-03-29

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 (and planners!) for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is California, and our COUNTRIES are Mozambique 🇲🇿, Myanmar (Burma) 🇲🇲, Namibia 🇳🇦, and Nauru 🇳🇷. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌒 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waxing crescent — a good time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more!

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (29 March 2020) — Today is the 89th day of 2020; there are 277 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 Today is also the birthday of two unrelated Waltons: the English composer William Walton (1902–1983), and the American businessman Sam Walton (1918–1992), the founder of Walmart. 🎼 🛒

Monday (30 March 2020) — On this day in 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire for about two cents an acre. 🏔

Tuesday (31 March 2020) — The great French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was born on this day in 1596. 📈 (And bonus points for anyone today who can tell why I chose that emoji for Descartes.) 😊 Also, on this day in 1774, Great Britain ordered the closure of the major trading port of Boston, escalating the tensions that would eventually lead to the American Revolution. 🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸

Wednesday (1 April 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great English physician William Harvey (1578–1657), who first described the circulation of the blood in the human body. ❤️ It’s also the traditional date of the annual spaghetti harvest in Ticino, Switzerland. 🍝 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Island of Mozambique. 🇲🇿 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this first week of April is the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which opens with April showers. ☔️ Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Thursday (2 April 2020) — The United States Mint was established on this day in 1792. 💰 And today is also the birthday of the Danish novelist and children’s author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), which means that it’s International Children’s Book Day too! 📚

Friday (3 April 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet George Herbert (1593–1633). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the American naturalist and author John Burroughs (1837–1921). 🏞 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the friendly and familiar Larks and Swallows. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (4 April 2020) — Today is the birthday of the American Quaker artist Edward Hicks (1780–1849), famous for his “Peaceable Kingdom.” 🎨 And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (5 April 2020) — Happy First Contact Day! 🖖 On this day in 2063, a Vulcan ship will land near Bozeman, Montana, bringing to an end our long galactic childhood. 🚀

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May the sunshine of comfort dispel the clouds of despair.”

❡ 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!”). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌍 🇲🇿 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Mozambique in southeastern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Limpopo River, which crosses Mozambique from northwest to southeast and empties into the Indian Ocean. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Limpopo River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Limpopo River in Mozambique. (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: California, Mozambique, Nauru, and More

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-california

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. Our 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 420), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    California State Bird and Flower
    CALIFORNIA (the 31st state, 9 September 1850) — The Golden State. Capital: Sacramento. California can be found on page 565 in your almanac and on plates 37 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Bestowed by Spanish conquistadores (possibly Hernán Cortés). It was the name of an imaginary island in the 1510 Spanish novel Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Exploits of Esplandián), by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The Spanish first visited Baja (Lower) California in 1533. The present-day U.S. state was called Alta (Upper) California” (almanac page 422). State bird: California Quail (bird guide page 56). Website: www.ca.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our 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 wealth of new geographical and historical information, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 😊

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning an extended unit-study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to look into the primary source materials for teachers available at the Library of Congress.

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

  • 🇲🇿 MOZAMBIQUE in southeastern Africa. Population: 27,910,300. Capital: Maputo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.portaldogoverno.gov.mz (in Portuguese).
  • 🇲🇲 MYANMAR (Burma) in southern Asia. Population: 56,111,671. Capital: Yangon. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.president-office.gov.mm (in Burmese and English).
  • 🇳🇦 NAMIBIA in southern Africa. Population: 2,581,689. Capital: Windhoek. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.gov.na (in English).
  • 🇳🇷 NAURU in the western Pacific Ocean. Population: 9,740. Capital: none. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.naurugov.nr (in English).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). 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 have you been making in your homeschool this Leo 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 (riverhouses.org/books) 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 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 (riverhouses.org/calendars) 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🇺🇸 🌎

🌟 SUNSET and Evening Star

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-venus

Be sure to get outside and see the big light show this weekend: the crescent moon and Venus will be up in the southwest at sunset, and Venus will be higher and brighter than it’s been in many years. The Old Farmer’s Almanac has all the details:

“One way to have fun at home is simply to step onto your backyard, deck, or roof, and look up at the sky. From this weekend (March 27 to 29) through April, you’ll see something extraordinary. Venus, also known as The Evening Star, is so unusually high and brilliant, it’s safe to say that you’ve never seen it looking better, not in your whole life.

“Venus is that unbelievably dazzling “star” you’ve probably already noticed. The thing is, while the Evening Star shows up every two years or so, it’s usually rather low, and normally not this bright. But right now it’s as high as it can get — about halfway up the sky as darkness falls. And it’s so bright it will actually make you cast a Venus shadow on a sheet or snowy surface if you’re away from all artificial lights.“ (Old Farmer’s Almanac)

And while you’re gazing admiringly at Venus, don’t forget the brightest true star in the sky, Sirius, our homeschool Great Star for the month for March. Look to the left of Venus, more toward the direct south, and you’ll see it burning bright.

What astronomical alignments and planetary apparitions have you been observing in your homeschool this Leo Term? 🔭

❡ Sunset and evening star: In light of current events, this may not exactly be the best time to introduce your students to famous poems about mortality — nevertheless, one of the greatest of all evening star poems is Tennyson’s short mortality-minded masterpiece “Crossing the Bar.” Enjoy it yourself, and bookmark it for study on some future shining night of star-made shadows, when all is health. 🌟

❡ Choose something like a star: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas (riverhouses.org/books) both contain charts of the constellations that will show you the all the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌌

❡ 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. 🔭

🌸 VISIT THE CHERRY BLOSSOMS in Washington, D.C.

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-bloomcam

On this day in 1912, the Japanese government presented a gift of 3000 cherry trees to the United States to line the banks of the Potomac River and other sites in Washington, D.C., where they and their successors may still be seen today. It’s the week of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, but sadly, like so many other events around the country during this season of illness, many of the customary events have been cancelled. But don’t despair! You and your students can view the cherry trees live from the comfort of your home, no matter where you are, thanks to BloomCam Live, sponsored by the Trust for the National Mall.

There doesn’t seem to be a way to embed the live feed, but you can find it right here:

Have you made a homeschool visit to Washington to see the sights? If not, perhaps you will in the next few years. If you schedule your trip for late March, you can visit the cherry blossoms in person.

Cherry blossoms by the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What phenological observations have you made in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊 (“Oh my, phenological is a lovely word. Let’s go look that up in our homeschool dictionary.”)

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

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Crows and Jays (II)

by Horace the Otter 🦦

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-crows-ii

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

This week’s birds are (once again) the Crows and Jays (pages 364–373). Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’ve spread the Crows and Jays out over two weeks: last week we looked at the Crows, and this week the Jays.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

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 dense information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here again is the bird guide’s introduction to this week’s group, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“CROWS · JAYS — Family Corvidae. Harsh voice and aggressive manner draw attention to these large, often gregarious birds. Powerful, all-purpose bill efficiently handles a varied diet. Species: 126 World, 21 N.A. [North America]“

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. How many species? (126 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (21 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Loud, gregarious, varied diet, 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 example, why not investigate a bird of the Rocky Mountains and the West: the Steller’s Jay (page 366).

[See attached blog post for images and video]

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 Steller’s Jay? (11½ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Cyanocitta stelleri.) 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 two most common jays in the United States are the Steller’s Jay of the West and the Blue Jay of the East. In fact, these two species sometimes hybridize (cross-breed) in the eastern Rockies where their ranges overlap. As a good comparative exercise, invite your students to look also at the Blue Jay and see how these two species differ.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

The Steller’s Jay is obviously darker, but note that both species are almost exactly the same size and shape, with similar behavior, matching crests, and even similar black and blue barring on the wings. They are what biologists call “sister species” — one another’s closest evolutionary relatives.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick a species that is near you, or one that looks striking, or one that has a strange name, and explore. For an additional species this week, why not take a look at the Black-billed Magpie (page 370), a large and long-tailed jay-like bird that’s found throughout much of the West. (Our Black-billed Magpie is very similar to the Eurasian Magpie of the eastern hemisphere, a bird well known in folklore and literature.)

[See attached blog post for images and video]

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 Leo Term? 😊

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

❡ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (riverhouses.org/books) (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 (riverhouses.org/books) 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 (riverhouses.org/books) 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🏹 HOMESCHOOL LITERARY LESSONS: Apollo, God of Plague

by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-apollo

If you’re a classically minded homeschooler with older kids who are coping well with current events, you might like to point out this month that Homer’s Iliad, written more than 2500 years ago, opens with a plague, and with a plea from the soldiers to their leaders to hurry up and do something about it.

The Greek commander Agamemnon has insulted a priest of Apollo by refusing to return his daughter, the war-captive Cryseis. Seeking revenge, the priest asks Apollo, the archer-god of health and disease, to send a plague to punish Agamemnon and his men. And Apollo obliges.

From Iliad, Book I

[The priest’s] prayer went up and Phoebus Apollo heard him.
Down he strode from Olympus’ peaks, storming at heart
with his bow and hooded quiver slung across his shoulders.
The arrows clanged at his back as the god quaked with rage,
the god himself on the march, and down he came like night.
Over against the ships he dropped to a knee, let fly a shaft
and a terrifying clash rang out from the great silver bow.
First he went for the mules and circling dogs but then,
launching a piercing shaft at the men themselves,
he cut them down in droves —
and the corpse‑fires burned on, night and day, no end in sight.

That’s Robert Fagles’ translation. Here it is with the surrounding context, beautifully read by Derek Jacobi:

➢

(And speaking of classics, did you know there’s a whole chapter in Moby-Dick about an epidemic and a quarantine, and about how different people reacted to them? It’s true!) 🐳

What literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😷

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