The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

26 October 2019 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, and more. Take a look around and make yourself at home! 😊

🇨🇾 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Painted Churches of Troödos in Cyprus

20 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Cyprus in the Mediterranean is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Cyprus’ World Heritage Sites: the Painted Churches of Troödos.

“Vault of the Church of the Holy Cross, Pelendri, Cyprus.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The island of Cyprus was for centuries part of the Byzantine Empire, the successor to the Roman Empire in the eastern Mediterranean.

“The Troödos mountain region of Cyprus contains one of the largest groups of churches and monasteries of the former Byzantine Empire. The ten monuments included on the World Heritage List, all richly decorated with murals, provide an overview of Byzantine and post-Byzantine painting in Cyprus and bear testimony to the variety of artistic influences affecting Cyprus over a period of 500 years. The structures display elements that were specific to Cyprus and were determined by its geography, history and climate, including steep-pitched wooden roofs with flat hooked tiles, in some cases providing a second roof over Byzantine masonry domes and vaulted forms, while exhibiting Byzantine metropolitan art of the highest quality. The architecture of these churches is unique, confined to the Troödos range and almost certainly of indigenous origin. They range from small churches whose rural architectural style is in stark contrast to their highly refined decoration, to monasteries such as that of St John Lampadistis. They also contain a wealth of dated inscriptions, an uncommon feature in the Eastern Mediterranean during the Middle Ages, which makes them particularly important for recording the chronology of Byzantine painting.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #351)

For a beautifully illustrated overview of the Byzantine Empire and its history, turn to pages 198–199 in your recommended homeschool history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books).

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

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 have you been exploring in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia (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 one-paragraph description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical, geographical, and cultural information. 🇨🇾

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

🦄 🌠 HEADS UP: Possible Meteor Storm Thursday Night (21–22 November 2019)

19 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Astronomy Alert! Researchers are predicting a possible meteor storm this Thursday–Friday night, 21–22 November 2019, between 04:30–05:00 GMT (that’s 11:30 p.m. to midnight on Thursday, U.S. Eastern Time). You and your homeschool students should definitely take a look and see what you can see.

This possible storm is associated with the annual Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower. The Alpha Monocerotids are very minor meteor shower each year, producing only a few meteors per hour above the usual random background level. This year, however, researchers believe the earth may pass almost directly through the thin ribbon of dust left behind by the meteors’ parent comet — a comet that has still not been identified. If that occurs, a theoretical maximum of up to 400 meteors per hour may cross the sky. (That is an estimated theoretical maximum, a value that actual observers on earth will probably not see.)

The constellation Monoceros (the Unicorn) with Canis Minor to the left, Orion to the right, and Canis Major below. The Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower radiates from the border between Monoceros and Canis Minor, near the star Procyon, the brightest star of Canis Minor. Sirius in Canis Major, the brightest star in the sky, is at the bottom of this chart, and Betelgeuse, the red giant that marks the shoulder of Orion, is in the upper right. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Keep in mind that this is a prediction: it may prove to be correct, or it may not. That’s a top homeschool science lesson right there. (If you have advanced high school science students in your homeschool who want to be comet-predictors one day, send them to the library and invite them to learn all about the mathematics of conic sections — Dewey Decimal 516.2.) As with all natural phenomena, there’s only one thing you can be absolutely sure of: if you don’t look, you won’t see.

Expected region of the potential Alpha Monocerotid meteor storm on the evening of 21 November 2019 (11:15 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time.) (Image: *Sky & Telescope*.)

Here’s some background from Sky & Telescope this week:

“What’s rarer than seeing a unicorn? How about a unicorn spitting meteors at the rate of 400 per hour? You’ll have an opportunity to see it for yourself on Thursday night, November 21–22, when the obscure Alpha Monocerotid shower could produce upwards of 400 meteors per hour from a radiant near the star Procyon, a star near the constellation Monoceros, the unicorn. Even more amazing, the outburst is expected to last only a half-hour.

“Peter Jenniskens, a senior research scientist with the SETI Institute and NASA’s Ames Research Center, along with Esko Lyytinen of the Finnish Fireball Network, have been keeping tabs on the shower for years. During outbursts, such as those that occurred in 1925 and 1935, activity reached meteor-storm levels with a zenithal hourly rate (ZHR) of more than 1,000. Activity rose to near-storm levels again in 1985 and 1995 with ZHRs around 700 and 400. ZHR is an idealized number based on how many meteors a single observer would see if the radiant were overhead in a dark sky during shower maximum.

“The source of the Alpha Monocerotids is unknown, but the stream’s orbital characteristics point to a long-period comet with a period of about 500 years. This nameless visitor deposited a dense, narrow ribbon of debris in the distant past with a half-width of only around 55,000 kilometers, equal to the distance from the center of Earth to the geostationary satellite belt.

“Jenniskens and Lyytninen expect Earth to barrel through the swarm of cometary dust bunnies on the night of November 21–22, centered on 4:50 Universal Time on November 22nd (11:50 p.m. EST on November 21st). Circumstances are nearly identical to the 1995 outburst when the ZHR briefly reached 400.“ (Sky & Telescope)

You’ll want to face generally to the east and south in as dark a location as you can find, with the expected focal period being between 11:30 p.m. and midnight U.S. Eastern Time. The radiant should be about 30–40º above the horizon in eastern North America, but only right at the horizon in the western states and provinces, where viewing won’t be as good (although it will still be worth checking). If a significant outburst occurs, it may be brief, lasting as little as fifteen minutes — so keep your eyes on the sky!

What other astronomical alignments and celestial wonders have you examined in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ 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. 🌠

❡ Star bright: If you’d like some easy and comfortable homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us month by month as we make twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟

❡ 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. 🔭

🇺🇸 SEVEN SCORE and Sixteen Years Ago

19 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

On November 19th, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered what we now call the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Once upon a time all American students could recite it. If your homescholars can’t yet, perhaps learning it would be a worthy goal for the week:

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.“

This six-minute segment from Ken Burns’ famous documentary The Civil War (1990) will fill in some of the historical background for your students (including uncensored images of the battlefield), to help them understand the context of the address a little better:

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And if you want to expand into an educational reflection on the passage of time, from four score and seven to seven score and sixteen — the Civil War is more remote from us than the Revolution was from Lincoln — you can add the picture below of the Gettysburg fields and Carl Sandburg’s famous poem “Grass” (1918):

Grass

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

[The fields of Gettysburg.] — The fields of Gettysburg. (Image: American Battlefield Trust, a national organization devoted to the preservation of Civil War and Revolutionary War battlefields.)

You can learn more about the history of the Gettysburg Address at a special online exhibition prepared by the Library of Congress. The text of the Address is available on page 490 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books), and a beautifully illustrated outline of Abraham Lincoln’s life and work is available on pages 316–317 in your history encyclopedia. Your atlas will point you to the location of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

What historical anniversaries are you marking in your homeschool this Cygnus Term?

❡ Let the river run: This is one of our regular Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries posts. Print your own River Houses calendars (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us, and 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. 🗞

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 17 November 2019

17 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-11-17

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

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is North Carolina, and our COUNTRIES are Cyprus 🇨🇾, Czechia (Czech Republic) 🇨🇿, Denmark 🇩🇰, and Djibouti 🇩🇯. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌖 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning — a good time for moon watching! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (17 November 2019) — Today is the 321st day of 2019; there are 44 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 Today is the birthday of German mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius (1790–1868), inventor (discoverer?) of the strip that bears his name. 🥓 And the annual Leonid meteor shower, made up of debris from comet Tempel–Tuttle, is expected to peak tonight. 🌠

Monday (18 November 2019) — Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, the largest church in the world, was consecrated on this day in 1626. 🇻🇦 And today is the birthday of the great American composer and lyricist Johnny Mercer (1909–1976). 🎼

Tuesday (19 November 2019) — Seven score and sixteen years ago today, Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. American school children often memorized it once upon a time. Why not read it aloud in your homeschool today — you’ll find the text on page 490 of your almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 🇺🇸

Wednesday (20 November 2019) — On this day in 1820, an 80-ton sperm whale struck and sank the whaleship Essex about 2000 miles off the west coast of South America. The destruction of the Essex would become one of the inspirations for Herman Melville’s great novel Moby-Dick (1851). 🐳 Today is also the birthday of the American astronomer and cosmologist Edwin Hubble (1889–1953), who vastly enlarged our understanding of the universe. 🔭

Thursday (21 November 2019) — On this day in 1905, a technical paper titled “Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?” was published in the German science journal Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics). The author was a 26-year-old Albert Einstein, and the paper established that E = mc². ⚛️

Friday (22 November 2019) — Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to a very large group, the Sandpipers, which we’ll cover over two weeks. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of November, Thanksgiving week, is Rowena Bastin Bennett’s “Thanksgiving Magic,” for all this week’s kitchen magicians from sea to shining sea. 🍽 👩‍🍳 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Saturday (23 November 2019) — One of the great masters of polyphonic music, Thomas Tallis, died on this day in 1583. (He was born about 1505 on a date unknown.) Tallis wrote, and his themes inspired, some of the most ethereal music in the world. 🎵

Sunday (24 November 2019) — One of the most influential books ever written, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, was published on this day in 1859. 🦋 And the much loved novel Black Beauty was published on this day in 1877. 🐴

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May every day bring more happiness than yesterday.”

❡ 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: The island-nation of Cyprus is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Kouris River, one of the longest rivers of Cyprus. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Kouris River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

Dam on the Kouris River on the island of Cyprus. (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: North Carolina, Cyprus, Djibouti, and More

17 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

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 429), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
North Carolina State Bird and Flower
NORTH CAROLINA (the 12th state, 21 November 1789) — The Old North State. Capital: Raleigh. North Carolina can be found on page 580 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “In 1619, Charles I gave patent to Sir Robert Heath for Province of Carolana, from Carolus, Latin name for Charles. Charles II granted a new patent to Earl of Clarendon and others. Divided into North and South Carolina in 1710″ (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: www.nc.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:

🇨🇾 CYPRUS in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Population: 1,237,088. Capital: Nicosia. Government: Presidential democracy. Website: www.cyprus.gov.cy (in Greek and English).
🇨🇿 CZECHIA (Czech Republic) in central Europe. Population: 10,686,269. Capital: Prague. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.czech.cz (in English and several other languages).
🇩🇰 DENMARK in northern Europe. Population: 5,809,502. Capital: Copenhagen. Government: Parliamentary constitutional republic. Website: denmark.dk (in English).
🇩🇯 DJIBOUTI in eastern Africa. Population: 884,017. Capital: Djibouti. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.presidence.dj (in French).

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 geographical discoveries have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 🦢

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

❡ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — is one of the best educational gifts you can give them. Why not look up any one of our selected states or countries each week in your recommended homeschool atlas (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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦁 🌠 LEONID METEORS for November 2019

16 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

The annual Leonid meteor shower peaks each year around 17–19 November, so this weekend is the time to be on the lookout — make it an annual homeschool tradition! You can get some quick facts and local observing recommendations at timeanddate.com:

➢ Leonid Meteor Shower (timeanddate.com)

The Leonids appear to radiate from the constellation Leo, which rises in the east a little before midnight at this time of year, so that’s the general direction you’ll want to be looking. Pages 120–133 in your recommended backyard star guide (riverhouses.org/books) will help you teach a good basic meteor lesson, and the charts in the guide and in your world atlas will help you identify Leo (although you don’t actually have to locate the Heavenly Lion to watch for meteors in that general region of the sky).

Meteor terminology, a free printable poster available from the American Meteor Society.

Meteor showers like the Leonids occur when the earth in its orbit around the sun passes through the trail of debris left behind by a comet (that’s why they occur at the same time each year, once per annual orbit). The website of the American Meteor Society (amsmeteors.org) contains a wealth of additional information — here are some of their resources:

The Leonids are a particularly famous meteor shower because they have played an important role in history, both scientific and cultural. The parent object of the Leonids is comet Tempel–Tuttle, which orbits the sun once every 33 years. That means that the Leonids are especially abundant, on average, every 33 years, right after Tempel–Tuttle leaves a fresh trail of debris. On those occasions they sometimes produce a meteor storm, with thousands or even tens of thousands of meteors visible every hour. One such storm occurred over North America in 1833. It was accorded religious significance by many people at the time, and in the scientific community this storm provided important new insights into the relationship between meteor showers and comets.

[Leonid meteors of 1833] — The great Leonid storm of 1833 as depicted in an 1889 publication of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

There is a truly remarkable interactive animation of the Leonid meteor shower and its parent comet available from the website meteorshowers.org. Until quite recently, interactive animations of this kind would have been available only on the most advanced computers, but now you can examine them with a laptop from the comfort of your little home academy. 💻

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Note that this animation is fully interactive: by dragging and scrolling across the screen you can tilt the plane of the solar system to view it from above or below, and you can zoom in on the earth’s or the comet’s orbit. (The earth is the blue planet, orbiting third from the sun.)

Pay a nighttime visit to a dark-sky location near your homeschool in the next few days, look to the lion, and see what shooting stars you can see.

What astronomical alignments have you examined in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ 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 all the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Lapwings, Plovers, and Jacanas

15 November 2019 by Horace the Otter 🦦

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

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 (two different families) are the Lapwings and Plovers (pages 116–123), and the Jacanas (pages 122–123).

[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. Here are the guide’s introductions to this week’s groups, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“LAPWINGS · PLOVERS — Family Charadriidae. These compact birds run and stop abruptly when foraging. Shape and behavior identify plovers in general. Species: 67 World, 17 N.A. [North America]“

“JACANAS — Family Jacanidae. Extremely long toes and claws allow these tropical birds to walk on lily pads and other floating plants. 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 Plover family, for example. How many species? (67 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (17 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Compact birds, run along shorelines and in fields, 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, in the Plover family, why not investigate a well-known bird found all across North America: the Killdeer (page 118).

[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 Killdeer? (10.5 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Charadrius vociferus.) 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 do you tell it apart from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

The Killdeer’s name comes from its call:

[See attached blog post for images and video]

Like all plovers, Killdeers are ground nesters that lay well-camouflaged eggs right out in the open on rocky beaches and fields. The adults are famous (though not unique) for giving a conspicuous “broken-wing display” if you approach too close to the nest. The parent bird will spread itself out on the ground and appear to drag itself along while screeching loudly — all in an attempt to draw you away from the eggs. Once you’ve fallen for the trick and moved away, the perfectly healthy bird will take off and escape.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

If you track backwards from the direction the bird was luring you, however, and are careful to watch your step, you might be rewarded with a special discovery:

[See attached blog post for images and video]

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 example, the American Golden-Plover (page 116), another widespread plover species that occurs all across the continent; or from this week’s other family, the Jacanas, take a look at the Northern Jacana (page 122), sometimes called the Lily-Trotter, a tropical bird that occasionally makes it north into Texas; and so on with as many species as you wish.

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 hope also to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological investigations have you been making in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, 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 also define 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. Why not print a 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. 🐦 🦅 🦉 🦆 🦃

🌠 WONDERFUL WORDS: Of Poems and Meteors

15 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

The annual Leonid meteor shower will skim the skies this weekend, so our River Houses poem-of-the-week for the third week of November is this gem drawn from the world’s small store of meteor poems: “Stars, I have seen them fall” by A.E. Housman (1859–1936).

Stars, I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.

The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.

A great poem — and this is a great poem — can become your friend for life, and as with any new friend, you need to take some time to get acquainted. We always recommend looking at structure first, before you even start to think about meaning; this teaches your students to see poems as finely crafted pieces of literary labor and not just spontaneous assemblages of words.

Housman was a literary master-craftsman, and his structural skill is very much on display here. Notice first that the poem consists of two complete sentences that divide the work precisely in half. Next, count the syllables: each line has exactly six, with no irregularities. Note also, remarkably, that with the exception of the words primal and into, the entire poem is composed of one-syllable words. That’s a very hard thing to do — invite your students to write two good 24-word sentences using only one-syllable words, and you’ll see that it requires some effort.

What about the rhyme scheme? It’s simple and exact, with no off-rhymes: fall–die–all–sky, be–fault–sea–salt (ABAB CDCD). The meter is formally iambic trimeter, a very short and tight form, and that’s easy to see in the second line: “But when they drop and die.” A more natural reading of many of the lines will depart from this heavy iambic beat, however, because it can come across as too jingly or sing-songy in such a short poem. For example, the third line could be formally scanned: “No star is lost at all” — a sing-songy rendering. But it’s more natural and effective to read it aloud as: “No star is lost at all” — a reading with two strong initial pulses that emphasize the idea of “No star” being lost.

What about meaning? Housman was a Classical scholar who was knowledgeable about ancient astronomy, philosophy, and religion. The two halves of the poem contrast the world of the heavens — Classically imagined as perfect and unchanging — with the defective and imperfect “sublunary” world in which we mortals live. Even though stars seem to fall, the heavens remain perfect: “No star is lost at all.” Our earthly existence is the opposite. No matter how hard we try — “the toil of all that be” — we can never achieve the perfection of the heavens because “the primal fault,” Original Sin in the Christian worldview, makes perfection impossible. Brine, not pure water, is what we mortals must taste in life.

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

❡ All the star-sown sky: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 😊

❡ Explore more: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including A.E. Housman) 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 every week, 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. 📖

🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH AND NEWS – November 2019

15 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Around the middle 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 — and if they don’t seem appealing, just scroll on by. The title links generally point to the full text of each publication, which is often a pdf file. (Facebook readers should click to the attached blog post to find these links live.) The abstracts are quoted in full when possible, without editing. We have six items this month — the third one is by well-known homeschool advocate Kerry McDonald.

(1) Homeschooling in Turkey (Focus Group Interviewing Method) — Elife Doğan Kılıç and Özgür Önen (2012)

Abstract: In literature, homeschooling is described as education given by parents at home. It is an alternative education model which has begun to be applied in many developed countries. While there is no distinction in these countries on homeschooling applications, in Turkey, the regulation on homeschooling only covers the handicapped children. The purpose of this study is to examine the views of teachers who work in primary schools in Burdur and Isparta on homeschooling and its practicability and also possible effects of homeschooling on Turkish educational system.

(2) The Experience of Being a Homeschool Mother: A Heuristic Inquiry — Michele L. Catlin (2019)

Abstract: The intent of this dissertation was to answer the research question: What is the experience of being a homeschool mother? While the number of homeschool mothers across the globe increases rapidly, research that targets this population fails to keep up, from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. Using a heuristic inquiry, 11 co-researchers shared their experience through in-depth interviews and journaling. What the data analysis exposed is that the homeschool mother is dissatisfied with corporate education, she is more concerned with her children’s lifelong learning than their short-term information acquisition, and she has a strong social support. Among the patterns and themes, it became evident that not only does she invest in her own children, but she has a genuine concern for children in general. She is highly adaptive and can quickly recognize when she needs to alter the course and speed of her child’s education. The homeschool mother in this research was also self-reflective, identifying her shortfalls and ensuring that she invests in her relationships with her children; she identified homeschooling as a transformative process. She is rewarded through her teaching and her relationships, yet she also struggles internally with guilt, pressure and self-care. External societal pressures require the need for defense mechanisms, and she is constantly and unashamedly prepared for conflict. Future research should focus on the homeschool mother from more diverse characteristics and backgrounds including those from various cultures, geographies, and socioeconomic statuses. Longitudinal studies should investigate the homeschool mother for a more thorough understanding of her experience.

(3) Review of School Choice Around the World (Pauline Dixon and Steve Humble, eds.) — Kerry McDonald (2019)

Introduction: Government control of education has become so ordinary that it can be difficult to imagine another way. The idea that parents can most capably decide how and where their children are educated, or that the private sector could do a better job in providing education options for every child, is often dismissed as foolish at best, reckless at worst. Yet, for centuries humans have become highly educated without technocratic decree, seeking and building decentralized approaches to learning. Indeed, these emergent approaches continue to sprout around the world, gaining traction in developed countries where parents and educators are fed up with a one-size-fits-all mass schooling monopoly, as well as in developing nations where parents are increasingly dismissive of government schooling. In School Choice Around the World, editors Pauline Dixon and Steve Humble, along with their contributor colleagues, highlight global efforts to limit or avoid government control and provision of education through education choice. While different in scope and scale, and with varying levels of government intervention, these efforts in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the U.S. share a goal of elevating parental choice in education. School Choice Around the World is a refreshing and informative look at how school choice is being broadly practiced and promoted worldwide.

(4) Reasons Why Homeschooling Families Choose Strict Home-Based Education or Cooperative Groups — Robert Eugene McTurnal (2019)

Abstract: In its current format, homeschooling has become the fastest growing method of education in the United States. Over 3% of American children are currently being homeschooled. Because of this rise, considerable research has been done both to support and to critique the concept and practice of homeschooling. Recently, a subgroup has emerged within the larger homeschooling community and is known as a cooperative group, or co-op. Some homeschool families still choose to be the sole educators of their children. Other parents have intentionally come together to cooperatively educate their children. This has not gone unnoticed, or without criticism. This study sought to answer this question: How can the following factors (Social interaction, Concern of other educational environments, Religiosity, Moral instruction, Physical/mental needs, Illness, Special needs, Option for a non-traditional education) influence whether a parent will use a co-op format of homeschool education. This study also evaluated how the social learning theory relates to homeschool education. A survey-based descriptive design was used for this study. The participants were comprised of a convenience sample of both co-op home schoolers as well as traditional homeschoolers residing in Fairfax County, VA. The instrumentation for this study will include question #17 of the National Home Education Research Survey. Overall, the factors together were found to be insignificant. All findings and conclusions regarding future research are stated at the conclusion of this study.

(5) Homeschoolers’ Experiences with the Public Library: A Phenomenological Study — Sarah Pannone (2019)

Introduction: The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of homeschoolers using the public library. A phenomenological design using interviews, a survey, and a writing prompt was used to give voice to the public library experiences of seven homeschool participants. From the data, three primary themes surfaced. First, most of the participants felt that the library was a home away from home. Next, many of the participants valued how the public library saved them money, and finally, many of the participants voiced a desire for more library daytime programs, especially daytime programs that catered to older, homeschooled children.

(6) Homeschooling and Authenticity — Eldar Sarajlic (2019)

Abstract: In this article, I address the relation between children’s authentic identity development and homeschooling. I show the limitations of claims that homeschooling protects children’s authenticity. I argue that the aim of homeschooling is the reproduction of parental beliefs and culture, which is inimical to the development of authentic children’s identities. Thus, I consider homeschooling prima facie unjustified. However, I do not advocate for a prohibition of homeschooling. Instead, I argue that parents could justify their homeschooling practices by satisfying specific authenticity-based requirements. I develop the outline of these requirements in the second part of the article.

What interesting homeschool news and research have you been browsing lately? 👩🏻‍🎓

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

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

☿ 🌞 HORACE the Astronomical Otter and the Transit of Mercury

14 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Did you see the Mercury transit on Monday? It was cloudy in the Nashua River valley, so our mascot Horace the Otter had to resort to his personal Internet observatory, where he watched the transit as broadcast from Norway and England:

Horace the Otter watches the 2019 Transit of Mercury.

If you watched either online or in person, you might have sensed that what you were seeing was rather more blurry than you expected. That’s because all terrestrial observations are made through the atmosphere, and it always introduces some fuzziness. To get really sharp celestial images you have to get up above the atmosphere. Many telescopes are placed on mountaintops for just that reason — they aren’t completely outside the atmosphere, but the higher up you can get, the less air you have to look through.

For the sharpest views of all, you have to get your telescope into orbit, and that’s just what NASA does with its Solar Dynamics Observatory, a special orbiting telescope that’s dedicated to the study of the sun. The SDO was one of thousands of telescopes focused on the Mercury transit this week, and here’s an edited collection of time-lapse clips from the observatory that have just been posted online by NASA:

➢

The different colors are produced by the different filters that are used to study different aspects of the sun’s surface and fiery atmosphere. If you have some serious astronomers in your little home academy, send them to the SDO’s website for many more examples and a rich assortment of additional solar science:

➢ 2019 Mercury Transit (NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory)

What other astronomical alignments have you and your students examined in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

🇨🇷 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Cocos Island National Park in Costa Rica

13 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Costa Rica in Central America is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Costa Rica’s World Heritage Sites: Cocos Island National Park.

Chatham Beach, Cocos Island National Park, Costa Rica. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Cocos Island National Park includes not only small Cocos Island itself, but also a large reef area surrounding the island that is home to many rare tropical marine organisms:

“Cocos Island National Park is located in the Eastern Tropical Pacific, covering an area of 202,100 hectares some 530 kilometers off the Costa Rica mainland. The island itself, “Isla del Coco,” also known as “Treasure Island,” is the only landmark of the vast submarine Cocos Range. With a surface area of 2,400 hectares it supports the only humid tropical forest on an oceanic island in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. The remaining 199,700 hectares protect not only diverse marine ecosystems, mostly pelagic, but also the most diverse coral reefs of the entire Eastern Tropical Pacific. Thanks to its remote location and conservation efforts, the biologically highly diverse property constitutes one of the best conserved marine tropical waters, well-known as a world-class diving destination. The property belongs to the Eastern Tropical Pacific Marine Corridor, a marine conservation network, which also includes World Heritage properties in Colombia, Ecuador and Panama.

“Natural population densities of large top predators indicate a near pristine conservation status of a property that is among the most important sites in the Eastern Tropical Pacific for the protection of large pelagic migratory species, such as the endangered Scalloped Hammerhead Shark and the near-threatened Silky Shark and Galapagos Shark. Due to its geographical position, the oceanic island of volcanic origin is the first landmark met by the North Equatorial Countercurrent and a point of confluence of other marine currents. This makes it a dispersing centre of larvae of marine species from various parts of the Pacific Ocean. In its land portion, the property hosts a remarkable degree of endemism across most diverse taxonomic groups. There are, for instance, three endemic bird species, two endemic freshwater fish and two endemic reptile species. Cocos Island National Park is of irreplaceable global conservation value, reminding us what parts of tropical oceans historically looked like.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #820)

The UNESCO 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 will you be exploring in your homeschool this week? 😊

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – November 2019

12 November 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

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

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

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

➢ The Lunar Society of the River Houses (riverhouses.org/lunar)

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

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

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

On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I’ve been tracking the birds in a small riverside park near me (eBird hotspot L6926932) and have so far contributed a total of 630 checklists (daily observation reports) for this locality — it’s a site that had never been documented before. When all the checklists are combined and charted automatically by eBird you can really get a sense of the seasonal distribution and migration patterns for the year — take a look:

➢ Seasonal Bar Chart for Nashua River Site L6926932 (ebird.org/barchart?r=L6926932)

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

➢ Sample Checklist for 8 November 2019 at Nashua River Site L6926932 (ebird.org/checklist/S61261569)

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

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

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, SETI@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually processed and how much your team has processed — they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. (And while they are running, both Einstein@Home and SETI@Home have cool screensavers that show you in real time what your computer is analyzing.) 📡

[For embedded images click to attached blog post]

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

[For embedded images click to attached blog post]

That’s just a simple graphing exercise — nothing particularly profound. It’s something that can be refined, developed, and expanded in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in many different scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The examples above are just a few that happen to interest me — pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects in a great variety of areas that you and your family can join.

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

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

❡ Featured this month at Zooniverse: Looking for a good place to get started? Zooniverse.org is one of the biggest clearinghouses for citizen science projects, and each month on their front page they specially feature one of their many research projects you can join. This month’s featured project is the Galaxy Zoo “Clump Scout” — find regions of space where stars are being born! (Yes, that’s something you and your students can really work on from your home computer.) If you’re looking for a project to get yourself started, this might be a good choice. 😊

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

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

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