The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

1 November 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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

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

🌕 INDEPENDENT PROJECTS for Homeschoolers – December 2022

7 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

(If you have homeschool teens who want to develop independent academic skills for college or career, take a look at the many online projects we recommend. Some can be done indoors and some outdoors; some are scientific and some are historical; all of them are real projects that contribute to the growth of knowledge. The post below is my monthly report on the ones I myself participate in. Take a look at the whole list and find one or two that appeal to you and your students and get started today!)

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 “citizen science” projects and to share their results with other homeschool families.

Here’s our list of just 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)

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 investigative 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 citizen-science projects 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 astronomy research using the Berkeley network computing 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 have been documenting the birds of a local college campus that I frequently visit. So far I’ve contributed a total of 719 checklists (observation reports) for this locality — it’s a site that has never been documented before. As more checklists are added, and as eBird combines them and charts them automatically, you can get a real sense of seasonal distribution and migration patterns at this location:

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

➢ Sample Checklist for Campus Site S75408328 (ebird.org)

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 and start exploring.

❡ Feed the birds: Want a simple way to get started with bird study? Join Project FeederWatch and have your students make a contribution to science by counting the birds in your own backyard. 🐦

The astronomy projects I contribute to are “distributed computing” projects that run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure platform (BOINC). This free online platform uses idle time on your computer to perform complex scientific calculations, and so whenever my laptop is plugged in, I’m automatically contributing computer time to three astronomy projects: (1) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; (2) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy; and (3) the Asteroids@Home project, which calculates the shapes and orbits of poorly-known asteroids. (Yes, those are projects that you and your students can really contribute to, and no, you don’t have to be astronomy experts to join in the fun.)

❡ Note: I’m pleased to report that the Asteroids@Home project, which had been offline for some time because of hardware problems, is once again online and running! Why not sign up today!

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, Asteroids@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and you can 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 it’s running, Einstein@Home has a cool screensaver that shows you in real time what your computer is analyzing.) 📡

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. I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results using an online spreadsheet, and this is what it looks like — if you join one of these projects, your numbers will be included in these totals:

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 projects in many different scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The specific 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 independent investigations will your students be making in your homeschool this Orion 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. 🌕

❡ 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 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 independent “citizen science” projects that we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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

🌎 🇸🇻 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Joya de Cerén in El Salvador

7 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

El Salvador in Central America is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of El Salvador’s World Heritage Sites: the Joya de Cerén Archaeological Site.

Joya de Cerén has been called the Pompeii of the Western Hemisphere:

Joya de Cerén is an archaeological site located at the Canton Joya de Cerén, in the Department of La Libertad in El Salvador. The property has an extension of 3,200 ha. The archaeological site contains the remains of a pre-hispanic farming village that was covered by a volcanic eruption in the seventh century AD.

Around AD 500, the central and western parts of the territory of the modern Republic of El Salvador were buried beneath thick layers of volcanic ash from the Ilopango volcano. The area was abandoned until the ash layer had weathered into fertile soil and the Joya de Cerén settlement was founded. Not long afterwards, it was destroyed by the eruption of the Loma Caldera. The site was discovered during the construction of grain-storage silos in 1976, when a clay-built structure was exposed by a bulldozer. Excavations were resumed in 1989 and been continuing since that time.

The circumstances of the volcanic event led to the remarkable preservation of architecture and the artefacts of ancient inhabitants in their original positions of storage and use, forming a time capsule of unprecedented scientific value that can be appreciated in present times.

Underneath the layers of volcanic ash, the best preserved example of a pre-hispanic village in Mesoamerica can be found, with architectural remains, grouped into compounds that include civic, religious and household buildings. To date, a total of 18 structures have been identified and 10 have been completely or partially excavated. All structures are made of earth and important features like thatch roofs and artefacts found in-situ have been recovered. The excavated structures include a large community (public) building on the side of a plaza, two houses of habitation that were part of domiciles, three storehouses (one was in the process of being remodeled), one kitchen, and a sweat bath. On the northeast side of the plaza there is a religious building devoted to communal festivities and one where a shaman practiced. Rammed earth construction was used for the public buildings and the sauna, and wattle and daub (which is highly earthquake resistant) for household structures.

The degree of preservation also applies to organic materials, from garden tools and bean-filled pots to sleeping mats, animal remains and religious items that normally deteriorate in tropical conditions and were part of the subsistence and daily life of the inhabitants. These have been preserved as carbonized materials or as casts in the ash deposits. Several cultivated fields and other vegetation has also been uncovered. These include fields containing young and mature maize plants, a garden with a variety of herbs and a henequen (agave) garden. Various fruit trees, including guava and cacao, have also been found. (World Heritage Centre #675)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Joya de Cerén Archaeological Site on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

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

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

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

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

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

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

🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: What Sweeter Music

6 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

If you send your students to your family dictionary this month they will be able to report back that a carol is “a song of praise or joy, especially for Christmas,” and that “to carol” is therefore “to sing in a loud, joyous manner” and specifically “to go from house to house singing Christmas songs.”

December is Homeschool Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites in a great variety of styles and genres — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes that will let you teach little musical lessons all along the way.

Yesterday we introduced the great modern carol-composer John Rutter (b. 1945), and today we’ll listen to and learn about another of Rutter’s best-known carols, a work that is now performed by choirs all around the world: “What Sweeter Music.”

“What Sweeter Music” is a setting of a seventeenth-century carol-text by the English poet Robert Herrick (1591–1674) and the music was composed by Rutter for his friends and colleagues at King’s College of Cambridge University. The chapel of King’s College, constructed from the late 1400s through the early 1500s, is one of the most famous architectural spaces in the world, and that’s where you see the carol being performed in the video above. (We’re going to have a special live event coming up on Christmas Eve from the King’s College Chapel — watch for news of it here.)

A Christmas Carol

What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!

Dark and dull night fly hence away!
And give the honour to this day
That sees December turn’d to May.

Why does the chilling winter’s morn
Smile like a field beset with corn?
Or smell like a meadow newly-shorn,
Thus on a sudden? Come and see
The cause why things thus fragrant be:
‘Tis he is born, whose quickening birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To heaven and the under-earth.

We see him come, and know him ours,
Who, with his sunshine and his showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

The darling of the world is come,
And fit it is we find a room
To welcome him. The nobler part
Of all the house here is the heart,
Which we will give him; and bequeath
This holly and this ivy wreath
To do him honour, who’s our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

What sweeter music can we bring
Than a carol for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?

If you prefer American to English accents, here’s another wonderful recording of “What Sweeter Music,” from the student choir of St. Olaf College in Minnesota — a place some talented homescholars might well end up some day.

I have no doubt that “What Sweeter Music,” like many of Rutter’s other carols, will continue to be sung for many generations to come. Why not introduce this modern masterpiece to your students this month and make it their friend for life.

What marvelous musical discoveries will you be making in your homeschool during this delightful Holiday Music Month? 🎄 🎵

❡ Frozen music: You can teach a little architectural lesson today as well. The opening twenty seconds of the first video above shows the ceiling of King’s College Chapel, a famous example of fan vaulting, one of the most distinctive features of late Medieval and early-modern Gothic architecture. (If you look up “fan vault” in your River Houses dictionary you’ll find it defined and illustrated.) And you can also note that some of the singers in the King’s College Choir may be about the same age as your own homeschoolers. 😊

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

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds during the holidays, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music radio station in New York City. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on as background music almost every day at this time of year. Won’t you join me? 📻

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Arts & Music. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Religious 200s

6 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Tuesday is our usual Homeschool Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your young scholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can adopt one major class each month and survey the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for December is the 200s, which covers Religion. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 200s” means the numbers running from 200 to 299.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the Religious 200s:

CLASS 200 – RELIGION
- 200 – Religion (General)
- 210 – Philosophy & Theory of Religion
- 220 – The Bible
- 230 – Christianity
- 240 – Christian Practice & Observance
- 250 – Christian Orders & Local Churches
- 260 – Social & Ecclesiastical Theology
- 270 – History of Christianity
- 280 – Christian Denominations
- 290 – Other Religions

Each of these “tens” divisions is subdivided further of course. For example, in the 280s (Christian Denominations) you’ll find works on the Early Church (281), Roman Catholicism (282), Anglicanism (283), Methodism (287), and so on.

The Dewey Decimal System was first developed in late nineteenth century, and since the majority of books on religion in American public libraries at that time would have been about some aspect of Christianity, Christianity naturally predominates within the main subdivisions of the 200s. But the advantage of a decimal system like this is that it is infinitely expandable, so the single “tens” division of the 290s (Other Religions) can be further subdivided as needed to accommodate the rest of the world’s religions in larger library collections today: Greek & Roman Religions (292), Germanic Religions (293), Religions of Indic Origin (294), Zoroastrianism (295), Judaism (296), Islam (297), and so on.

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, Astronomy, you’ll find it in the 520s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. If you have an opportunity to take field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to demonstrate that in practice and get your students accustomed to orienting themselves by reading the numbers aloud as you walk together down the ranges: “500 … 510 … 515 … here it is, 520.”

Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

What delightful decimals and textual treasures will you be searching for in your library this Orion Term? 📚

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 200s, one in the 210s, one in the 220s, one in the 230s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 200) and the very last book in the class (the highest 299). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your three favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this month-by-month, over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb and how many academic skills they will develop without even realizing it. 🔍

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

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

🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Introducing John Rutter and His Carols

5 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Not all musical masterpieces in the classical style were written centuries ago. Why not spend a few homeschool minutes this week introducing your students to the great contemporary composer John Rutter and his modern but traditionally styled Christmas carols.

December is Homeschool Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites in a great variety of styles and genres — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of educational notes that will let you teach little musical lessons all along the way.

The Christmas carol tradition is one of the richest and most beautiful musical traditions in the world. Every educated person, whether religious or secular, should be able to recognize many of the popular ancient and modern carols and should be familiar with the Christian Nativity story on which they are based. And as Gramophone magazine says, among the popular modern carol writers “John Rutter stands alone.” The above recording of “Candlelight Carol” was made by Rutter’s own choir, the Cambridge Singers, a group he formed in 1981.

Rutter’s website (johnrutter.com) provides a wealth of information about his life and work, and it’s well worth studying by any musically inclined homescholar. Although Rutter has produced works in a variety of musical genres, it is for his traditional carols and anthems that he is best known.

Rutter’s words for “Candlelight Carol” were inspired by a painting called “Nativity at Night” by the fifteenth-century Dutch artist Geertgen tot Sint Jans.

For a great open-ended homeschool discussion, invite your students to think about how a work of art produced at one time in history can continue to influence and inspire other works of art centuries later.

Candlelight Carol

How do you capture the wind on the water?
How do you count all the stars in the sky?
How can you measure the love of a mother?
Or how can you write down a baby’s first cry?

Candlelight, angel light, firelight and star-glow
Shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn.
Gloria! Gloria in excelsis deo!
Angels are singing; the Christ child is born.

Shepherds and wise men will kneel and adore him;
Seraphim round him their vigil will keep;
Nations proclaim him their Lord and their Saviour,
But Mary will hold him and sing him to sleep. (Refrain.)

Find him at Bethlehem laid in a manger,
Christ our Redeemer asleep in the hay,
Godhead incarnate and hope of salvation,
A child with his mother that first Christmas Day. (Refrain.)

John Rutter was born in 1945 and he studied music at Clare College, one of the colleges of Cambridge University in Britain. He later served as Clare’s Director of Music, and many school and college choirs around the world have made his Christmas carols part of their standard repertoire. I have no doubt that Rutter’s carols, like those of the great composers of previous centuries, will continue to be popular for many generations to come. Introduce your students to these modern masterpieces and they will become their friends for life.

What marvelous musical discoveries will you be making in your homeschool during this delightful Holiday Music Month? 🎵

❡ Firelight and star-glow: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of this month’s musical selections, 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 lyrical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 🎄

❡ Looking in the lexicon: For a special musicological mystery word this week, send your students to your family dictionary to look up the definition of macaronic. Many traditionally styled Christmas carols, including “Candlelight Carol,” have macaronic lyrics. 🔍

📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE – December 2022: “Engines” and “Rule Breaking”

5 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Calling all homeschool photographers! One of the independent projects we recommend to homeschool students is the monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. The December challenge is now open and the announced themes are “Under the Hood” and “Breaking the Rules.” You can see sample photos and learn how to submit your own entry here:

➢ Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge – Open Themes (updated monthly)

The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge encourages people to take and submit high-quality images for the public Wikimedia Commons database, the source from which Wikipedia and many other websites draw their images. Once you’ve registered and submitted an entry, you can also participate in the selection of future themes and in the voting for the monthly winners.

If you have enthusiastic 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 assemble 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.

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

You can find more ideas for independent homeschool projects in a wide range of subject areas on our River Houses Lunar Society page.

What photographic, artistic, and scientific discoveries will you be making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac has a long list of famous artists on pages 174–177, 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! 📸

❡ Whether they work together or apart: 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 and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 4 December 2022

4 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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

🌕 This Wednesday–Thursday night (7–8 December) a somewhat rare OCCULTATION OF MARS by the full moon will be visible across much of North America. Check the EarthSky website for all the details and go outside to watch Mars disappear!

🗓 🗡 This is the first full week of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses. Orion Term runs from December through February.

🎵 🎄 🎅 DECEMBER is Holiday Music Month in the River Houses and throughout the month (all the way until Twelfth Night, actually) we’re sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes to help you teach little musical lessons all along the way.

🎵 🎄 📻 And speaking of HOLIDAY MUSIC, I have WQXR’s Holiday Channel on in the background almost every day this month. Won’t you join me?

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Vermont, and our COUNTRIES are El Salvador 🇸🇻, Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, Eritrea 🇪🇷, and Estonia 🇪🇪. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing — a good time for moon watching! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 331–346 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (4 December 2022) — Today is the 338th day of 2022; there are 27 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of Scottish historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), one of the most prominent writers of the Victorian era. 🖋

Monday (5 December 2022) — On this day in 1775, in one of the great engineering feats of the American Revolution, Henry Knox began transporting sixty tons of artillery captured from the British at Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain all the way to Boston, a wagon journey of 300 miles through snow-filled forests and over frozen swamps and rivers. ⚔️ Today is also the birthday of the American journalist and political theorist Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968). 🇺🇸 And it’s also the birthday of the great German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), the father of quantum mechanics. ⚛️

Tuesday (6 December 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great American songwriter Ira Gershwin (1896–1983). 🎼 Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Harry Truman on this day in 1947. 🐊 And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Religious 200s. 📚

Wednesday (7 December 2022) — On this day in 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 📜 And on this day in 1941, “a date which will live in infamy,” the Imperial Japanese Navy launched a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, bringing the United States into World War II. ⚔️ Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Joya de Cerén Archaeological Site in El Salvador. 🇸🇻 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report from the River Houses Lunar Society on the many independent “citizen science” projects that are available to homeschool students. 🌕

Thursday (8 December 2022) — On this day in 1660, a female actor (her identity is disputed) appeared on the English stage for the first time, playing the role of Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello. 🎭 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for second week of December is Emily Dickinson’s “He ate and drank the precious words,” in honor of her upcoming birthday (on the 10th). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 📖

Friday (9 December 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet and republican revolutionary John Milton (1608–1674), one of the towering figures in the history of the English language. 🍎 And on this day in 1965, the much-loved special “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” with now-classic music by Vince Guaraldi (1928–1976), premiered on CBS television. 🎄 🐶 🥜 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Gulls, Terns, and Skimmer (Part I). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (10 December 2022) — Today is the birthday Augusta Ada (Byron) King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852), a pioneer of computer science (long before the field existed). 🖥 It’s also the birthday of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). 🎂 And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: Aldebaran, the brightest star in the constellation Taurus the Bull. 🌟

Sunday (11 December 2022) — Today is the birthday of British scientist David Brewster (1781–1868), the inventor of the kaleidoscope! 🌈 Today is also the birthday of two very different Nobel laureates: the German microbiologist Robert Koch (1843–1910), who identified the bacterial basis for many human diseases, and the Russian writer and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008), who exposed the evils of Soviet Communism to the world. 🔬 🖋 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Kentucky 🇺🇸, Eswatini 🇸🇿, Ethiopia 🇪🇹, Fiji 🇫🇯, and Finland 🇫🇮.

🥂 🎵 OUR WEEKLY TOAST for the beginning of Homeschool Holiday Music Month is an old traditional that has been offered at least since the 1790s: “May the charms of music harmonize our hearts.”

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

🌍 🇪🇪 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Estonia in central Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is Estonia’s beautiful Põltsamaa River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Põltsamaa River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Children of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 693–695), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you. 🌎 🌍 🌏

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

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

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Vermont, El Salvador, Estonia, and More

4 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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

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

🇺🇸
Vermont State Quarter (2001)
VERMONT (the 14th state, 4 March 1791) — The Green Mountain State. Capital: Montpelier. Vermont can be found on page 587 in your almanac and on plates 44 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “From French words vert (green) and mont (mountain). The Green Mountains were said to have been named by Samuel de Champlain. When the state was formed in 1777, Dr. Thomas Young suggested combining vert and mont” (almanac page 419). State bird: Hermit Thrush (bird guide page 410). Website: www.vermont.gov.

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

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

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

🇸🇻 EL SALVADOR in Central America. Population: 6,528,135. Capital: San Salvador. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.presidencia.gob.sv (in Spanish).
🇬🇶 EQUATORIAL GUINEA in western Africa. Population: 857,008. Capital: Malabo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: guineaecuatorialpress.com (in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and English).
🇪🇷 ERITREA in eastern Africa. Population: 6,147,398. Capital: Asmara. Government: Presidential republic. Website: shabait.com (in English and Amharic).
🇪🇪 ESTONIA in eastern Europe. Population: 1,220,042. Capital: Tallinn. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.eesti.ee (in English, Estonian, and Russian).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) will you be making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

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

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

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

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

🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: All Those Christmas Clichés

3 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Small children love family traditions, and grownups love family traditions, but sometimes in between there’s a teen-age and young-adult wandering phase where such things don’t seem to matter. If someone in your family is passing through that phase, don’t despair. They’ll come back to all your family traditions and be grateful for them, just like the great American singer Nancy LaMott (1951–1995):

December is Homeschool Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites in a great variety of styles and genres — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes that will let you teach little musical lessons all along the way.

“All Those Christmas Clichés” was written by the award-winning duo of Stephen Flaherty (music) and Lynn Ahrens (lyrics), and this recording by Nancy LaMott is the best I’ve heard.

All Those Christmas Clichés

I’ve spent Christmas in Peoria, Christmas in Schenectady,
Christmas in Las Vegas and L.A.
And I always thought it couldn’t matter less.
But lately, come December, I confess
I want the tree full of toys and tinsel,
I want the wreath on the red front door,
I want the elves in the yard and each sentimental card
Dripping glitter on the floor,
I want a roof full of plywood reindeer,
I want a road full of horse-drawn sleighs:
All those Christmas clichés.

I want the turkey with all the trimmings,
The turkey mom hardly ever made;
I want the gulp and the tear at the moment that I hear
Johnny Mathis being played;
I want a lake full of perfect skaters,
I want that fruit cake with sugar glaze:
All those Christmas clichés.

Not to mention the snow, not to mention the choir,
Not to mention the candles in the window,
And chestnuts roasting on the fire
Inside a house filled with noise and laughter
Along a street bathed in twinkling light;
I want the bells and the drums, mistletoe
And sugar plums, and kids to tuck in tight.
And as for that guy in the bright red outfit,
Instead of flying off he stays;
All those Christmas clichés.

I want those overblown, corny, heartwarming,
Hallmark, Christmas clichés.

You may have run across Lynn Ahrens’ name before: she wrote many of the songs and lyrics for the popular Schoolhouse Rock! educational programs on TV. And that points us to a whole range of little homeschool lessons you can teach this season whenever you’re listening to holiday musical favorites.

If your students take delight in some particular piece of music, just drop in a question: “I wonder who wrote that?” For many pieces of traditional music (as we noted with “Past Three O’Clock”), the answer may be, “lots of different people over many generations.” But for more modern pieces, the answer is usually simpler. You’ll want to make sure your students understand the three basic roles of performer, composer (writer of the music), and lyricist (writer of the words). Sometimes these roles are combined into a single person, as with “singer-songwriters.” In other cases, such as the recording above, each role may be held by a different person: LaMott is the performer (along with pianist Christopher Marlowe), Flaherty is the composer, and Ahrens is the lyricist. Knowing the names behind a favorite piece of music will increase your students’ artistic understanding and encourage them to investigate and learn more.

(“All Those Christmas Clichés” is also full of musical quotations — did you catch them? That’s a topic we’ll be taking up again at the end of the month with a special version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”)

What marvelous musical discoveries will you be making in your homeschool during this magnificent Holiday Music Month? 🤶 🎅 😊

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds during the holidays, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music radio station in New York City. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on as background music almost all day at this time of year. Won’t you join me? 📻

🔭 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – December 2022

3 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

On the first Saturday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead.

There’s going to be a somewhat rare event taking place this Wednesday–Thursday night (7–8 December): a lunar occultation (eclipse) of Mars. Observers in most of North America will be able to watch Mars disappear behind the moon and then reappear a few minutes later. Check the EarthSky website for all the details and take your students outside for a look!

Here’s the regular monthly northern hemisphere night-sky review for December 2022 from the Hubble Space Telescope’s website — it features December constellations and concludes (appropriately enough) with our term-namesake, Orion:

And here’s another December night-sky review, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California — it features December planets and the upcoming occultation of Mars:

One of the easiest astronomical exercises you and your students can do each month is print out your own copy of the current two-page Evening Sky Map and monthly sky calendar available from skymaps.com:

➢ Evening Sky Maps – Northern Hemisphere Edition (updated monthly)

Each map includes a constellation chart for the month as well as a schedule of upcoming astronomical events and an astronomical glossary. (Monthly maps for the southern hemisphere and the equatorial regions are also available.) Give a copy to your students and ask them to study it and report back to you on three notable things you can watch for this month. (And as they report to you, ask them questions about what they’re telling you.) Do that for a few minutes each month, and before you know it you’ll have a team of expert astronomers in your homeschool.

The best stargazing nights in December will be toward the end of the month: the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 23rd. As always, you can look up the moon’s phases in your River Houses almanac and also on the timeanddate.com website. 🌑 🌓 🌕 🌗 🌑

December is the first month of Orion Term, our winter term in the River Houses. Our Great Star for the month of December is Aldebaran (alpha Tauri), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us through the year as we learn about twelve of the high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky. 🌟

December is also the month of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere — the astronomical beginning of winter — which falls this year on Wednesday the 21st. (In the southern hemisphere the 21st will be the summer solstice — the astronomical beginning of summer.) The winter solstice is the “shortest day” of the year: the day with the shortest period of daylight and the longest period of darkness. 🌃 🏙 🌃

What celestial sights and aerial apparitions will you and your young astronomers be examining during this homeschool December? 🔭

❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨

❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages, posted each Tuesday, usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school science students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and narrate a summary back to you. 🌌

❡ The majestic clockwork: Where are the planets right now? Not as we see them in the sky, but rather where are they in their orbits around the sun? Find out at The Planets Today. 🪐

❡ Make friendship with the stars: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

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

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