The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

1 June 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! 😊

🌏 🇹🇯 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Tajik National Park in Tajikistan

29 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Tajikistan in central Asia is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Tajikistan’s World Heritage Sites: Tajik National Park (the Mountains of the Pamirs).

Tajik National Park in Tajikistan. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Tajik National Park spans an area of more than 10,000 square miles, nearly 20% of the entire territory of Tajikistan:

Tajik National Park (2,611,674 ha in area) encompasses almost the entire Pamir Mountains, the third highest mountain ecosystem in the world after the Himalaya and Karakorum Mountains. The Pamir Mountains lie at the centre of the ‘Pamir Knot’, the term used by geographers to describe the tangle of the highest mountain ranges on the Eurasian continent. Huge tectonic forces stemming from the collision of the Indian-Australian plate with the Eurasian Plate have progressively thrown up the Himalaya, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Kunlun, and Tien Shan — all radiating out from the Pamir Mountains. Along with the Karakoram Mountains, the Pamir region is one of the most tectonically-active locations in the world.

Tajik National Park stands out as a very large protected area, with a stark treeless landscape of exceptional natural beauty. The outstanding scenic values are enhanced by the landform juxtaposition of heavily-glaciated high peaks and high plateaux with an alpine desert character. The property contains a number of superlative natural phenomena, including: Fedchenko Glacier (the longest glacier in the world outside of the Polar Regions); Lake Sarez (a very high, deep lake impounded just over a century ago by a severe earthquake which generated a huge landslide forming the Uzoi Dam, the highest natural dam in the world); and Karakul Lake, likely to be the world’s highest large lake of meteoric origin. (World Heritage Centre #1252)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Tajik National Park 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 Hercules Term? 😊

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

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring historical 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 26 June 2022

26 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Idaho, and our COUNTRIES are Switzerland 🇨🇭, Syria 🇸🇾, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

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

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (26 June 2022) — Today is the 177th day of 2022; there are 188 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 also the birthday of the great French astronomer Charles Messier (1730–1817), who accidentally documented and numbered many of the most beautiful objects in the universe. 🔭

Monday (27 June 2022) — Today is the birthday of the pioneering African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the popular American children’s entertainer Bob Keeshan (1927–2004), better known as Captain Kangaroo! 📺

Tuesday (28 June 2022) — On this day in 1914 the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo set World War I in motion, and on this day in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles brought that war to an end. (See pages 370–375 in your homeschool history encyclopedia for an overview of “The Great War.”) ⚔️ 🕊

Wednesday (29 June 2022) — The famous French economist and freedom-philosopher Frédéric Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. 💰 And today is the birthday of the French writer and air force pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), author of The Little Prince. 🐘 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Tajik National Park in (naturally enough) Tajikistan. 🇹🇯

Thursday (30 June 2022) — Today is International Asteroid Day, marking the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska Event when a meteoroid perhaps as much as 600 feet long exploded in the atmosphere and flattened more than 700 square miles of forest in Siberia. 🌠

Friday (1 July 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great German mathematician and polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). 🧠 It’s also the birthday of the German–Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865), “the savior of mothers,” who discovered that deaths from childbed fever could be dramatically reduced by requiring physicians delivering babies to wash their hands. 🚿 On this day in 1863, the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg began. Over three days of fighting, Union and Confederate forces suffered more than 40,000 casualties. ⚔️ And the devastating World War I Battle of the Somme began on this day in 1916. ⚔️ More hopefully, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of July is William Ralph Emerson’s American anthem “A Nation’s Strength,” for Independence Day. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🇺🇸 And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the colorful Tanagers and the obscure Western Spindalis. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (2 July 2022) — Noon today is the mid·point of this common (non-leap) year: 182.5 days have passed, and 182.5 days remain. 🗓 On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution, declaring the Thirteen Colonies independent of Great Britain. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993), the first African American appointed to the United States Supreme Court. ⚖️ The first Walmart store opened on this day in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas! 🛒 And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (3 July 2022) — On this day in 1775, on orders from the Continental Congress and a year before Independence was declared, George Washington took command of the thousands of New England militiamen encamped outside of Boston, and the Continental Army was born. 🇺🇸 Today is the birthday of the early American painter John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), who memorialized many prominent figures of the American Revolutionary period. 🎨 And today is also the birthday of the American songwriter, actor, and Yankee Doodle Dandy George M. Cohan (1872–1942). 🎵 One of the most mysterious archeological objects in the world, the Phaistos Disk, was discovered on this day in 1908 in the ancient Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete. Believed to be about 3500 years old, it is covered with a spiral of stamped symbols that appear to represent an unknown form of writing. You can learn more about the Minoan civilization that produced the Phaistos disk (and see a picture of it) on page 76 of your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🐬 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Wyoming 🇺🇸, Tanzania 🇹🇿, Thailand 🇹🇭, Timor-Leste (East Timor) 🇹🇱, and Togo 🇹🇬.

🥂 🇺🇸 THIS WEEK’S TOAST is the Lee Resolution of 1776, which passed in the Continental Congress on July 2nd and established American independence. (The formal Declaration was approved two days later.) The host says: “Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.” And the guests respond: “Yea!”

❡ 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: The island nation of Taiwan in southeastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is northern Taiwan’s Beishi River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Beishi 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: Idaho, Switzerland, Tajikistan, and More

26 June 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:

🇺🇸
Idaho State Seal
IDAHO (the 43rd state, 3 July 1890) — The Gem State. Capital: Boise. Idaho can be found on page 569 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “George Willing claimed to have coined the name, with the invented meaning ‘gem of the mountains.’ He first suggested it for the Pikes Peak mining territory (Colorado) before the name was adopted for the new mining territory of the Pacific Northwest” (almanac page 419). State bird: Mountain Bluebird (bird guide page 408). Website: www.idaho.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:

🇨🇭 SWITZERLAND in central Europe. Population: 8,453,550. Capital: Geneva. Government: Federal republic (formerly a confederation). Website: www.ch.ch (in English and several other languages).
🇸🇾 SYRIA in the Middle East. Population: 20,384,316. Capital: Damascus. Government: Presidential republic; highly authoritarian regime. Website: www.egov.sy (in Arabic).
🇹🇼 TAIWAN off the southeast coast of Asia. Population: 25,572,052. Capital: Taipei. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.taiwan.gov.tw (in Chinese and English).
🇹🇯 TAJIKISTAN in central Asia. Population: 8,990,874. Capital: Dushanbe. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.president.tj (in Tajik, Russian, English, and Arabic).

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 Hercules 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🖋 🚂 WONDERFUL WORDS: “It was late June”

25 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

It’s late June, so why not share one extra homeschool poem this week with your students: a famous imaginative “photograph” taken right at this time more than a hundred years ago, by the British poet Edward Thomas (1878–1917).

Adlestrop

Yes, I remember Adlestrop —
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.

The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop — only the name,

And willows, willow-herb, and grass,
And meadowsweet, and haycocks dry,
No whit less still and lonely fair
Than the high cloudlets in the sky.

And for that minute a blackbird sang
Close by, and round him, mistier,
Farther and farther, all the birds
Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.

This would be a wonderful poem for your high-school or advanced middle-school students to memorize. It has a little bit of rhyme: the second and fourth lines match in each stanza, but not the first and third. Overall it has a fairly prose-y feel because it has a lot of enjambment, and that’s the key to reading it well aloud.

There’s a touch of tricky vocabulary to investigate in your family dictionary. Unwontedly is a beautiful word to learn. Wont is not to be confused with won’t or want, and it’s most often heard today in the phrase “as is our wont” (“as is our custom” or “as is our habit”). The express train would ordinarily go directly to the next major station, so its brief stop at the minor Adlestrop platform was un-wonted, that is, un-usual or not expected. And the haycocks in the nearby fields that were no whit less still than the little clouds in the sky were not one bit less still, or more naturally in prose, just as still.

The Eurasian Blackbird (Turdus merula) is very like our American Robin (Turdus migratorius) both in its habits and in its cultural role in its native territory. And like our American Robin, it’s a familiar singer. Can you hear it by the Adlestrop platform?

More than a hundred years ago a train stopped for just a moment next to an empty railway platform in the country, and a bird sang. And readers ever since have been thankful that Edward Thomas was there to record it.

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Making a new friend: When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one in a traditional form, take your time, and don’t worry about “getting” everything right away. A good poem is a friend for life, and as with any friend, it takes several meetings to get acquainted. Before you even start to think about meaning, take a look at the poem’s structure. How many lines does it have? Are the lines grouped into stanzas? How many lines in each stanza? How many syllables in each line? Many traditional poems are highly structured and fit together in an almost mathematical way, which you can discover by counting. Do the lines rhyme? What is the rhyme-scheme (ABAB, AABA, ABCD, or something else)? By uncovering these details of structure your students will come to appreciate good poems as carefully crafted pieces of literary labor. 🖋

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

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

❡ Comparative literature: If you have advanced high schoolers in your home academy, one of the best ways to get them to think critically about literature is to have them compare and contrast different works on similar themes. After they’ve talked with you for a while about “Adlestrop,” invite them to read two other relatively short poems: Thomas Hardy’s “Channel Firing” and Richard Eberhart’s “The Groundhog” (which, as it happens, is also set in June). A key point of comparison among all three of these poems is the way they end. How does the ending relate to the main body of the text in each poem? 🔍

❡ 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 to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Wood-Warblers (II)

24 June 2022 by Horace the Otter 🦦

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

This week’s birds are (once again) the Wood-Warblers (pages 452–485), the little jewels of the American forests. Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’re spreading the Wood-Warblers out over two weeks because there are so many of them: about 109 in the western hemisphere (the only place they occur) and 57 in North America.

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here again is how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

WOOD-WARBLERS — Family Parulidae. About half of the many species in this colorful New World family occur in N.A. [North America] Most are highly migratory; a few reach central S.A. [South America] Species: 109 World, 57 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 Wood-Warblers, for example. How many species? (109 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (57 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Small, colorful, highly migratory, 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, why not investigate the Common Yellowthroat (page 464), a little masked warbler with a loud voice.

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 Common Yellowthroat? (5 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Geothlypis trichas.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

Many warbler species live high up in the tree canopy, but Yellowthroats typically prefer low brush and thickets, often near water. Their loud and repetitive call — wichity wichity wichity — is often heard long before the bird is seen. The males have the characteristic black mask that gives them away; the females are much plainer and can be difficult to distinguish from other female warblers, especially in the fall.

For a second species in the Wood-Warbler family this week, take a look at the Yellow-rumped Warbler (page 472), another species that is common across the entire United States. Yellow-rumps are highly migratory like most warblers, but they are one of the few warbler species that will occasionally overwinter in northern areas if they have a good supply of food available — bayberries are one favorite in the northeast, as is suet at a bird feeder.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore. For a third warbler this week, instead of a common species why not take a look at one of the rarest birds in North America: Kirtland’s Warbler (page 478). Kirtland’s Warblers nest only in young stands of Jack Pine in northern Michigan, and nowhere else in the world. Current estimates put the total population at about 5,000 individuals.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this Hercules 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, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations using the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (pages 6–13) explains a little bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book — why not have your students study it as a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts of a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. 🦉

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary as a nature reference, but a comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning. 📖

❡ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things. 🌎

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🖋 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS: Stevenson’s “Summer Sun”

22 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Many of the homeschool poems we write about each week are aimed at high-school–level homeschoolers, but this week’s poem, for the week of the summer solstice — the astronomical beginning of summer — is just easy seasonal fun for all ages: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Summer Sun.”

Summer Sun

Great is the sun, and wide he goes
Through empty heaven without repose;
And in the blue and glowing days
More thick than rain he showers his rays.

Though closer still the blinds we pull
To keep the shady parlour cool,
Yet he will find a chink or two
To slip his golden fingers through.

The dusty attic spider-clad,
He, through the keyhole, maketh glad;
And through the broken edge of tiles,
Into the laddered hay-loft smiles.

Meantime his golden face around
He bares to all the garden ground,
And sheds a warm and glittering look
Among the ivy’s inmost nook.

Above the hills, along the blue,
Round the bright air with footing true,
To please the child, to paint the rose,
The gardener of the World, he goes.

“Summer Sun” was published in Stevenson’s classic collection A Child’s Garden of Verses, one of the best-loved children’s books of all time.

Illustration for *A Child’s Garden of Verses* (1908) by E. Dorothy O’Reilly.

What wonderful words and poetical productions will you be studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

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

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

❡ Explore more: If your homeschool travels ever take you to San Francisco, why not pay a visit to that city’s Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial — he’s a popular fellow all around the world! 📚

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

🌏 🇱🇰 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Dambulla Temple in Sri Lanka

22 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

The island nation of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Sri Lanka’s World Heritage Sites: the Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple.

The underground Buddhist temples of Dambulla have been sites of religious pilgrimage for more than two thousand years:

Located in central Sri Lanka, the Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple is a living Buddhist site that is focused on a series of five cave shrines. Inhabited by forest-dwelling Buddhist monks since the 3rd century BCE, these natural caves have been transformed continuously throughout the historical period into one of the largest and most outstanding Buddhist complexes in the Southern and South Eastern Asian region, showcasing innovative approaches to interior layout and decoration. In keeping with a longstanding tradition associated with living Buddhist ritual practices and continuous royal patronage, the cave shrines underwent several renovation and refurbishing programmes before assuming their present interior forms in the 18th century. The vast internal spaces of the cave shrines are not compartmentalized, but are spatially differentiated by a deliberate and subtle arrangement of polychrome sculpture of exceptional craftsmanship and decorated with brilliant compositions of mural paintings. This spatial hierarchy and purposive interior layout devoid of physical divisions lead the devotees systematically through the spaces from one ritual function to the next. The site is remarkable in the Buddhist world for its association with the continuous tradition of living Buddhist ritual practices and pilgrimage for more than two millennia. (World Heritage Centre #561)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

Interior of a portion of the Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

🗓 ⛱ SUMMER IS HERE! (Astronomically Speaking)

21 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Today (June 21st) is the June solstice — we call it the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the winter solstice. The summer solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of summer, just as the winter solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of winter.

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

➢ June Solstice: Shortest & Longest Day of the Year (timeanddate.com)

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

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – June 2022

21 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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

We have four items this month; the first one is a substantial collection of twelve different papers.

(1) This is Homeschooling: Stories of Unconventional Learning Practices On the Road and In Nature — K.R. Mathews, ed. (2022) [Edited collection]

Publisher’s summary: The number of homeschooling families has grown in recent years, along with the number of methods for learning at home. In this timely book, you’ll meet diverse families that are engaging in the day-to-day work of a variety of approaches, including self-directed learning, unschooling, nature-based education, farmschooling, wildschooling, and worldschooling.

Chapters and interludes are written by scholars and families engaged in this work, who show how their approaches take a balanced, slower-paced, and nature-minded approach to learning, nourishing the child’s heart and brain. They also address common critiques of homeschooling and show how it is something that can be normalized and encouraged as a positive educational tool, helping families bond and live life to the fullest. Each chapter includes practical applications you can use right away in your own journey.

Simultaneously inspirational and practical, this book will help guide and motivate those who are either considering or already homeschooling to see the possibilities of what learning and education can truly be.

(2) Home Away from Home: Exploring the Transitional Experiences Homeschooled Students Face when Attending University — A.A. Rodriguez (2022)

Abstract: This study aimed to explore the experiences of homeschooled students compared to non-homeschooled students through their transitional encounters of attending university. In the quantitative research design of this study, with a sample of 115 survey responses that were fully submitted, I examined the two transitional experiences. The transitional experiences explored included socio-emotional competence and classroom preparedness. For this study, research questions were as follows: (1) To what degree do homeschooled students experience socio-emotional competence during the transition to college compared to those who were not homeschooled? (2) To what degree do homeschooled students have classroom preparedness compared to those not homeschooled? Results indicated that homeschooled students scored slightly higher in comparison to non-homeschooled students

(3) Homeschool 101: Using Visual Media to Promote Awareness of Homeschooling — S.R. Sherlin (2022)

Abstract: Parents who are making decisions about the education of their children can benefit from a general awareness of the full range of schooling options available to them. Although the United States has seen its homeschooling population grow to all-time highs in recent years, many people are still unfamiliar with what homeschooling is actually like in practice. Some parents fail to recognize homeschooling as a viable option because of they are unfamiliar with its potential benefits, standard homeschooling methods, and resources for homeschooling families. This thesis reviews the homeschooling research literature and overviews relevant case studies to inform a visual solution to this problem. I developed a multifaceted information campaign to demonstrate how graphic design and visual media can be used to advance awareness of homeschooling as a viable option for education. The campaign provides general information about the homeschool movement and presents a picture of what contemporary homeschooling looks like.

(4) How Homeschooling Happens: A Phenomenological Study of Educational Practices in the Home Education Setting — B. Whitlow-Spurlock (2022)

Abstract: The purpose of this hermeneutic phenomenological study was to examine the educational processes and expand the personalized education theory of gifted and twice-exceptional homeschooling through the lived experiences of home educators at the international level via internet communications. Two theories guided this study. The first was the personalized education theory of gifted and twice-exceptional homeschooling, as it is part of the central focus in expanding the theory to new populations and could provide insight into parents’ experiences in designing their children’s homeschool environment. Secondly, the social cognitive theory was integrated within the findings. The central question guiding this study was: What are the lived experiences of parents who choose to homeschool their children? This hermeneutic phenomenology study was conducted with 10 participants who were recruited using convenience and web-based respondent sampling. Data were collected through interviews, participant journals, and vignettes. Data analysis was conducted through thematic analysis and determination of the essential themes: personalization, augmentation, and research. Furthermore, the analysis revealed three types of transitions, homeschool groups, daily structures, and annual schedule types. The results of this study support the four educational processes. The data supported the expansion of the personalized education theory of gifted and twice-exceptional homeschooling to the general homeschool population with the suggestion to change the name to personalized home education theory.

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

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

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

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

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 19 June 2022

19 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Washington, and our COUNTRIES are Sri Lanka 🇱🇰, Sudan 🇸🇩, Suriname 🇸🇷, and Sweden 🇸🇪. (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 331–346 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (19 June 2022) — HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads everywhere! 🏰 Today is the 170th day of 2022; there are 195 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 On this day in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Union troops announced to slaves still living in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. The date was long celebrated in Texas as Juneteenth Emancipation Day and it is now a federal holiday. 🎉

Monday (20 June 2022) — The University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, received its royal charter on this day in the year 1248. 🎓 And the United States Congress approved the design of the Great Seal of the United States on this day in 1782. (Take a look and see if you have a copy of it in your pocket right now.) 💵

Tuesday (21 June 2022) — Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Summer! ⛱ Today is the June Solstice, known as the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of astronomical winter). 🗓 Today is also the birthday of American painter and illustrator Rockwell Kent (1882–1971). 🎨

Wednesday (22 June 2022) — On this day in 1633, the Catholic Church forced Italian scientist Galileo Galilei to “abjure, curse, and detest” the view he formerly supported, namely that the earth revolved around the sun and was not fixed at the center of the universe. 🔭 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple in Sri Lanka. 🇱🇰 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this summer solstice week is (naturally enough) Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Summer Sun.” Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌞

Thursday (23 June 2022) — The great English mathematician Alan Turing was born on this day in 1912. His pioneering work in computer science and cryptanalysis was instrumental in the breaking of German codes during World War II. 🖥

Friday (24 June 2022) — On this day in the year 1497, the Italian-English explorer John Cabot (ca. 1450–1500) landed in Newfoundland and became the first European since the Vikings, centuries before, to set foot in North America. ⚓️ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will (re)introduce you to the delightful Wood-Warblers (Part II). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (25 June 2022) — On this day in 1876, the combined forces of several Plains Indian tribes under the command of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated a U.S. Army regiment under the command of George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known ever since as “Custer’s Last Stand.” ⚔️ And today is the birthday of American children’s book illustrator Eric Carle (1929–2021), author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and founder of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. 🐛

Sunday (26 June 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great French astronomer Charles Messier (1730–1817), who accidentally documented and numbered many of the most beautiful objects in the universe. 🔭 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Idaho 🇺🇸, Switzerland 🇨🇭, Syria 🇸🇾, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯.

🥂 ⛱ OUR WEEKLY TOAST is a happy traditional offering, for the arrival of summer: “To full stomachs and merry hearts.”

🌍 🇸🇩 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Sudan in eastern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the White Nile, one of the world’s great rivers, which joins the Blue Nile in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to form the Nile proper. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the White Nile entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The confluence of the White Nile (left) and the Blue Nile in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

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