The River Houses Homeschool Network

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

1 March 2021 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! 😊

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 11 April 2021

11 April 2021 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 Minnesota, and our COUNTRIES are the Netherlands 🇳🇱, New Zealand 🇳🇿, Nicaragua 🇳🇮, and Niger 🇳🇪. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌑 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is new — that’s the best time of the month for dark-sky stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (11 April 2021) — Today is the 101st day of 2021; there are 265 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of the strange and wonderful eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart (1722–1771). 🐈 It’s also the birthday of American educator and statesman Edward Everett (1794–1865), one of the most celebrated orators of his day, who in 1863 had the misfortune of speaking for the two hours before Abraham Lincoln delivered the two-minute Gettysburg Address. 🇺🇸

Monday (12 April 2021) — On this day in 1861, Confederate artillery opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, touching off the American Civil War. (For a quick review of the Civil War, turn to page 314 in your River Houses history encyclopedia.) ⚔️ And on this day in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968) became the first human being ever to orbit the earth. (You can find him also in your history encyclopedia, on page 578.) 👨‍🚀

Tuesday (13 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on this day in 1943 by President Franklin Roosevelt, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth. 🏛

Wednesday (14 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great cartographer Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), who produced history’s first atlas of the world. 🌐 And on this day in 1986, more than 90 people were tragically killed when the heaviest hailstones ever recorded (more than two pounds each) fell on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh. ⛈ Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Defense Line of Amsterdam in the Netherlands 🇳🇱.

Thursday (15 April 2021) — Today is the midpoint of Leo Term and thus one of the four cross-quarter days of the River Houses year. How are things going? 🦁 Today is also the birthday of the great Renaissance painter and polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). 🎨 And on this day in 1912, the passenger liner R.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, two hours after striking an iceberg. More than 1500 passengers and crew died in the accident. 🚢 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of April is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” for the beginning of the American Revolution. 👨‍🌾 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Friday (16 April 2021) — On this day in the year 73, the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada fell to the Roman army after several months of siege. ✡️ And on this day in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after being arrested for protesting segregation in Alabama. 🖋 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the little Nuthatches, Creepers, and Wrens. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (17 April 2021) — On this day in 1524, the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485–1528) became the first European to sail into what is now New York harbor. 🗽 Today is also the birthday of the American novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder (1897–1975). 🖋

Sunday (18 April 2021) — On the evening of this day in 1775, Paul Revere and a network of alarm riders fanned out from Boston to warn the surrounding countryside that British troops were marching overnight to seize the colonists’ stores of arms and ammunition in the nearby town of Concord. Join us today for a special reading of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous American poem “Paul Revere’s Ride.” 🏇 Also, on this day in 1906, a major earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, California. 🔥 And, today is World Heritage Day! 🏛

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is one of our traditional offerings, for the beginning of the American Revolution in April 1775: “May truth and liberty prevail throughout the world.”

❡ 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 this week? 🥂

🌍 🇳🇪 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Niger is west-central Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is (naturally enough) the Niger River, one of the principal rivers of western Africa. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Niger River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Daughters 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 699–701), 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. 🌍

AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Tuesday this month! 🙀

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: Minnesota, the Netherlands, Niger, and More

11 April 2021 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 458), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Minnesota State Flag
MINNESOTA (the 32nd state, 11 May 1858) — The North Star State. Capital: St. Paul. Minnesota can be found on page 582 in your almanac and on plates 39 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Dakota Sioux word meaning ‘cloudy water’ or ‘sky-tinted water’ of the Minnesota River” (almanac page 459). State bird: Common Loon (bird guide page 218). Website: mn.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week, 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:

🇳🇱 THE NETHERLANDS in western Europe. Population: 17,280,397. Capital: Amsterdam. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.government.nl (in Dutch and English).
🇳🇿 NEW ZEALAND in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Population: 4,925,477. Capital: Wellington. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.govt.nz (in English).
🇳🇮 NICARAGUA in Central America. Population: 6,203,441. Capital: Managua. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.asamblea.gob.ni (in Spanish).
🇳🇪 NIGER in north-central Africa. Population: 22,772,361. Capital: Niamey. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.presidence.ne (in French).

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 752–859; 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) have you been making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

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

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

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

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Regulus for April

10 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

April is the middle month of Leo Term in the River Houses, and as our monthly star calendar will tell you, April’s Great Star is Regulus, the brightest star in constellation Leo the Heavenly Lion. Its formal designation is α Leonis — “alpha of Leo.” Leo and Regulus are high in the southern sky in the early evening this month, passing over to the west as the night goes on.

The constellation Leo, showing the position of its alpha star, Regulus, the “Little King” that is the heart of the lion. The dashed red line is the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets follow across the sky. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you want to introduce your students to Regulus and Leo you can start with some basic astronomy and astronomical mythology from your backyard star guide:

Leo is a large and easily recognized constellation that sits in a rather empty portion of the sky, just beyond Ursa Major and between its fellow zodiacal constellations Cancer and Virgo. A sickle-shaped asterism represents the lion’s head, mane, and chest. Shaped like a backward question mark, the period of this giant piece of celestial punctuation is marked by the brilliant star Regulus, while the stars trailing to the east mark Leo’s hindquarters. This is one of the easier constellations to construct mentally, as it resembles the classic image of the Sphinx.

The beacon-like, blue-white light of Regulus has long made it easy to see. Observation records of it date back to Babylonian tablets from around 2100 B.C. The sphinx, an icon of ancient Egyptian civilization, may have been modeled after this celestial beast. Better known in antiquity as Cor Leonis, the Lion’s Heart, its current name is actually taken from a Latin word meaning “little king,” and it is often known as the Royal star…. Regulus lies 79 light-years away, shining some 160 times brighter than our own sun and with a diameter five times larger. Binoculars and small telescopes show a very dim companion star. The fainter star’s real distance from Regulus is about 100 times the distance tiny Pluto orbits from our sun. (National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, page 200)

That’s plenty for beginning students — your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Regulus is packed with additional information on everything from astrometry to cultural history.

Regulus A (the primary star of the system) and its Regulus B-C neighbors (actually two stars, but appearing single here). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Regulus we see with the naked eye is blue-white, but that Regulus is actually just the primary star (Regulus A) of a quadruple system that is arranged into two pairs: Regulus A and a suspected white dwarf that is detectable only spectroscopically, and Regulus B and C (a pair that is visible as a single star in binoculars and small telescopes). The B-C pair orbit each other, and together they orbit the primary star Regulus A and its own tiny companion.

The primary star in the Regulus system, Regulus A, is spinning so fast that it bulges out at the equator: it takes only 16 hours to complete one rotation, in contrast to about 25 days for the sun. The four-star Regulus system is estimated to be about one billion years old — quite old, but less than a quarter of the age of our own solar system. If you’d like to give Regulus an in-person inspection just bring your earth-based spaceship up to the speed of light and you’ll be able to get there in only 79 years. 🚀

Sometime this month, take your homeschool students out at dusk and introduce them to this great system of stars, and teach them its name, and so give them a new friend for life.

What stellar observations have you been making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 🦁

❡ Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular names — Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so on — as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572–1625) devised the formal system of star designations that is still in common use today. In Bayer’s system, the stars in each constellation, from brightest to dimmest, are assigned a lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet: α (alpha, brightest), β (beta, second brightest), γ (gamma, third brightest), δ (delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the name of the constellation in its Latin possessive (genitive) form: Lyra becomes Lyrae (“of Lyra”), Canis Major becomes Canis Majoris (“of Canis Major”), and so on. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the star Vega) thus becomes α Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes α Canis Majoris (“alpha of Canis Major”), and so on, through all 24 Greek letters and all 88 constellations. How bright would you expect, say, the σ (sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright — it’s far down the alphabet — but σ Orionis happens to mark the top of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still notable and easy to locate on a dark night. ✨

❡ Star bright: The brightness of a star as we see it in our night sky is its magnitude — or more properly, its apparent magnitude. The scale of star magnitudes was developed long before modern measuring instruments were invented, so it can be a little bit confusing for beginners. Originally, the brightest stars in the sky were called “first magnitude” and the less-bright stars “second magnitude,” “third magnitude,” and so on, down to the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye, which were called “sixth magnitude.” In the nineteenth century the star Vega (our August star) was chosen as the standard brightness reference and its value on the magnitude scale was defined to be zero (0.0). Five steps in magnitude (from 0.0 to 5.0 or from 1.0 to 6.0) was defined to be a change in brightness of 100 times: a star 100 times dimmer than Vega (0.0) was defined to be a magnitude 5.0 star. Vega is not quite the brightest star is the sky, however, so the scale also had to be extended into negative numbers: Sirius (our March star), for example, is magnitude –1.5, about three times brighter than Vega (at 0.0). The planet Venus at its brightest is about magnitude –4.2; the full moon is about magnitude –12.9; the sun is magnitude –26.7. By contrast, the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye in a populated, light-polluted area are about magnitude 3.0; the dimmest stars visible under very dark conditions are about magnitude 6.5. The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit around the earth has photographed distant stars and galaxies below magnitude 30, the dimmest celestial objects humans have seen so far. 🌃

❡ And all dishevelled wandering stars: How far away are the stars? Do they all occupy a single celestial “dome” that rotates through the heavens (as some ancient and medieval astronomers believed), or are they scattered through space at different individual distances? Astronomers had long suspected that the fixed stars existed at different distances from us, but early attempts to measure those distances failed. It was not until the early 1800s that instruments and measuring techniques became precise enough to allow the first stellar distances to be calculated using the technique of parallax. Parallax is the displacement in the apparent position of an object with respect to the background when an observer moves from side to side. It’s an ordinary phenomenon you experience every day — it’s how we judge distances as we move through the landscape. Stellar parallaxes are extremely small — fractions of an arc-second (one 3600th of a degree) — and they are calculated by measuring a star’s position against the background at opposite sides of the earth’s orbit, six months apart. (That’s the astronomical equivalent of taking one step to the side.) Vega, our August star, was one of the first stars to have its parallax measured; modern estimates put it at about 0.13 arc-seconds. Apply some trigonometry, and that yields a distance of about 25 light-years. 🔭

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. We recommend the handy Backyard Guide to the Night Sky as a general family reference — it will help you identify all the northern hemisphere constellations and will point out many highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Your recommended world atlas also has beautiful maps of the whole northern and southern hemisphere night skies on plates 121–122. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌌

❡ First star I see tonight: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts featuring twelve of the most notable stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. Download and print your own copy of our River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us as we visit a different Great Star each month — and make each one of them a homeschool friend for life. 🌟

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Chickadees, Titmice, and Allies

9 April 2021 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 (three different families) are the Chickadees and Titmice (pages 382–387), the Penduline Tits and Verdins (pages 386–387), and the Long-tailed Tits and Bushtits (pages 386–387).

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

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

CHICKADEES · TITMICE — Family Paridae. Small, hardy birds with short wings. Active and agile, they often hang upside down to feed. The are among the most familiar visitors to feeders. Species: 59 World, 12 N.A. [North America]

PENDULINE TITS · VERDINS — Family Remizidae. These small, spritely birds with finely pointed bills inhabit arid scrub country, feed in brush chickadee-style, and build spherical nests. Species: 10 World, 1 N.A.

LONG-TAILED TITS · BUSHTITS — Family Aegithalidae. Tiny and long-tailed. Except when breeding, feed in large, twittering flocks. Build an elaborate hanging nest. Species: 10 World, 1 N.A.

When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about a new group — about the Chickadees and Titmice, for example. How many species? (59 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (12 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Small, agile, short-winged, often hang upside down, and so on.)

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, for the Chickadee family, why not investigate the Black-capped Chickadee (page 384), a familiar and friendly backyard bird found across most of northern North America.

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is the Black-capped Chickadee? (5¼ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Poecile atricapillus.) 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.)

As the family description indicates, Chickadees readily come to bird feeders and many people known them as backyard birds. Black-capped Chickadees typically nest in holes that they excavate in dead trees — they don’t have the drilling power of woodpeckers, so they usually select a well-rotted tree that can be easily picked apart. And of course they get their name from their familiar chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee call:

If you live in the southern or southwestern United States, out of the Black-cap’s range, take a look at the Carolina Chickadee and the Mountain Chickadee (page 384), two similar species with ranges that extend farther to the south.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick a species that is near you, or one that looks striking, or one that has a strange name, and explore. For example, in one of this week’s other families, the Penduline Tits and Verdins, take a look at the Verdin (page 386), a tiny yellow-headed bird of the southwest.

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

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, 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 on the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

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

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

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

❡ State birds: One species included this week is a United States state bird twice over: the Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus), featured above, the state bird of both Maine and Massachusetts. 🇺🇸

❡ 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: Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day

8 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Teach your homeschool high-schoolers a small narrative masterpiece this week from the American poet Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966) — it’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of April.

Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day

Calmly we walk through this April’s day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn…)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(…that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn…)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn…)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(…that time is the fire in which they burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;

Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

This is a philosophical poem about the passage of time. The narrator is walking through a city park in the spring of 1937 (he tells us the year), with children racing around, cars rushing past, a poor person on one bench, a wealthy person on another — “Metropolitan poetry here and there” — and he is remembering people he knew who are now gone. And he asks: “What will become of you and me / Besides the photo and the memory?”

[Delmore Schwartz] — The American poet Delmore Schwartz (1913–1966). (Image: poetryfoundation.org.)

When you introduce your students to a modern poem that may be somewhat difficult, make sure they don’t worry about “getting” everything right away. Encourage them to think of the poem as a clever new friend: have a conversation, spend a little time getting acquainted, and then plan to meet again some other April day to get to know each other better still.

“Calmly We Walk Through This April’s Day” isn’t structured in a traditional way with a fixed meter — it’s arranged more like a piece of music, with repeating sounds and phrases that are varied each time they appear. And even though it doesn’t rhyme throughout, it does have a lot of rhyme and near-rhyme to discover. There are quite a few y-sounds on the line-endings in the first stanza, for example: day, rentier, away, away, memory. (There is enough of a rhyming pattern for you to see that the French word rentier, a wealthy landlord, is pronounced rent-i-ay.)

Note in particular how Schwartz slightly varies the poem’s two key repeating lines so they are familiar but not monotonous, like a repeating motif that weaves in and out through a piece of music: “This is the school in which we learn,” “This is the school in which they learn,” “Time is the school in which we learn.” And then these two rhyming lines that were initially separated (and given tentatively in parentheses) finally come together at the end in a famous couplet: “Time is the school in which we learn, / Time is the fire in which we burn.” The fact that the poem as a whole does not have a regular rhyming pattern gives this strongly rhymed pair at the end an extra punch.

Don’t miss the opportunity to send your students to your family dictionary to investigate some lovely vocabulary this week: metropolitan, rentier, fugitive (as an adjective), theodicy, avid, reeling — wonderful words, every one.

And if while studying this poem you’re worried that you might be wasting time with ephemeral literature that will soon be forgotten (“How all things flash! How all things flare!”), be assured that “Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day” will still be remembered centuries from now, in federations unborn, on planets yet unknown:

What wonderful words and poetical productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Time is the school in which we learn: 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. 😊

❡ Nature’s bonfire burns on: 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 “Calmly We Walk,” send them off to read Gerard Manley Hopkins’ (famously difficult) religious masterpiece “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and the Comfort of the Resurrection.” Did Schwartz have Hopkins in mind when he was writing his poem? I haven’t researched the history, but I bet he did. How would Hopkins respond to Schwartz’s question, “What will become of you and me / Besides the photo and the memory?” 🔍

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

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list 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. 📖

🌏 🇲🇲 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Ancient Pyu Cities of Myanmar

7 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Myanmar (Burma) in southern Asia is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Myanmar’s World Heritage Sites: the Ancient Pyu Cities.

The ancient Pyu culture flourished for more than a thousand years in the south-Asian region that is today Myanmar:

The Pyu Ancient Cities provide the earliest testimony of the introduction of Buddhism into Southeast Asia almost two thousand years ago and the attendant economic, socio-political and cultural transformations which resulted in the rise of the first, largest, and longest-lived urbanized settlements of the region up until the 9th century. The Pyu showed a striking capacity to assimilate Indic influences and swiftly move into a significant degree of re-invention. They created a special form of urbanization, the city of extended urban format, which subsequently influenced urbanization in most of mainland Southeast Asia. These earliest Buddhist city-states played a seminal role in the process of transmitting the literary, architectural and ritual traditions of Pali-based Buddhism to other societies in the sub-region where they continue to be practiced up to the present.

Halin, Beikthano and Sri Ksetra together as a Serial Property jointly testify to the several aspects of the development of this new model of urban settlement for the Southeast Asian region. Together the three cities provide evidence for the entire sequence and range of Pyu urban transformation from ca. 2nd century BCE to the 9th century CE, Buddhist monastic communities, distinctive mortuary practice, skilful water management, and long distant trade. At all three Pyu Ancient City sites, the irrigated landscape of the Pyu era is still impacting on the rural livelihoods of the modern population, while the religious monuments continue to be venerated by Buddhist pilgrims from throughout the region. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1444)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Ancient Pyu Cities 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 are you exploring in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia 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. 🌏

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Technological 600s

6 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Tuesday is our regular 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 April is the 600s, which covers Technology. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 600s” means the numbers running from 600 to 699.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the Technological 600s:

CLASS 600 – TECHNOLOGY
- 600 – Technology (General)
- 610 – Medicine & Health
- 620 – Engineering
- 630 – Agriculture
- 640 – Home & Family Management
- 650 – Management & Public Relations
- 660 – Chemical Engineering
- 670 – Manufacturing
- 680 – Manufacture for Specific Purposes
- 690 – Construction of Buildings

Each of these “tens” divisions is subdivided further of course. For example, in the 630s (Agriculture) you’ll find works on Field Crops (633), Orchards & Forestry (634), Horticulture (635), Animal Husbandry (636), and so on.

So this month if you’ve got a future farmer in your homeschool, the 630s is the place to go. A future civil engineer? Head for 624. A future blacksmith? Try 682. A future HVAC technician? Explore 697. (You may want to skip over 662, however, unless your child is really determined to study the manufacture of explosives.) 😮

❡ Dewey Detectives at home: If you’re still locked out of your local library because of the current pestilence, why not become a Dewey Detective at home! There may actually be Dewey decimal numbers hidden all around your house right now. Here are some tips on how to find them. 🔎

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 make 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 have you discovered in your library this Leo 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 600s, one in the 610s, one in the 620s, one in the 630s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 600) and the very last book in the class (the highest 699). 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. 🔎

❡ Looking in the lexicon: The Dewey system attempts to encompass the whole of knowledge, so there’s a good chance it will introduce your students to subjects and terminology they haven’t encountered before. In the 600s, for example, they may come across words like “hydraulics,” “horticulture,” and “metallurgy” (to name just a few). During or after your library visit, then, why not send your students to your family dictionary or to any dictionary sitting open in the library reference room and invite them to investigate some distinguished Dewey-inspired vocabulary. 📖

❡ 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. 📚

🖖 HAPPY FIRST CONTACT DAY!

5 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

On this day in the year 2063, in a remote area near Bozeman, Montana, a Vulcan survey ship will make first contact with the human race. And some of today’s homeschoolers will probably be around to see it! 👽 👨‍🚀 😊

Earlier in the day, Zefram Cochrane will break the warp barrier for the first time, and the Vulcans, who had previously taken no notice of us (“too primitive”), will decide to say hello. And the rest will be history.

➢

I’m not much of a creative writer, but I’ve always wanted to edit Picard’s last lines in that scene. When Lily says, “I envy you — the world you’re going to,” Picard’s reply should have been, “I envy you — the world you have.”

Sure on This Shining Night

James Agee

Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.

Where will your students boldly go this this Leo Term? 🚀

❡ Stay up to date: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries 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 4 April 2021

4 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is California, and our COUNTRIES are Myanmar (Burma) 🇲🇲, Namibia 🇳🇦, Nauru 🇳🇷, and Nepal 🇳🇵. (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 at its third quarter — 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 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (4 April 2021) — Today is the 94th day of 2021; there are 271 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is also Easter Sunday, the Christian holiday that commemorates the resurrection of Jesus. ✝️ And it’s also the birthday of the American Quaker artist Edward Hicks (1780–1849), famous for his “Peaceable Kingdom.” 🎨

Monday (5 April 2021) — Happy First Contact Day! On this day in 2063, a Vulcan ship will land near Bozeman, Montana, bringing to an end our long galactic childhood. 🖖

Tuesday (6 April 2021) — The Civil War Battle of Shiloh began on this day in 1862 near Shiloh, Tennessee. Herman Melville would later commemorate the battle in his poem “Shiloh: A Requiem.” ⚔️ 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 Technological 600s. 📚

Wednesday (7 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850). 🌈 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Ancient Pyu Cities of Myanmar. 🇲🇲

Thursday (8 April 2021) — On this day in 1820, the famous ancient statue now known as the Venus de Milo was discovered on the Greek island of Milos in the southern Aegean Sea. 🏛 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of April is Delmore Schwartz’s “Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day,” a beautiful, philosophical, Heraclitean, high-school-level poem for spring. 🌸 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Friday (9 April 2021) — On this day in 1865, Confederate general Robert E. Lee formally surrendered to Union general Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. 🕊 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the friendly Chickadees, Titmice, and their allies. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (10 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of William Booth (1829–1912), the founder of the Salvation Army. ✝️ And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo the Lion. 🌟

Sunday (11 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the strange and wonderful eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart (1722–1771). 🐈 It’s also the birthday of American educator and statesman Edward Everett (1794–1865), one of the most celebrated orators of his day, who in 1863 had the misfortune of speaking for the two hours before Abraham Lincoln delivered the two-minute Gettysburg Address. 🇺🇸

🥂 🖖 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for First Contact Day, is a Vulcan traditional. The host says: “Peace and long life.” And the guests respond: “Live long and prosper.”

🌏 🇲🇲 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Myanmar (Burma) in southern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is western Burma’s Lemro River, which empties into the Bay of Bengal. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Lemro River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

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

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: California, Myanmar, Nepal, and More

4 April 2021 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.

🇺🇸
California State Flag
CALIFORNIA (the 31st state, 9 September 1850) — The Golden State. Capital: Sacramento. California can be found on page 572 in your almanac and on plates 37 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Bestowed by Spanish conquistadores (possibly Hernán Cortés). It was the name of an imaginary island in the 1510 Spanish novel Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Exploits of Esplandián), by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. The Spanish first visited Baja (Lower) California in 1533. The present-day U.S. state was called Alta (Upper) California” (almanac page 459). State bird: California Quail (bird guide page 56). Website: www.ca.gov.

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

🇲🇲 MYANMAR (Burma) in southern Asia. Population: 56,590,071. Capital: Yangon. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.president-office.gov.mm (in Burmese and English).
🇳🇦 NAMIBIA in southern Africa. Population: 2,630,073. Capital: Windhoek. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.gov.na (in English).
🇳🇷 NAURU in the western Pacific Ocean. Population: 9,785. Capital: none. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: naurugov.nr (in English).
🇳🇵 NEPAL in central Asia. Population: 30,327,877. Capital: Kathmandu. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website: www.nepal.gov.np (in Nepali and English).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you been making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

April 2021
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