Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses.
Many homeschoolers review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and the recommended River Houses reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We are going through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 453), so this week’s state is:
Seal of Rhode IslandRhode Island (29 May 1790, the 13th state) — The Ocean State. Rhode Island appears on pages 585–586 in your almanac, and on plate 44 in your atlas. Name origin: “Origin unknown. One theory notes that Giovanni de Verrazano recorded observing an island about the size of the Greek island of Rhodes in 1524. Another theory is that Dutch explorer Adriaen Block named the state Roode Eylandt for its red clay” (almanac page 455).
❡ What can you do with the state of the week? A thousand things, with your reference library as a starting point. Find the state bird with your almanac and look it up in your bird guide. Trace the state’s outline with your atlas. 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 the library — the possibilities are endless and they can be easily adjusted according to a student’s age and interests.
This week’s countries, with links to their official websites, are:
These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. For example, you’ll find the main entries for Dominica on almanac page 770, atlas plate 49 (where you can also practice reading insets on a map), and history encyclopedia page 505, with illustrations, flags, and other mentions available through the indexes in each volume.
What geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ 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 practice their critical reading and thinking skills.
Not everyone is content and well fed on Thanksgiving. If you despair on this holiday, try to keep your mind focused on our bright future, when all the races of the galaxy will live in harmony and will join together each year for a traditional dinner of burned replicated bird meat.
What futuristic holiday traditions will you be observing in your homeschool this week? 😊
Take two minutes for a music history lesson today.
Thomas Tallis “blue plaque” historical marker. (Image: dover-kent.co.uk.)If you’re looking for something to be thankful for this on this Thanksgiving Day beyond the custom of family, friends, and turkey dinner, why not invite your young students to give thanks for the life of Thomas Tallis, the great master of early English polyphony, who died on this November day in 1585.
Polyphonic music is the music of many voices. Unlike earlier styles of Western music such as Gregorian Chant, where all the singers follow the same vocal line, polyphonic music assigns different vocal lines to different singers — it is composed of “two or more independent melodic parts sounded together,” as your River Houses dictionary says.
Here are three versions of Thomas Tallis’s magnificent polyphonic “If ye love me,” a work based on a text from the New Testament Gospel of John (14:15–17), where Jesus tells his disciples: “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth.” Note how the voices are aligned together at the beginning, and then move apart and circle around each other like dancers, and then at the end come back into perfect alignment.
First, sung by the professional choral group The Cambridge Singers, with the musical score showing the four vocal lines (clicking in the lower right will open the video up to full screen and make it easier to follow along):
Second, sung by the casually dressed Ensemble D.E.U.M. with the minimal complement of four singers, making it easy for students to see how each person is following a different vocal line:
Finally, sung in its natural habitat by a full choir, at a 2010 ecumenical service in Westminster Abbey, London, featuring Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams:
So turn up the volume on Thomas Tallis for your students today, and be thankful that we live in a world that has had such people in it.
❡ A thousand educational opportunities are possible with a magnificent piece of music like this. If you have a musical household, you can get the sheet music directly from ChoralWiki. If your student is a budding musicologist, polyphony is a very rich and complex subject that music historians have written about extensively — a perfect topic to research on your next visit to the library. And if you are in the midst of studying grammar, you can point out how Tallis employs special poetic contractions in the text — ’bide, e’en and the unusual monosyllabic spir’t — to align the words with the meter of his music.
On any given night it’s possible to see a few meteors if you watch the sky from a dark location, and at certain times of year meteor showers occur, when tens and even hundreds of meteors can be seen each hour. But only rarely will you see a fireball — an exceptionally bright meteor that leaves a glowing trail behind it or visibly explodes or fragments during its descent. Fireballs of this kind — also called bolides — are unpredictable, and can indicate an object that was large enough to have made it to the ground as a meteorite.
Just after sunset this evening, as I was waiting for the train at Concord Station, I saw a fireball in the northwest, descending almost vertically until its trail disappeared behind a building. It’s impossible for a single observer to correctly estimate the true distance and altitude of an object of this kind, but if enough observers see the same event from different locations, then triangulation is indeed possible. And that’s where the fireball reporting system of the American Meteor Society comes in.
Fireball over Denmark, 2017. (Image: M. Hansen via amsmeteors.org.)
If you ever see a fireball, note down the time, the compass direction, the fireball’s height above the horizon and its direction of travel, its color and whether it visibly broke up or exploded — and then head over to the AMS’s fireball reporting page. If you fill in all the details of your observation it will be added to the list of pending reports, and then if other observers in other locations saw the same thing it will be designated an event — a verified fireball — and the fun work will begin to identify the object’s true location and course through the atmosphere.
As of this writing, the fireball I saw has been entered and classified as pending report #128372, and it looks like one other person in Northfield, Massachusetts, about 70 miles west from where I was, saw the same fireball. I’ll be checking over the next couple of days to see if any other people also file reports, and if so, what we can determine about the true nature of that unexpected evening flash in the sky.
❡ Lots of simple educational opportunities are possible with an event like this. To begin, in your River Houses dictionary and almanac have your students look up the definitions of meteor, meteorite, fireball, and bolide, and look up the major meteor showers that occur every year.
On November 19th, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered what we now call the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Once upon a time all American students could recite it — if your students can’t yet, perhaps that would be a worthy goal:
Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
And if you want to expand into an educational reflection on the passage of time, from four score and seven to seven score and fourteen, perhaps you can add in the picture below of the Gettysburg fields and Carl Sandburg’s famous poem “Grass”:
Grass
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work —
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
The fields of Gettysburg. (Image: Rob Shenk via civilwar.org, a national organization devoted to the preservation of Civil War battlefields.)
Quick Freshes: November 19th, today, is the 154th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address. Thanksgiving Day, the fourth Thursday in November, falls on the 23rd this year, coinciding with the anniversary of the death of the great English composer Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505–1583).
Your weekly toast: “A little health, a little wealth, a little house, and freedom.”
❡ Toasts can be a fun tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To variety in toasting!”). Our weekly examples are currently selected and adapted for amusement from two 19th-century collections: W.T. Marchant’s “Toasts and sentiments” (1888), and the anonymous Social and Convivial Toast-Master (1841). What did you toast this week?
States and Countries: Many homeschoolers review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and the recommended River Houses reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We are going through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 453), so this week’s state is:
Seal of North CarolinaNorth Carolina (21 November 1789, the 12th state) — The Tar Heel State, the Old North State. North Carolina appears on page 582 in your almanac, and on plate 42 in your atlas. Name origin: “In 1619, Charles I gave patent to Sir Robert Heath for Province of Carolana, from Carolus, Latin name for Charles. Charles II granted a new patent to Earl of Clarendon and others. Divided into North and South Carolina in 1710″ (almanac page 455, in telegraphic style).
❡ What can you do with the state of the week? A thousand things, with your reference library as a starting point. Find the state bird with your almanac and look it up in your bird guide. Trace the state’s outline with your atlas. 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 the library — the possibilities are endless and they can be easily adjusted according to a student’s age and interests.
This week’s countries, with links to their official websites, are:
Cyprus (English and Greek), in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
Denmark (English and several other languages), in Northern Europe.
Djibouti (French only), on the east coast of Africa.
These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. For example, you’ll find the main entries for Cyprus on almanac pages 768–769, atlas plates 72 and 96, and history encyclopedia page 550, with illustrations, flags, and other mentions available through the indexes in each volume.
What geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ 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 practice their critical reading and thinking skills.
Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses.
Many homeschoolers review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and the recommended River Houses reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We are going through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 453), so this week’s state is:
Seal of New YorkNew York (26 July 1788, the 11th state) — The Empire State. Capital: Albany. New York appears on pages 581–582 in your almanac, and on plates 43 and 44 (among others) in your atlas. Name origin: “For James, Duke of York and Albany, who received patent for New Netherland from his brother Charles II and sent an expedition to capture it, 1664” (almanac page 455, in telegraphic style).
❡ What can you do with the state of the week? A thousand things, with your reference library as a starting point. Find the state bird with your almanac and look it up in your bird guide. Trace the state’s outline with your atlas. 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 the library — the possibilities are endless and they can be easily adjusted according to each student’s age and interests.
This week’s countries, with links to their official websites, are:
Costa Rica (Spanish only), in Central America. Capital: San José.
Cote d’Ivoire (French only), in West Africa. Capital(s): Yamoussoukro and Abidjan.
Croatia (English and Croatian), in Southeastern Europe. Capital: Zagreb.
Cuba (Spanish only), in the West Indies. Capital: Havana.
These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. For example, you’ll find the main entries for Cote d’Ivoire (formerly the Ivory Coast, in English) on almanac pages 766–767, atlas plates 97 and 131, and history encyclopedia page 561, with illustrations, flags, and other mentions available through the indexes in each volume.
What geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ 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 form or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their critical reading and analysis skills.
Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world with the River Houses.
Many homeschoolers review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and the recommended River Houses reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We are going through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 453), so this week’s state is:
Seal of VirginiaVirginia (25 June 1788, the 10th state) — The Old Dominion. Capital: Richmond. Virginia appears on page 589 in your almanac, and on plate 43 in your atlas. Name origin: “Named by Sir Walter Raleigh, who outfitted an expedition in 1584, in honor of England’s Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen” (almanac page 455).
❡ What can you do with the state of the week? A thousand things, with your reference library as a starting point. Find the state bird with your almanac and look it up in your bird guide. Trace the state’s outline with your atlas. 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 the library — the possibilities are endless and they can be easily adjusted according to a student’s age and interests.
This week’s countries, with links to their official websites, are:
Colombia (Spanish only), in north-west South America. Capital: Bogotá.
The Comoros (French only), in the Indian Ocean between Madagascar and the coast of West Africa. Capital: Moroni.
Congo (BBC News country profile, in English), in central Africa. Capital: Kinshasa.
Congo Republic (French only), in west-central Africa. Capital: Brazzaville.
These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. For example, you’ll find the main entries for the tiny island nation of the Comoros on almanac pages 734–735, atlas plates 131 and 95 (where you can practice reading insets on a map), and history encyclopedia page 567, with illustrations, flags, and other mentions available through the indexes in each volume.
What geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ 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 form or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their skills in critical reading and analysis.
![[Seal of Rhode Island]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Seal_of_Rhode_Island-150x150.png)
![[Thomas Tallis historical marker]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/tallis-132x150.jpg)
![[Fireball over Denmark, 2017]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/fireball.jpg)
![[The fields of Gettysburg.]](https://www.civilwar.org/sites/default/files/styles/gallery_item/public/thumbnails/image/fieldsofgettysburg-web_0.jpg)
![[Seal of North Carolina]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Seal_of_North_Carolina-150x150.png)
![[Seal of New York]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Seal_of_New_York-150x150.jpg)
![[Seal of Virginia]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Seal_of_Virginia-150x150.png)
