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 your River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 422), so this week’s state is:
🇺🇸 Seal of FloridaFLORIDA (the 27th state, 3 March 1845) — The Sunshine State. Capital: Tallahassee. Florida appears on pages 568–569 in your almanac, and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Named by Juan Ponce de León Pascua Florida, ‘Flowery Easter,’ on Easter Sunday, 1513″ (almanac page 423). State bird: Northern Mockingbird. Website:www.myflorida.com.
❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas. 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 a few minutes each week, and by the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a world of new geographical and historical information.
🇲🇱 MALI in West Africa. Population: 17,885,245. Capital: Bamako. Website (in French):primature.gov.ml.
These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. For example, you’ll find the main entries for Malawi on almanac pages 801–802, atlas plates 100 and 135, and history encyclopedia page 566, with illustrations, flags, and other mentions available through the indexes in each volume.
❡ 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 thinking skills.
What geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately?
Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more!) of the items below and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule!
🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Florida, and our COUNTRIES are Malawi, Malaysia, the Maldives, and Mali. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post will be up shortly.)
❡ Little lessons: “Did you know that the tiny nation of the Maldives is made up of 19 small islands in the Indian Ocean, none of them more than five square miles in area?” You can find a facts-and-figures outline of Maldives on page 802 in your River Houses almanac and on plate 136 in your atlas, with a map of the country in an inset on atlas plate 85 (riverhouses.org/books).
🌖 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is waning gibbous, just past full, a relatively poor time for stargazing (the night sky will be darker toward the middle of the month). Track the moon’s phases each month at timeanddate.com/moon/phases, and dial up this week’s constellations with your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).
🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 4 March) — Today is the 63rd day of 2018; there are 302 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 351–357 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books).
Monday (5 March) — Monday is Museums & Monuments Day at the River Houses. Since Florida is our state-of-the-week, we’re going to pay a virtual visit to the Air Force Space & Missile Museum in Cape Canaveral, Florida. ⬩ This is also the anniversary of the Boston Massacre. On this day in 1770, five Americans were fatally shot on the streets of Boston by British troops in an event that would contribute to the outbreak of the American Revolution five years later.
Tuesday (6 March) — Join us for Tuesday Tea at the Library and some notes on books, libraries, and history that will mark the birthday of the great Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo in 1475. ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the English poet and translator Elizabeth Barrett Browning (born 6 March 1806).
Wednesday (7 March) — Wednesday is Wonderful Words Day at the River Houses. Since yesterday was Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s birthday, we’ll spend a few homeschool minutes today reading a few lines of her poetry. ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the great American botanist and agricultural scientist Luther Burbank (born 7 March 1849).
Thursday (8 March) — Do you need a nap? Take a nap today — you’ve earned it.
Friday (9 March) — Our regular Friday Field & Nature Notes will take a look at the beginning of the spring bird migration in North America. ⬩ Today is also the birthday of Italian cartographer and explorer Amerigo Vespucci (born 9 March 1454), who gave his name to two continents. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of American pianist and composer Samuel Barber (born 9 March 1910).
Saturday (10 March) — Saturday is Arts & Music Day at the River Houses. Spend a few homeschool minutes today introducing your students to one of Samuel Barber’s most famous pieces of music, his Adagio for Strings (perhaps one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written).
🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May we esteem merit wherever we find it.”
❡ Toasts are 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 current examples are adapted from two old collections: Marchant’s “Toasts and sentiments” (1888) and the anonymous Social and Convivial Toast-Master (1841). What will you toast this week?
🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Mali is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Niger, one of the world’s great rivers, which flows through Mali and much of West Africa. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read much more about it in the comprehensive Niger River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps at your local library the next time you visit.
“Mud houses on the center island at Lac Debo (Lake Debo), a wide section of the Niger River, in Mali.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
❡ Let the river run: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 691–692), 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 the homeschool week ahead?
![[Seal of Florida]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Seal_of_Florida-150x150.png)
![[Niger River in Mali]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Niger_River_Center_Island.jpg)
