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 recommended 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:
🇺🇸 Connecticut State QuarterCONNECTICUT (the 5th state, 9 January 1788) — The Constitution State. Capital: Hartford. Connecticut can be found on page 567 in your almanac and on plates 44 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Mohican and other Algonquin words meaning ‘long river place’” (almanac page 423). State bird: American Robin. Website:portal.ct.gov.
❡ 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 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 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. 😊
This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
🇧🇪 BELGIUM – in Western Europe. Population: 11,491,346. Capital: Brussels. Website:www.belgium.be (in English, French, Dutch, and German).
🇧🇿 BELIZE – in Central America. Population: 360,346. Capital: Belmopan. Website:www.belize.gov.bz (in English).
🇧🇯 BENIN – in West Africa. Population: 11,038,805. Capital(s): Porto-Novo and Cotonou. Website:www.gouv.bj (in French).
🇧🇹 BHUTAN – in South Asia. Population: 758,288. Capital: Thimphu. Website:www.bhutan.gov.bt (in English).
These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of all 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 geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊
❡ 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.
❡ 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? 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. 😊
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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.
🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Connecticut, and our COUNTRIES are Belgium 🇧🇪, Belize 🇧🇿, Benin 🇧🇯, and Bhutan 🇧🇹. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post will be up shortly.)
🌖 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning — a good time for moonwatching and an increasingly good time for stargazing. 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, 30 September) — Today is the 273rd day of 2018; there are 92 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). ⬩ Today is the birthday of William Wrigley, Jr. (1861–1932), founder of the Wrigley chewing gum company. ⬩ The Hoover Dam on the Arizona–Nevada border was dedicated on this day in 1935.
MONDAY (1 October) — The first Ford Model T automobile was put on sale on this day in 1908. The price was $825. ⬩ The George Washington Bridge linking New York and New Jersey across the Hudson River was opened on this day in 1931. ⬩ Our poem-of-the-week for the first week of October (1–7) is John Keats’ “To Autumn,” perhaps the most famous fall poem in the English language. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us throughout the year.
TUESDAY (2 October) — Today is the birthday of Indian lawyer, philosopher, and political leader Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948). ⬩ It’s also the birthday of American poet Wallace Stevens (1879–1955). ⬩ The comic strip Peanuts premiered on this day in 1950. ⬩ 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: Class 000 (General Works).
WEDNESDAY (3 October) — Today is the birthday of English veterinarian James Herriot (1916–1995), author of All Creatures Great and Small and other popular books on animals.
THURSDAY (4 October) — On this day in 1582, the Gregorian calendar was adopted on the European continent by decree of Pope Gregory (of course) XIII. Today was the 4th of the month, and tomorrow was declared to be the 15th. (The English-speaking world didn’t make the change for almost two more centuries.)
FRIDAY (5 October) — Today is the birthday of American physicist and engineer Robert Goddard (1882–1945), inventor of the liquid-fueled rocket. ⬩ And speaking of aiming for the stars: since this is the first Friday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your homeschool students can be on the lookout for over the next few weeks.
🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “To the old, long life and treasure; to the young, all health and pleasure.”
❡ 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 set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?
🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Bhutan is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the largest river in Bhutan, the Manas River, which crosses the Bhutan–India border. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Manas River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
❡ 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 your homeschool this week? 😊
American Crow roost. (Image: Kevin McGowan, Cornell University.)
Friday is Natural History Day in the River Houses. As fall advances, there are lots of changes in the natural world that you and your homeschool students can monitor. A conspicuous one is the formation of winter crow roosts.
During the summer breeding season many birds are territorial and don’t associate together in large numbers. Once the breeding season is over, however, flocking begins, not only in the context of migration (think vees of geese), but also in the context of nightly roosting assemblages.
The American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) is common across much of North America, and it’s one of the most conspicuous roosting species in the United States. At this time of year, around dusk every day, crows can often be seen passing over the landscape heading toward their nightly roosts. Here’s a good two-minute introduction to crow roosts from the Humane Society of the United States:
Large crow roosts often contain many thousands of birds and they can be a spectacular sight. It’s interesting that we still don’t fully understand why these roosts are formed. It’s usually thought that they serve a social-communication function, but the evidence is not clear. Here’s some biological background you can share with your students from Kevin McGowan at Cornell University:
There’s a very large American Crow roost not far from where I live, beside the Nashua River at a spot called Rollstone Hill in central Massachusetts. Every evening now, crows begin to assemble at this location — a few hundred each night this week, and by later in the season, a few thousand. Every morning they disperse again over the landscape, and then every night they return to the roost.
There’s probably a crow roost somewhere near your homeschool. If you haven’t come across it yet, it should be easy to find, and tracking it down would be a great homeschool science lesson. Just go outside in the hour or so before dusk and keep an eye on the sky. If you see crows passing overhead, hop in the car and follow them. They’ll lead you right to the roost.
What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊
❡ Books in the running brooks: Our River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉
What defines the seasons? Is it a change in temperature? Migrating birds? The position of the sun in the sky? An evocation of the air?
Here’s a wonderful poem-of-the-week for homeschool high-schoolers (and for mom and dad, too) that considers how the seasons arrive and what defines them. It’s from British poet Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001):
Song at the Beginning of Autumn
Now watch this autumn that arrives
In smells. All looks like summer still;
Colours are quite unchanged, the air
On green and white serenely thrives.
Heavy the trees with growth and full
The fields. Flowers flourish everywhere.
Proust who collected time within
A child’s cake would understand
The ambiguity of this —
Summer still raging while a thin
Column of smoke stirs from the land
Proving that autumn gropes for us.
But every season is a kind
Of rich nostalgia. We give names —
Autumn and summer, winter, spring —
As though to unfasten from the mind
Our moods and give them outward forms.
We want the certain, solid thing.
But I am carried back against
My will into a childhood where
Autumn is bonfires, marbles, smoke;
I lean against my window fenced
From evocations in the air.
When I said autumn, autumn broke.
When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one like this that appears to be 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 time to get acquainted.
Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001). (Image: Oxford Today.)Before you even start worrying 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.
“Song at the Beginning of Autumn” is a very precisely structured poem. If you count, you’ll find that every line has exactly eight syllables. (That pattern tells you that “flowers” should be pronounced here as a one-syllable word: “flowrs” not “flow-ers.”) Do the lines have a rhyming pattern? Yes they do! The lines of the first stanza end with: arrives–still–air, thrives–full–where. We’ll call that ABC ABC, and if you check all the other stanzas you’ll find they’re exactly the same: ABC ABC.
If you try to read this poem aloud you’ll discover that it has a kind of prose-y feel — it doesn’t seem very “poetical” at first. What creates that sensation? The prose-y feel comes from Jennings’ deliberate use of enjambment — a wonderful literary word that refers to the mismatch between the line breaks of the poem and the natural grammatical pauses of the poem’s underlying sentences.
The opposite of enjambed verse is end-stopped verse, in which the line-ends correspond to natural grammatical breaks: “Whose woods these are I think I know (pause). / His house is in the village though (pause); / He will not see me stopping here / To watch his woods fill up with snow (pause).” That’s Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods,” a heavily end-stopped poem with a sing-song-y feel.
Contrast that with Jennings, with natural grammatical pauses added: “Now watch this autumn that arrives / In smells (pause). All looks like summer still (pause); / Colours are quite unchanged (pause), the air / On green and white serenely thrives (pause). / Heavy the trees with growth and full / The fields (pause). Flowers flourish everywhere (pause).” In her case, many of the natural grammatical pauses don’t coincide with the line-ends — that’s enjambment, and that’s what creates the prose-y feel of the poem.
What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊
❡ Looking in the lexicon: You can ask your students some good vocabulary-related questions this week in the context of this poem — send them to your family dictionary for answers. Who is Proust? What’s the difference between “colours” and “colors”? What’s the origin of the word “nostalgia”? (And how is it related to the word “analgesic”?) How is the word “broke” being used here? (Hint: it’s intransitive definition #13.) Wait, are you saying there are thirteen different definitions of “break/broke”? Actually, there are a lot more — take a look in the lexicon! 😊
❡ When I said autumn, autumn broke: If a special line or a turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our poems-of-the-week, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud a few times — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship! 😊
We love libraries in the River Houses, and we’re rather fond of Harry Potter, too, since the River Houses and the Hogwarts Houses have a lot in common.
If you have Harry Potter fans in your homeschool, why not spend some quality library time this week exploring a wonderful exhibit from the British Library called “Harry Potter: A History of Magic”:
This online exhibit is sponsored by the Google Arts & Culture website, and it features a history of the Harry Potter series, beautiful images of Potter manuscripts and sources, original artwork samples, stories of magical cats and owls, and even an assortment of medieval manuscripts on magic from an age when many people believed potions and spells ruled the world (instead of just our imaginations).
Original artwork for the Harry Potter series, by Jim Kay. From the British Library exhibition “Harry Potter: A History of Magic.”
“When in doubt, go to the library,” said Hermione Granger in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. That’s good advice for all. 😊
What magical discoveries have you made in your library this week? 😊
❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊
Tonight (24 September) is the night of the full moon, and that means it’s time for a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses.
The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in a variety of fields, and the Lunar Society is another big and wonderful River Houses plan to help bring those students together. Instead of leaving students to work in isolation from other homeschoolers, the Lunar Society will encourage them to join online research projects and share their accomplishments with other members of the River Houses every month (on you-know-what-day).
I’m putting together a list of a few such projects that I hope future members of the River Houses network (as it develops) will be able to work on together. The list will include projects in a variety of fields, to appeal to different interests. Here are four I already participate in myself (and you can too) — one in natural history, two that use the idle time on your computer to assist with scientific calculations, and one that documents astronomical observations:
➢ eBird (ebird.org) — A project to map bird observations in your backyard and around the world.
Of these four initial projects, eBird is active and suitable for people of all ages — even small children can join in a count of birds at a backyard feeder. The second two are more advanced, suitable for high school students interested in computers, science, and astronomy (and their parents, too), but these projects are also more passive and simply involve having your computer do calculations in the background. The final project, on fireballs, is very interesting, but it’s also quite unpredictable, since there’s no way you can guarantee making a successful observation yourself (although there are ways to increase your chances with special equipment).
Here’s my own participation report — if you participate in these projects, you can let everyone know how you’re doing as well:
On eBird.org I have been documenting the birds of a local riverside park for most of the year (ebird.org/hotspot/L6926932), and have so far recorded 67 species with daily observations. It’s very easy to see differences in abundance and migration patterns, and this collection of local observations helps to build up a more detailed picture of bird populations in my region and state as a whole.
The SETI@Home project is something I’ve had my own computers signed up to work on for (gosh!) almost twenty years, and I’ve recently created a River Houses team page for future use. There isn’t much there at this point, and it’s not especially well designed from the point of view of a beginning student, but it’s a starting point from which to grow. So far, I’ve contributed a total of 29,603 hours of computer time to the analysis of radio telescope data for SETI. (No sign of E.T. yet, alas.)
My American Meteor Society page includes two fireball reports, one that was traced to an object that entered the atmosphere over eastern New York state (273-2018), and another that was traced to an object that traveled west over southern New Hampshire (4563-2017).
You and your homseschoolers can independently join any of these projects today, if you wish — no need to wait for any special River Houses affiliation.
Here are some additional project opportunities that I haven’t participated in myself but that I am investigating:
➢ Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge — Do you have a budding photographer in your homeschool? The Wikimedia Foundation (sponsors of Wikipedia) has a monthly photography contest to encourage people to produce freely available images on a variety of themes that will help to improve Wikipedia.
➢ Zooniverse (zooniverse.org) — The big clearinghouse for “citizen science,” with dozens of research projects available in many different fields. This may be best place to explore if you want to find a new homeschool project to take up.
Take a look at these and see if any of them catch your interest and the interest of your students.
What does this have to do with the full moon? Well, there was a famous science-and-technology club in England in the late 1700s and early 1800s called the Lunar Society of Birmingham (because they met each month around the time of the full moon). They discussed current scientific developments, shared new research results, talked about new inventions, and generally had a grand old time.
I’m hoping that within the River Houses, we’ll be able to get homeschoolers participating in a number of these group research projects, and at each full moon we can have a kind of round-up of the things our members have accomplished (and we can have a grand old time, too). Imagine hundreds (thousands?) of homeschoolers across the country learning about and contributing to interesting research projects with their River House friends. That’s the Lunar Society — a nice idea for the future. 😊
What scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this month? 😊
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 recommended 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:
🇺🇸 Georgia State QuarterGEORGIA (the 4th state, 2 January 1788) — The Peach State. Capital: Atlanta. Georgia can be found on page 569 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Named by colonial administrator James Oglethorp for King George II of England in 1732” (almanac page 423). State bird: Brown Thrasher. Website:georgia.gov.
❡ 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 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 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. 😊
This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
🇧🇭 BAHRAIN – in the Middle East. Population: 1,410,942. Capital: Manama. Website:www.bahrain.bh (in Arabic and English).
🇧🇩 BANGLADESH – in South Asia. Population: 157,826,578. Capital: Dhaka. Website:www.bangladesh.gov.bd (in Bengali and English).
🇧🇧 BARBADOS – in the West Indies. Population: 292,336. Capital: Bridgetown. Website:www.gov.bb (in English).
🇧🇾 BELARUS – in Eastern Europe. Population: 9,549,747. Capital: Minsk. Website:www.president.gov.by (in Belarusian, Russian, and English).
These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of all 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 geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊
❡ 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.
❡ Calendars for the year: Print your own River Houses homeschooling calendar for the whole year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us every week! 😊
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! Print your own River Houses Calendar for the whole year at riverhouses.org/calendars.
🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Georgia, and our COUNTRIES are Bahrain 🇧🇭, Bangladesh 🇧🇩, Barbados 🇧🇧, and Belarus 🇧🇾. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post will be up shortly.)
🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing, heading toward full on the 24th. 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, 23 September) — Today is the 266th day of 2018; there are 99 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). ⬩ Today is also the birthday of Gaius Octavius Thurinus, better known as Caesar Augustus, first emperor of the Roman Empire (63 B.C. – A.D. 14).
MONDAY (24 September) — On this day in 1789, the U.S. Congress, acting under the new Constitution, established the federal judiciary system and specified a structure for the Supreme Court (with six, not the current nine, justices). ⬩ And … it’s National Punctuation Day!!(!*!)!!
TUESDAY (25 September) — Today is the birthday of the great American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945), who established the role of chromosomes in the process of inheritance. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of American poet and children’s author Shel Silverstein (1930–1999). ⬩ And the great Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould was born on this day in 1932.
WEDNESDAY (26 September) — On this day in 1687, during the Venetian siege of Athens, a bomb fell on the Parthenon, which was being used by the Ottoman Turks for munitions storage. The roof, parts of the frieze, and many of the columns, which had stood for more than two thousand years, were destroyed. ⬩ Today is the birthday of American nurseryman and folk hero John Chapman (1774–1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of American poet and Nobel Prize laureate T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), author of (among other things) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a wonderful read-aloud book for children.
THURSDAY (27 September) — On this day in 1941, the S.S. Patrick Henry, the first of a fleet of nearly 3000 “Liberty Ships” that transported supplies and troops during World War II, was launched in Baltimore, Maryland.
FRIDAY (28 September) — On this day in 1066, William II, Duke of Normandy, landed at Pevensey in Sussex and commenced the Norman conquest of England. ⬩ On this day in 1928, Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming noticed that mold growing on some of his laboratory samples was killing colonies of bacteria. The result of this chance observation was the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin.
🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May the gale of prosperity waft us into the port of happiness.”
❡ 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 set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?
🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Bangladesh is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Meghna River, one of the principal contributing rivers of the Ganges Delta. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the comprehensive Meghna River entry in Wikipedia, or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
❡ 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 your homeschool this week? 😊
Today (22 September) is the September equinox — we call it the autumnal or fall equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the vernal or spring equinox. The autumnal equinox is (astronomically speaking) the first day of fall, just as the vernal equinox is (astronomically speaking) the first day of spring.
❡ Little lessons: “‘Vernal’ and ‘autumnal’ are beautiful words. Let’s look them up in our dictionary (riverhouses.org/books).”
Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:
The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of 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 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 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.)
What calendrical events and astronomical transitions will you be marking in your homeschool this season? 😊
The fall bird migration is well underway across much of the United States, and to give your students a window into what’s happening why not spend a few minutes with them exploring the wonderful birdcast.info website sponsored by Cornell University.
Birdcast.info is a daily “weather” forecast, and the weather it predicts is the nightly level of bird migration across the United States. (Did you know that most birds migrate at night?) For example, tonight (21–22 September) is expected to be a fairly heavy migration night through the upper Midwest, with little overnight activity in the Northeast and West:
United States bird migration forecast for the night of 21–22 September 2018. (Image: Birdcast.info.)
In addition to its daily forecast maps, birdcast.info also produces real-time nightly migration images based on nationwide radar observations that can detect bird movements directly. Birds start moving about 30 minutes to an hour after sunset and the whole sky “lights up” with radar echoes of migrating birds:
Birdcast.info will help you and your students connect what you see in your local neighborhood with the grand pattern of migration that is taking place across the whole continent.
What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊
❡ Books in the running brooks: Our River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that will serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉
If your students are learning how to read poetry — and poetry requires a special kind of reading, different from prose reading — tell them not to read too quickly or expect everything to be clear on the first pass through. Getting to know a poem is like getting to know a person: some things are apparent on the surface, but there are new things to discover over time with repeated engagement. If you make the effort you’ll often discover that good poems, like good people, can become friends for life.
For traditionally styled poems like this one, the first thing to do as you make the poem’s acquaintance is not to think about meaning or abstract symbolism; instead, just count syllables. As imperceptibly as Grief (eight). The Summer lapsed away (six). Too imperceptible at last (eight). To seem like Perfidy (six). 8-6-8-6. The other three stanzas are a shortened version of this: 6-6-8-6.
“Eights-and-sixes” is one of the most common hymn meters in the Protestant tradition, and Emily Dickinson learned her very precise prosody from the church hymns she grew up with. Compare the rhythm of the first stanza above with this familiar verse:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.
A perfect match (8-6-8-6). Whenever you encounter Emily Dickinson in your homeschool reading — and I hope that will be often — start by counting syllables and you’ll gain a new appreciation for the details of her craft.
What literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊
❡ Looking in the lexicon: There’s some good vocabulary in this week’s poem to look up in your dictionary (riverhouses.org/books): imperceptible, perfidy, sequestered, harrowing, keel. Send your students to the dictionary also for any poetical terminology you encounter: stanza, couplet, quatrain, sonnet, pentameter, hexameter, dactylic, iambic (that’s what this poem is) — wonderful words, every one! 😊
Tuesday is Library Day in the River Houses, and this Tuesday also happens to be the birthday of “Dr. Johnson” — Samuel Johnson, that is, the great English author and lexicographer (1709–1784). (“Oooh, ‘lexicographer’ is a beautiful word — let’s look it up in our lexicon.”) (“Oooh, ‘lexicon’ is a beautiful word — let’s look it up in our dictionary.”) Dr. Johnson’s birthday is just the right day for some homeschool lessons about dictionaries.
Dr. Johnson in his element.
Every homeschool should have several dictionaries — simple picture dictionaries for small children, intermediate dictionaries for tweenagers, and big unabridged dictionaries for teens and mom and dad. The big family dictionary we recommend is the American Heritage Dictionary (riverhouses.org/books), but many other good choices are also available, and the place you and your students should investigate them is your local library.
On your next library visit, take your students to the dictionary section (usually Dewey Decimal 403, 413, 423, etc., perhaps in the non-circulating Reference area) and show them the wide range of different types of dictionaries that exist. If they’re used to just one dictionary at home, this should be an eye-opening experience. You’ll find pocket-sized dictionaries and multi-volume monsters. (The 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary is one of the most wonderful books in the world.) Show them bilingual and monolingual dictionaries in French, Spanish, German, Greek, and whatever other languages you can find. Look for some speciality dictionaries as well: science dictionaries, law dictionaries, medical dictionaries, and more.
You might even find a modern reprint of Dr. Johnson’s great Dictionary of the English Language (1755), one of history’s most famous books.
A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson, 1755.
Teaching your students about all the resources available in the library will help them become independent learners who can branch out on their own and make new educational discoveries. That’s surely a worthy ambition for every student — Dr. Johnson would approve! 😊
What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊
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![[Manas River, Bhutan]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Manas_River.jpg)
![[Crow roost]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/crow-roost.jpg)
![[Elizabeth Jennings]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/elizabeth-jennings-219x300.jpg)
![[Phoenix]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/potter-phoenix.png)
Tonight (24 September) is the night of the full moon, and that means it’s time for a report from the ![[Georgia quarter]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/georgia-state-quarter-150x150.png)
![[Meghna River]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Boat_in_meghna_river.JPG)
![[Migration forecast map]](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dno3_7GX0AEc47L.jpg)
![[Emily Dickinson Homestead]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/dickinson-homestead.jpg)
![[Samuel Johnson]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/samuel-johnson-300x252.jpg)
![[Johnson's Dictionary]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/johnsons-dictionary-1024x538.jpeg)
