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📖 🎉 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Dord Day!

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Happy Dord Day! On this day each year we celebrate dictionaries and the people who make them — and we remind ourselves that lexicographers are human, just like us. 😊

On the 28th of February in 1939, an editor working on the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary was examining the second edition (1934) to see what entries should be updated. He came across the word “dord,” a synonym (according to the dictionary) for the word “density” as used in physics and chemistry. The word had no associated etymology, so the editor decided to investigate.

The definition of the word ‘dord’ as it appeared in Webster’s New International Dictionary (1934).

Upon investigation, it turned out (amusingly and embarrassingly) that there is no such word as “dord,” even though it appeared in the big Webster’s New International Dictionary. A science specialist working on the previous edition had submitted a request to have the letters “D” and “d” added as abbreviations for “density,” but the request slip was written “D or d” — and through a series of minor editorial missteps, this became “Dord” and it was added the dictionary as a word meaning “density.”

In later editions, after it had been spotted, the error was removed, leaving the dictionary more accurate, but less entertaining.

Today’s little lesson for your homeschool students: dictionaries are compiled by people just like you and me, and even though they try very hard to be accurate, sometimes they make mistakes just like we do.

What wonderful words — real or imaginary — have you discovered in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: The delightful Fun With Words website has the full story of “dord,” along with a host of other wild and woolly word-wonders to explore.

❡ Looking in the lexicon: Our recommended River Houses homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books), the American Heritage Fifth, does not, alas, include the word “dord,” but you can send your students to search nevertheless. Where would it be if it were there? Right between Dorchester and Dordogne.

🎵 HEARTS ALL WHOLE: “Sure On This Shining Night”

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Share a modern masterpiece with your students this evening — “Sure On This Shining Night” by American choral composer Morton Lauridsen, born on this day in 1943:

There is a lot of ephemeral art and music in the world, but there are also contemporary works that will still be performed and loved centuries from now. This is one of them. The text is from the American poet James Agee (1909–1955):

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.

What marvelous musical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

📚 LIBRARY LESSONS: Black History Month at LC and the National Archives

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Tuesday is Books & Libraries day in the River Houses, and February is Black History Month, so there’s no better time to browse and bookmark the wonderful African American history resources available at both the Library of Congress and the National Archives. There’s a wealth of top-quality educational materials available, not just for this month, but for the entire year.

Here’s a big collection of social media links and pages from the Library of Congress on everything from the Civil Rights Movement, to the history of jazz, to black veterans of the U.S. military, to African American poets and writers, to Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, and more:

And here are a few specific ready-to-use lesson plans for grades 6–9 that are designed around the library’s online resources:

The Library of Congress also publishes a number of great blogs on a variety of subjects. Although there isn’t a specific blog devoted to African American history, many of the posts this month in several different LC blogs have focused on black history themes.

The National Archives — just a few blocks from the Library of Congress in Washington — also has a wide range of African American history materials available online, from documents and records, to photographs, essays, and links to other governmental agencies and departments:

Our national libraries are great resources for Black History Month, and for every month, for every homeschool family. Bookmark them and visit them regularly.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ 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. 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website (riverhouses.org) has links to several important online library collections that we like to explore. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (not a phone), and give them a browse. 😊

❡ 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📚

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 24 February 2019

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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 Michigan, and our COUNTRIES are Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, Macedonia 🇲🇰, and Madagascar 🇲🇬. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌖 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning — a good time for moon watching! You can dial up this week’s constellations with your homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 24 February) — Today is the 55th day of 2019; there are 310 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ On this day in 1803, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the principle of judicial review. ⚖️

MONDAY (25 February) — The first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress, Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi, was sworn in on this day in 1870. 🇺🇸 And today is the birthday of the great French impressionist painter and sculptor Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). 🎨

TUESDAY (26 February) — Today is the birthday of the German-American clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss (1829–1902). 👖 It’s also the birthday of the great American songwriter and rock-and-roll pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino (1928–2017). 🎹

WEDNESDAY (27 February) — Today is the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), one of the most popular poets of the nineteenth century. 🖋

THURSDAY (28 February) — Happy Dord Day! 🎉

FRIDAY (1 March) — Today is the beginning of LEO TERM in the River Houses. 🦁 It’s also the birthday of the great Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). 🎵 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of March is an excerpt from “Aurora Leigh” by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, for her upcoming birthday. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋 And since this is the first Friday of the month, we’ll also post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can be on the lookout for over the next few weeks. 🌠

SATURDAY (2 March) — Today is the birthday of Sam Houston (1793–1863), the first President of the Republic of Texas. ☆

SUNDAY (3 March) — The Scottish-American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1847. 📞 And on this day in 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem. 🇺🇸

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May the friends of our youth be the companions of our age.”

❡ 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 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: Madagascar is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Namorona River, flowing from the central Madagascan highlands east into the Indian Ocean. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Namorona River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Namorona River in eastern Madagascar. (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 691–693), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you!

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

❡ Lively springs: This is one of our regular “Quick Freshes” posts looking at the homeschool week ahead. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) 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 (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Michigan, Lithuania, Madagascar, and More

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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 homeschool 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 429), so this week’s state is:

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    Michigan State Quarter
    MICHIGAN (the 26th state, 26 January 1837) — The Great Lakes State. Capital: Lansing. Michigan can be found on page 574 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Chippewa mici gama, meaning ‘great water,’ after lake of the same name” (almanac page 430). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: www.michigan.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 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 world of new geographical and historical information. 😊

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning a comprehensive unit study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress.

This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

  • 🇱🇹 LITHUANIA in eastern Europe. Population: 2,793,284. Capital: Vilnius. Website: lrvk.lrv.lt (in Lithuanian).
  • 🇱🇺 LUXEMBOURG in western Europe. Population: 605,764. Capital: Luxembourg. Website: gouvernement.lu (in French, German, English, and Luxembourgish).
  • 🇲🇰 MACEDONIA in southeastern Europe. Population: 2,118,945. Capital: Skopje. Website: www.vlada.mk (in Macedonian, Albanian, and English).
  • 🇲🇬 MADAGASCAR in the Indian Ocean. Population: 25,683,610. Capital: Antananarivo. Website: www.primature.gov.mg (in French).

These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). 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 grand 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.

❡ 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

🖋 🔭 WONDERFUL WORDS: Watchers of the Skies

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Have you noticed that our astronomy posts are usually headed “Watchers of the Skies“? If you didn’t know why we used that title, today you’ll find out. 🔭

The shortest month of the year is winding down. Why not send it off with a literary flourish by introducing your students to one of the most famous poems in the English language, John Keats’ sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February:

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The “Chapman” of the title is George Chapman (ca. 1599–1634), an Elizabethan writer and Classical scholar, and this poem is an account of Keats’ first reading of Chapman’s English translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The story — a wonderful one to share — is that Keats was introduced to Chapman’s translation by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, and the two young men stayed up nearly all night reading it to each other. The next morning, when Clarke came down to breakfast, he found this sonnet had been left for him on the breakfast table.

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a perfectly crafted example of a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines, thematically and structurally arranged into an initial group of eight (the octave) and a final group of six (the sestet). Encourage your students to map the rhyme scheme and see how tight it is: ABBA ABBA CD CD CD. The first eight lines tell of the writer’s prior experience in “realms of gold” — the imaginary (literary) landscape of ancient gods and kings and poets. He had heard tell that the greatest of the ancient poets was Homer, but not until he read Chapman’s translation did he truly understand why this was so. And at that point the sonnet turns: reading Chapman was like discovering a new planet, or a new ocean he had never seen before.

There’s some wonderful vocabulary here for your students to work through in your family dictionary (riverhouses.org/books): realms, bards, fealty, demesne, ken, surmise. The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 and the minor planet Ceres was discovered in 1801, so the discovery of new planets was very much a matter of public interest in Keats’ day. Unfortunately, Keats’ historical recollection was a bit off: the Spanish explorer Balboa — not Cortés — was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama (Darien) and see the Pacific Ocean. But that’s OK; it’s a poem, not a history text.

There are a great many recordings of this sonnet available online. Here’s a good one that will help your students get the pronunciation (and so the rhymes) correct:

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“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” has been one of the most widely read, taught, and quoted sonnets in the English language for almost two hundred years. This week, invite your young scholars to make it their friend for life.

❡ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies: 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 have your students speak it aloud a few times — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship. 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the Romantic Movement in art and literature, turn to page 338 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books).

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including John Keats) 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. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

🇺🇸 PRESIDENTIAL ADVICE: “Drink not nor talk with your mouth full”

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Happy birthday to our first president! Today is the real (as opposed to the observed) birthday of George Washington (1732–1799). Homeschoolers will certainly study his presidency, and his role in the American Revolution. But how about George Washington the teenage student?

Quite a few of Washington’s school papers have survived to the present day (amazing!), and one of the best known is a copywork assignment commonly called “George Washington’s Rules of Civility.” Here’s a formal transcript of the document from the University of Virginia:

This is a wonderful piece of history to share and discuss with your students. Many of the rules are perfect — still today — for copying onto your homeschool bulletin board:

  • • Put not off your Clothes in the presence of Others, nor go out your Chamber half Drest
  • • Drink not nor talk with your mouth full
  • • If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately
  • • Wear not your Clothes foul, unript or Dusty, but See they be Brush’d once every day
  • • Run not in the Streets, neither go too slowly nor with Mouth open; go not Shaking yr Arms
  • • Gaze not on the marks or blemishes of Others and ask not how they came
  • • Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation
  • • Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience

These were not original compositions, as some people have suggested. They were in fact common rules of conduct that had been in circulation for over a century and were often used as writing exercises for children. You can read more about the history of the rules here:

Go down the list with your students and ask: Which rules still apply today? Which seem outdated? What new rules do we follow today that Washington missed? A hundred interesting homeschool discussions will follow. 😊

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – February 2019

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Tonight is the night of a full moon, so that means it’s time for a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses.

The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and share their results with other homeschool families. Here’s an outline of the idea, along with a list of some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:

Browse through that project list and find one that would be a good fit for your family. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. 🔬 🔭 🖥 🦋 🔍 ⚗️ ⛏ 📖 🌲 😊

Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their achievements.

As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past month on the two types of projects I participate in: eBird monitoring of bird populations, and distributed computing research using the Berkeley open infrastructure application. You and your students can participate in these projects (and many others) too.

On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I’ve been tracking the birds in a small riverside park near me (eBird hotspot L6926932), and have now contributed a total of 518 checklists (daily observation reports) for this locality. When all the checklists are combined you can really get a sense of the seasonal distribution and migration patterns for the year. (I just completed a full year cycle, so for the first time there are observation records for all 52 weeks of the year.)

You can start keeping a similar list for a location near you — your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more interesting results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website (ebird.org) and start exploring.

Distributed computing projects use idle time on your computer to perform scientific calculations on various kinds of complex data. The most popular distributed computing projects run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform (BOINC), and I contribute computer time to three of these: (1) the SETI@Home project, sponsored by the University of California, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (really!); (2) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; and (3) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy.

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, SETI@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually analyzed and how much your team has analyzed — they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. 😊

And here’s another level of skill development for your high-school (or even advanced middle-school) students: once you’ve processed a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. Using Google Sheets, I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results, and this is what it looks like:

(See attached blog post for chart)

That’s just a simple graphing exercise — it’s something that we can refine, develop, and expand in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in a variety of scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects that your family can join.

What scholarly and scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. 📸

❡ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended star atlas will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. 🦉 🌠

❡ Whether they work together or apart: This is one of our regular Lunar Society Bulletins about the many cooperative research projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

📚 LIBRARY LESSONS: Copernicus and His Revolutions

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Today is the birthday of one of the most important figures in the history of science: the great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). In his honor, why not take a few homeschool minutes to introduce your students to Copernicus’ great work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium), first published in 1543.

[Copernicus' heliocentric system]
The heliocentric model of Copernicus, from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Note the sun (Sol) at the center, and the earth (Terra) in the third orbit, along with earth’s moon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

“De Rev” (as history of science geeks call it) is one of the most important books ever published because it laid out a comprehensive sun-centered or heliocentric picture of the solar system, replacing the earlier earth-centered or geocentric picture.

Fewer than 300 copies of the original 1543 edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium survive today. But we live in a truly fortunate age, when a young student can sit at home and examine up close some of the rarest and most important books in history — books that just a few years ago would have been accessible only to professional scholars in the world’s largest libraries.

Here is a copy of the “De Rev” that has been scanned and made available by RareBookRoom.org, a wonderful site that provides online access to some of the most important books ever written. The scans are very high resolution so all the pages can be examined one by one in great detail, right down to old handwritten notes in the margins and to the texture of the paper as it was impressed by the metal type. Spend a few homeschool minutes today with your students (at a large screen rather than a phone) exploring this bibliographic treasure:

The text is in Latin — the language of all scientific books written at that time — and the printing is exceptionally fine. Zoom in on a few pages using the −/+ scale at the top of the page to get a full appreciation for this great work, not only of science, but of the printer’s art as well.

If you have curious science students in your homeschool, be sure they know the name of Nicolaus Copernicus and how he changed our understanding of the world.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick review of the Renaissance, the historical period in which Copernicus lived, turn to pages 250–253 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books), and for an overview of the Scientific Revolution that he helped to spark see pages 266–267. It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history lesson.

❡ 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📚

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 17 February 2019

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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 Arkansas, and our COUNTRIES are Lesotho 🇱🇸, Liberia 🇱🇷, Libya 🇱🇾, and Liechtenstein 🇱🇮. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing — a good time for moonwatching! You can dial up this week’s constellations with your homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🐦 THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT is underway this weekend! I hope you and your students are counting — along with thousands of other people across the country and around the world!

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 17 February) — Today is the 48th day of 2019; there are 317 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the great Italian violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713).

MONDAY (18 February) — The famous American stained-glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany was born on this day in 1848.

TUESDAY (19 February) — Today is the birthday of the Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), one of the truly great figures in the history of science. 🌞 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research projects today from the River Houses Lunar Society. 🌝

WEDNESDAY (20 February) — Today is the birthday of the great American photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984). 📸

THURSDAY (21 February) — On this day in 1918, the last individual Carolina Parakeet — the only species of parrot native to the United States — died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. 😔

FRIDAY (22 February) — Today is the birthday of George Washington (1732–1799), the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And speaking of presidents, on this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first-ever radio address from the White House. 📻 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February is John Keats’ “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” for the anniversary of Keats’ death in 1821. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

SATURDAY (23 February) — Today is the birthday of the great German-English composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759).

SUNDAY (24 February) — On this day in 1803, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the principle of judicial review. ⚖️ And today is the birthday of the American painter and illustrator Winslow Homer (1836–1910). 🎨

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May our friendships be independent of time and be matured by character.”

❡ 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 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: Lesotho is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is northern Lesotho’s Malibamat’so River. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Malibamat’so River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Malibamat’so River in Lesotho. (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 691–693), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you!

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

❡ Lively springs: This is one of our regular “Quick Freshes” posts looking at the homeschool week ahead. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) 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 (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Arkansas, Lesotho, Liechtenstein, and More

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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 homeschool 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 429), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    Arkansas State Quarter
    ARKANSAS (the 25th state, 15 June 1836) — The Razorback State. Capital: Little Rock. Arkansas can be found on page 564 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Algonquin name for Quapaw Indians, meaning ‘south wind’” (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: www.arkansas.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 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 world of new geographical and historical information. 😊

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning a comprehensive unit study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress.

This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

  • 🇱🇸 LESOTHO in southern Africa. Population: 1,962,461. Capital: Maseru. Website: www.gov.ls (in English).
  • 🇱🇷 LIBERIA in southwestern Africa. Population: 4,809,768. Capital: Monrovia. Website: www.emansion.gov.lr (in English).
  • 🇱🇾 LIBYA in northern Africa. Population: 6,754,507. Capital: Tripoli. Website: www.pm.gov.ly (in Arabic).
  • 🇱🇮 LIECHTENSTEIN in central Europe. Population: 38,547. Capital: Vaduz. Website: www.liechtenstein.li (in German).

These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). 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 grand 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.

❡ 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

🖋 🌠 WONDERFUL WORDS: The Truly Great

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February is a month of extraordinary birthdays: Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, George Washington, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and more. In their collective honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of February is Stephen Spender’s encomium on “The Truly Great”:

The Truly Great

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

This is a beautiful and deeply philosophical poem — great for high school students — built around the ancient Greek concept of metempsychosis or “the transmigration of souls.”

Plato and other Greek philosophers taught that the individual soul was immortal, and that after one’s physical body dies, the soul returns to the spiritual realm where it chooses a new body into which it will be placed. It then drinks from the River of Forgetfulness (Lethe) so as to lose all memory of its previous life, and then it returns to the mortal world in a new soul-body combination.

Spender, in this poem, imagines that the truly great figures of history were great because they “remembered the soul’s history” — they didn’t partake of the waters of forgetfulness and so had lifetimes of knowledge and understanding to draw upon as they passed through the world. How else could they have accomplished what they did, with the experience of only one lifetime?

What philosophico-literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ And left the vivid air signed with their honour: 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. 😊

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Stephen Spender) 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. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.