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📚 TUESDAY TEA: A Free Library of Classic Children’s Books

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-childrens-books 😊

Tuesday is our Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses when we write about book-related resources you can browse, save, and share with your students. Here’s a real treat: a new digital collection of classic children’s books, all online and free to read, from the Library of Congress:

“In celebration of the 100th anniversary of Children’s Book Week (April 29 to May 5),” the Library reports, they have released this “unique online collection of 67 historically significant children’s books published more than 100 years ago. Drawn from the Library’s collection, Children’s Book Selections are digital versions both of classic works still read by children today and of lesser-known treasures.”

“William Wallace Denslow’s Humpty Dumpty is now one of the classic works of children’s literature from the Library of Congress online collections.”

There should be something for everyone in this wide-ranging collection:

“From Humpty Dumpty to Little Red Riding Hood, the books in this collection were published in the United States and England before 1924, are no longer under copyright, and are free to read and share. Highlights of the collection include examples of the work of American illustrators such as W.W. Denslow, Peter Newell and Howard Pyle, as well as works by renowned English illustrators Randolph Caldecott, Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway….

“The selections span many generations and topics, and reflect three central themes: Learning to Read: Materials produced to teach American children to read: ABC books, primers and a wooden hornbook. Reading to Learn: Materials that support classroom instruction in subjects such as mathematics, classical mythology, natural science and the structure and function of the Unites States government. Reading for Fun: Materials to nourish the imagination: fiction, poetry, fairy tales and toy books.“ (Library of Congress)

Why not browse this wonderful new (old) collection on a tablet, laptop, or large screen, and see if you can find some new (old) titles for your next homeschool read-aloud hour.

What treasures have you discovered in your library this week? 😊

❡ Dukedoms large enough: 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 (rather than 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 teaching ideas and learning resources like these sent right to your mailbox all through the year. 📚

💰 🇲🇵 AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL: American Memorial Park, Northern Mariana Islands

by Bob O'Hara

Attention all homeschool historians, geographers, artists, and treasure hunters! Here’s something new for you to search for this month: the American Memorial Park “America the Beautiful” quarter from the U.S. Mint:

(Click for image: riverhouses.org/2019-marianas-quarter)

American Memorial Park “America the Beautiful” quarter, 2019. (Image: U.S. Mint.)

If you’re looking for a fun and easy way to include some interesting geographical and historical facts in your homeschool schedule (as well as a little treasure hunting along the way), you can’t do better than to keep an eye on the “America the Beautiful” quarters series. This commemorative series began in 2010 and each year five new designs are issued featuring national parks and other historic sites in the U.S. states and territories.

The latest quarter commemorates the American Memorial Park in the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. commonwealth in the western Pacific Ocean, and it has just gone into circulation:

“American Memorial Park in Northern Mariana Islands honors the thousands of American troops and local residents of Saipan who gave their lives during the Marianas Campaign of World War II. At the Court of Honor, the American flag is displayed at the center of the Flag Circle and surrounded by the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, and Coast Guard flags. The Court of Honor consists of 26 granite panels inscribed with the names of 5,204 service members who died.

“The design depicts a young woman in traditional attire at the front of the Flag Circle and Court of Honor. She is resting her hand on the plaque whose text honors the sacrifice of those who died in the Marianas Campaign of World War II.“ (U.S. Mint)

The Mint has a remarkably comprehensive set of free lesson plans available for the whole America the Beautiful series — you could make quite an American history course out of them. And the Mint also has a very nice simple album for this series (amzn.to/2D2A3dO) — just the thing to get some educational treasure hunting under way.

(And next up, if you want to look ahead: a quarter for the War in the Pacific National Historical Park in Guam, scheduled for a few weeks from now.)

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

❡ Come, here’s the map: The America the Beautiful quarters are a great tool for teaching about geography. Locate each park and each historic site in your homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and spread out your whole collection on atlas plate 35, the map of the entire United States. 🇺🇸

❡ Explore more: These quarters are great for teaching history, too. For an overview of the Pacific theater in World War II, turn to page 402 in your homeschool history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books), which also includes a map showing the location of the Northern Mariana Islands. 🇲🇵

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not pick up a roll of circulated quarters at your local grocery store or bank each week and invite your students to go through it around the kitchen table. A whole world of historical and geographical discovery awaits them. 💰

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 28 April 2019

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-04-28 😊

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! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is West Virginia, and our countries are Peru 🇵🇪, the Philippines 🇵🇭, Poland 🇵🇱, and Portugal 🇵🇹. (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 waning crescent, heading toward new on the 4th — an increasingly good time for stargazing! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 28 April) — Today is the 118th day of 2019; there are 247 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 the birthday of the American novelist Harper Lee (1926–2016), author of the school-standard story To Kill a Mockingbird. 🖋

Monday (29 April) — Monday is the birthday of the great American jazz musician and composer Duke Ellington (1899–1974). 🎹

Tuesday (30 April) — On this day in 1789 on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, George Washington took the oath of office to become the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1897, British physicist J.J. Thompson announced the discovery of the electron. ⚛️ Today is also the birthday of the great American choral conductor Robert Shaw (1916–1999). 🎼

Wednesday (1 May) — May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses. Keep an eye on the season’s progress at birdcast.info. 🐦 The world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued on this day in 1840 in the United Kingdom. 📬 And on this day in 1931 the Empire State Building was dedicated in New York City as (at the time) the tallest building in the world. 🏙 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of May is the anonymous medieval song “All in this pleasant evening,” for the merry month ahead. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Thursday (2 May) — The King James Version of the Bible, probably the most influential book in the history of the English language, was first published on this day in London in 1611. 📖

Friday (3 May) — Today is the birthday of the famous Italian Renaissance historian and political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). 👑 On this day in 1715, Edmund Halley (of comet fame) successfully predicted, to within four minutes’ accuracy, a total solar eclipse that was visible across much of Europe. ☀️🌑🌍 And 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 students can be on the lookout for over the next few weeks.

Saturday (4 May) — Today is the birthday of the great American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). 🎨 And today is also International Firefighters Day. 👨‍🚒

Sunday (5 May) — The famous performance venue known today as Carnegie Hall opened in New York City on this day in 1891, with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as guest conductor. 🎵

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May we live all the days of our lives.”

❡ 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 Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Peru is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Ucayali River, one of the principal rivers of Peru and a major tributary of the Amazon. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Ucayali River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The meandering Ucayali River of Peru, seen from space. (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: West Virginia, Peru, Portugal, and More

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-west-virginia 😊

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:

  • 🇺🇸
    West Virginia State Quarter
    WEST VIRGINIA (the 35th state, 20 June 1863) — The Mountain State. Capital: Charleston. West Virginia can be found on page 589 in your almanac and on plates 43 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “So named when western counties of Virginia refused to secede from the U.S. in 1863” (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: www.wv.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, as well as some valuable reading and research skills. 😊

❡ 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:

  • 🇵🇪 PERU in western South America. Population: 31,331,228. Capital: Lima. Website: www.peru.gob.pe (in Spanish).
  • 🇵🇭 THE PHILIPPINES in southeastern Asia. Population: 105,893,381. Capital: Manila. Website: www.gov.ph (in English).
  • 🇵🇱 POLAND in central Europe. Population: 38,420,687. Capital: Warsaw. Website: www.poland.gov.pl (in English).
  • 🇵🇹 PORTUGAL in southwestern Europe. Population: 10,355,493. Capital: Lisbon. Website: www.portugal.gov.pt (in Portuguese).

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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we take a homeschool tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the year. 🌎

🌳 NATURE NOTES: Happy Arbor Day!

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-arbor-day 😊

Today is Arbor Day! Or more specifically, it’s national Arbor Day, since there are many other state Arbor Days across the U.S. (and even around the world). That makes this a great weekend to go out with your students and plant a tree — or maybe at least hug one. 😊🌳😊

Arbor Day began in the United States in Nebraska in 1872, and it’s now celebrated each year on the last Friday in April. Arbor Day is a day for planting and appreciating trees, and each year around Arbor Day the Arbor Day Foundation (arborday.org) provides millions of trees, ready for planting, to cities and towns, schools and colleges, and citizens across the country.

Why not bookmark and browse the many resources available from the Arbor Day Foundation and see how you can incorporate them into your own homeschooling activities. Here are some of the things happening near you this Arbor Day:

You can also learn more about tree-planter extraordinaire J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska and the history of Arbor Day in the United States:

And here are some fun educational resources, including printable activity sheets that are perfect for homeschoolers, from the national Arbor Day Foundation:

What delightful dendrological discoveries, deciduous and coniferous, have you discerned in your homeschool this week? 😊🌳

🌏 🇵🇬 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Kuk Early Agricultural Site in Papua New Guinea

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-new-guinea

Papua New Guinea is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes learning about Papua New Guinea’s only current World Heritage Site: the Kuk Early Agricultural Site in the New Guinea highlands.

The Kuk Agricultural Site in the highland region of New Guinea. (Image: Australia & Pacific Science Foundation.)

Kuk is an archeological site that is believed to represent one of the few places on earth where local human populations independently developed agriculture:

“Kuk Early Agricultural Site consists of 116 ha of swamps in the western highlands of New Guinea 1,500 metres above sea-level. Archaeological excavation has revealed the landscape to be one of wetland reclamation worked almost continuously for 7,000, and possibly for 10,000 years. It contains well-preserved archaeological remains demonstrating the technological leap which transformed plant exploitation to agriculture around 6,500 years ago. It is an excellent example of transformation of agricultural practices over time, from cultivation mounds to draining the wetlands through the digging of ditches with wooden tools. Kuk is one of the few places in the world where archaeological evidence suggests independent agricultural development and changes in agricultural practice over such a long period of time.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #887)

World Heritage Sites are cultural or natural landmarks of international significance, selected for recognition by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. More than 1000 such sites have been recognized in over 160 countries, and we post one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list online at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.

What world treasures have you explored in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your recommended River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books) for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found; the history encyclopedia includes national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes. 🌏

🎉 🎭 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WILL! (Shakespeare, that Is)

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-shakespeare 😊

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday! 🎉 Well, more or less.† And that’s good enough for us!

† The thing is, we don’t really know the exact date of Shakespeare’s birth. We do know that he was baptized on the 26th of April in 1564, and so was probably born just a few days earlier. The 23rd has become the customary date of celebration, and who are we to argue with that happy tradition? 😊

We love books and libraries and literature in the River Houses, and if you’re planning to study Shakespeare in your home academy — today, tomorrow, or any day in the future — you should definitely bookmark and explore the free teaching materials available online from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., one of the world’s leading centers for Shakespeare research:

The Folger is located on Capitol Hill, right next to the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court — a place of high honor indeed — and you can visit and tour the library the next time you make a homeschool trip to the nation’s capital.

At the Folger’s website you’ll find the full texts of all the plays and sonnets, lesson plans for many of them (with more on the way), and helpful summaries of each plot (Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and more).

Here’s a properly reverential reading from Macbeth that you can use to inspire your students this week — I didn’t learn this soliloquy until I was in high school, so this kid’s definitely got the jump on me:

➔

And if any of your students are aiming for a scholarly career, it’s never too early to start exposing them to an occasional reading from Shakespeare in the original language:

➔

What literary treasures have you laughed over in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books) has a beautifully illustrated overview of the Elizabethan period, within which Shakespeare lived and worked, on pages 260–261. It’s just the background you need to do a wonderful homeschool history-and-literature lesson.

❡ Dukedoms large enough: 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 (rather than a phone), and give them a browse. 😊

🖋 🌸 WONDERFUL WORDS: Loveliest of Trees

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-cherry

The flowering cherry trees are coming into bloom in my river valley this week, and yesterday was Easter Sunday, so that means this is the perfect week to share this famous gem from A.E. Housman (1859–1936) — it’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of April:

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

This is a wonderful poem to memorize — why not give it a try with your students this week. It has a simple AABB rhyme scheme that’s easy to remember, and the meter is fairly regular iambic or trochaic tetrameter, which gives it a sprightly lilting gait. There’s a bit of irregularity here and there — some lines have only seven syllables instead of the expected eight. And how many syllables does “Loveliest” have? Ordinary American English would give it three, but I’d venture that here it was originally meant to have two — something like “Lov-l’est.”

Great writers like Housman are very precise in their use of words, and that’s something you’ll want your students to appreciate. Send them to the family lexicon for the exact meanings of ride (noun definition #2, page 1509, “a path made for riding on horseback, especially through woodlands”) and tide (noun definition #4, page 1818, “A time or season. Often used in combination: eventide; Christmastide; Shrovetide“). Thus “woodland ride” and “Eastertide” are precise and perfect. Be sure also that your students are culturally literate readers and recognize “threescore years and ten” as the Biblical allotment for a human life, from the book of Psalms: the narrator of this spring poem is twenty (“a score”), and is imagining that he has fifty more springs to go (for a total of three score and ten).

Why not find a cherry tree in bloom about some woodland ride near you this week, and take along a copy of Housman, and have a little homeschool literature lesson that brings the tree and the words together — that’s better than you’ll find in any indoor classroom. 🌸

❡ Fifty springs are little room: 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 A.E. Housman) 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 (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 21 April 2019

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-04-21 😊

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! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Kansas, and our countries are Palau 🇵🇼, Panama 🇵🇦, Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬, and Paraguay 🇵🇾. (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 — an increasingly good time for stargazing! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 21 April) — It’s Easter Sunday! Happy Easter to all our homeschool readers and friends! 🕊 Today is the 111th day of 2019; there are 254 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). ⬩ And why not spend a few peaceful Easter minutes today with the great “Alleluia” of American composer Randall Thompson, born on this day in 1899. 🎵

Monday (22 April) — Today is the birthday of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). 🧠 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of April is A.E. Housman’s famous spring ode “Loveliest of Trees,” for cherry-blossom season. 🌸 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Tuesday (23 April) — The great poet and playwright William Shakespeare was (probably) born on this day in 1564. Happy birthday, Will! 🎭 And today is also the birthday of the great German physicist and Nobel laureate Max Planck (1858–1947). ⚛️

Wednesday (24 April) — Tradition says that the city of Troy fell on this day in the year 1184 B.C. (although that tradition may not be correct). 🐴 And today is the birthday of the Library of Congress! On this day in 1800, President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 for “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.” 📚

Thursday (25 April) — Today is the birthday of the English poet and novelist Walter de la Mare (1873–1956). 🖋 The World War I Battle of Gallipoli began on this day in 1915. The date is commemorated as Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand. 🇦🇺🇳🇿 On this day in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” outlining for the first time the double-helical architecture of DNA, the molecule of heredity.👨‍🔬

Friday (26 April) — It’s Arbor Day! 🌳 On this day in 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell from the skies over L’Aigle, France. 🌠 And today is the birthday of the famous French-American naturalist and artist John James Audubon (1785–1851). 🎨

Saturday (27 April) — On this day in 1667, blind and impoverished, John Milton sold the publishing rights to his masterpiece Paradise Lost for £5. 📖 And today is the birthday of the American artist Samuel F.B. Morse (1791–1872), the creator of Morse Code.

Sunday (28 April) — Today is the birthday of the American novelist Harper Lee (1926–2016), author of the school-standard story To Kill a Mockingbird. 🖋

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May prosperity never make us forget the friends of our adversity.”

❡ 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 Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌏 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Papua New Guinea is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Fly River, which is one of the longest rivers of Papua New Guinea. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Fly River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The mouth of the Fly River in southern Papua New Guinea. (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: Kansas, Palau, Paraguay, and More

by Bob O'Hara

(Sign up for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Kansas State Quarter
    KANSAS (the 34th state, 29 January 1861) — The Sunflower State. Capital: Topeka. Kansas can be found on page 571 in your almanac and on plates 39 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Sioux word for ‘south wind people’” (almanac page 430). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website: portal.kansas.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, as well as some valuable reading and research skills. 😊

❡ 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:

  • 🇵🇼 PALAU in the western Pacific Ocean. Population: 21,516. Capital: Ngerulmud. Website: www.palaugov.pw (in English).
  • 🇵🇦 PANAMA in Central America. Population: 3,800,644. Capital: Panama City. Website: www.presidencia.gob.pa (in Spanish and English).
  • 🇵🇬 PAPUA NEW GUINEA in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Population: 7,027,332. Capital: Port Moresby. Website: www.pm.gov.pg (in English).
  • 🇵🇾 PARAGUAY in central South America. Population: 7,025,763. Capital: Asunción. Website: www.presidencia.gov.py (in Spanish).

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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we take a homeschool tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the year. 🌎

🇺🇸 AMERICAN ICON: The Concord Minuteman

by Bob O'Hara

The American Revolution began on this day, the 19th of April, in 1775. One of the great symbols of the Revolution and of that day is the Minuteman monument that stands beside the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. With one hand holding his musket and the other the handle of his plow, the Concord Minuteman represents the thousands of men, most of them farmers, who left their homes and fields on this April morning to engage the British troops that had been sent to confiscate colonial stores of arms and ammunition just a few miles west of Boston. The elite companies of local militia were trained to respond “at a minute’s warning” and so were called Minutemen.

[Concord Minuteman]
Daniel Chester French’s Minuteman as he stands today at the North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Concord Minuteman was sculpted the great American artist (and Concord resident) Daniel Chester French (1850–1931), who later designed the statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln memorial, among many other famous landmarks. It was dedicated on the 19th of April in 1875 on the 100th anniversary of the Lexington and Concord battles, with President Ulysses Grant in attendance, and it carries on its base the first stanza of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous “Concord Hymn”:

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
 Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
 And fired the shot heard round the world.

Learning to recognize and interpret significant cultural symbols is something every homeschool student should be able to do, so here’s a gallery of images to share with your students this week. You can start by checking your pocket for a Massachusetts state quarter to make this into a hands-on history lesson.

[Massachusetts Quarter]
Massachusetts state quarter (2000) featuring the Concord Minuteman monument. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

That quarter wasn’t the first time the Concord Minuteman had appeared on an American coin or stamp. In 1925, for the 150th anniversary of the Revolution, he was featured on both a commemorative half-dollar and a general issue five-cent stamp.

Lexington–Concord postage stamp (1925), marking the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
Lexington–Concord commemorative half dollar (1925), featuring the Concord Minuteman. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Minuteman is the symbol of the National Guard, who are his genuine successors, and you’ll see him on their insignia around the country.

Seal of the Army National Guard featuring the Concord Minuteman. The individual state National Guard insignia commonly feature the Minuteman as well.

The Concord Minuteman is such an American icon that your students may run into him just about anywhere — even in a pizza parlor in Oklahoma.

The Minuteman Pizza Parlor in Sand Springs, Oklahoma.

Every society in the world, at every point in history, has iconic images and symbols, and the Concord Minuteman has been one of ours for almost 150 years. What other historical icons and artistic images have you studied with your homeschool students lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of American Revolution, turn to page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books).

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac (riverhouses.org/books) has a long list of famous artists on pages 185–188, and that list includes famous sculptors — you’ll find Daniel Chester French right there with the Concord Minuteman and the Lincoln Memorial listed as his most famous works, just as we noted above. 😊 If you have an art-minded student, why not pick out a name or two from that list to research each month, either online or on your next visit to your local library. 🎨

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – April 2019

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-04-lunar 😊

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 big project list and find one or two that would be a good fit for your family and a good match for your interests. 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 right now in these projects, and in 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 as of this week I’ve contributed a total of 439 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.

Seasonal summary for a number of local species as of late March 2019.

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:

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? 😊

❡ The friends who made the future: Learn more about the original Lunar Society of Birmingham in “The Lunar Men,” a fine short video from History West Midlands. 🌕

❡ 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 and world atlas (which has an astronomical section) 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. 🗞