For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-05-19 π
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.
πΊπΈβ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Colorado, and our countries are San Marino πΈπ², SΓ£o TomΓ© and PrΓncipe πΈπΉ, Saudi Arabia πΈπ¦, and Senegal πΈπ³. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
πβ THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning β an increasingly good time for moon watching! 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).
πβ TODAY (Sunday, 19 May) β Today is the 139th day of 2019; there are 226 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358β364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin (1786β1847) set out from Greenhithe, England, on this day in 1845, hoping to discover and chart the Northwest Passage. Franklin and his ships were never heard from again. The Franklin expedition’s disappearance was one of the great nautical mysteries of the nineteenth century. β
Monday (20 May) β Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published on this day in London in 1609, possibly without his permission. π And today is the birthday of the great philosopher of liberty John Stuart Mill (1806β1873). π And not only that, it’s also World Metrology Day! π
Tuesday (21 May) β Today the birthday of the great German artist Albrecht DΓΌrer (1471β1528). π¨ And the American Red Cross was established in Washington on this day in 1881 by Clara Barton (1821β1912). π©ββοΈ
Wednesday (22 May) β Today is the birthday of the famous American impressionist painter Mary Cassatt (1844β1926). π¨ It’s also the birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859β1930), the inventor of the inimitable Sherlock Holmes. π Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of May is Marta Keen’s “Homeward Bound,” which we hope will one day become the River Houses’ annual graduation anthem. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.
Thursday (23 May) β Today is the birthday of the great Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707β1778), who devised the system of species nomenclature that is still in use today in the biological sciences by all of us members of Homo sapiens. π π’ π³ π π πͺ π π π¦ π¦
Friday (24 May) β Today is the birthday of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819β1901), who gave her name to an entire historical era. You can read more about Victoria and the Victorians on page 348 in your homeschool history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). π And on this day in 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought!” from the U.S. Capitol building to his assistant in Baltimore, thirty-five miles away, instantly, thereby inaugurating the first commercial telegraph line between two U.S. cities. β‘οΈ
Saturday (25 May) β Today is the birthday of the great American poet, essayist, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803β1882). π And on this day in 1977, the first Star Wars movie was released! π
Sunday (26 May) β It’s National Paper Airplane Day! That’s surely something to be celebrated in every homeschool. βοΈ
π₯β YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May our endeavors be always successful when engaged under the banner of justice.”
β‘β Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week β 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?
πβ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Senegal is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Casamance River, which flows westward through southern Senegal into the Atlantic Ocean. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Casamance River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
β‘β 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 691β693), 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? π
β‘β 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. π