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🐳 MELVILLE @ 200: Moby-Dick for Toddlers

by Bob O'Hara

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

You can never get started with the Classics too early. 😊

The great American writer Herman Melville was born 200 years ago this Thursday, and in his honor we’re having an informal Homeschooling-With-Herman Week here in the River Houses.

“Call me felted Ishmael.” (Image: Cozy Classics Moby-Dick.)

It goes without saying that all responsible homeschool parents will want to introduce their children to all the Great Works of World Literature at least by age two. In the case of Melville, this can be readily accomplished with the “Cozy Classics” toddler edition of Moby-Dick, featuring needle-felted characters (including a fuzzy white whale):

If you’d like to see whether a local library near you already has it, the WorldCat library catalog will give you an answer (although children’s collections may not always be well indexed):

Note also that this Cozy Classics edition is a regular board/picture-book with photos of the felted characters; the book itself isn’t felt.

The good ship Pequod. (Image: Cozy Classics Moby-Dick.)

If it’s been a while since you’ve done an advanced literary study of Moby-Dick yourself, this volume can help! I hope I won’t run afoul of copyright if I reproduce the full text of the volume in all its rich complexity:

“Sailor. Boat. Captain. Leg. Mad. Sail. Find. Whale. Chase. Smash. Sink. Float.“

As you can see, this particular edition of Moby-Dick is probably best suited for more advanced toddlers who can appreciate mature concepts such as revenge, madness, isolation, despair, and redemption. Or who like looking at fuzzy pictures. 🐳

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

❡ And I only am escaped alone to tell thee: This is one of our occasional 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. 📚

🌏 🇺🇿 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Historic Center of Bukhara in Uzbekistan

by Bob O'Hara

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

Uzbekistan is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Uzbekistan’s World Heritage Sites: the Historic Center of Bukhara.

The old city center of Bukhara in Uzbekistan. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Bukhara was for centuries a major commercial and religious center along the trade route that connected Europe and the Far East:

“The Historic Centre of Bukhara, situated on the Silk Roads, is more than two thousand years old. It is one of the best examples of a well-preserved Islamic city of Central Asia of the 10th to 17th centuries, with an urban fabric that has remained largely intact.

“Bukhara was long an important economic and cultural center in Central Asia. The ancient Persian city served as a major center of Islamic culture for many centuries and became a major cultural center of the Caliphate in the 8th century.

“With the exception of a few important vestiges from before the Mongol invasions of Genghis Khan in 1220 and Temur in 1370, the old town bears witness to the urbanism and architecture of the Sheibani period of Uzbek rule, from the early 16th century onwards. The citadel, rebuilt in the 16th century, has marked the civic center of the town since its earliest days to the present.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #602)

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 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. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read UNESCO’s one-paragraph description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical and geographical information. 🇺🇿

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌏

📖 🐳 MELVILLE @ 200: A Homeschool Visit to Herman’s Home

by Bob O'Hara

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

The great American writer Herman Melville was born 200 years ago this Thursday — his name is one every homeschool student should know — so we’re having a kind of informal Melville week here in the River Houses.

Herman Melville’s house, “Arrowhead,” in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

During the 1850s, Herman and his wife Elizabeth lived in a farmhouse in rural western Massachusetts that Melville named “Arrowhead.” It was in a second-floor room there, with a view of the rolling Berkshire Hills, that Melville finished Moby-Dick and wrote many of his other well-known works. Arrowhead is now a museum open to the public, and a site on the National Register of Historic Places. You and your homescholars can visit it someday, perhaps in person, but certainly online:

How does a professional writer go about his work? Here’s Melville describing his daily routine at Arrowhead in a letter to his publisher in New York City:

“I rise at eight — thereabouts — & go to my barn — say good-morning to the horse, & give him his breakfast. (It goes to my heart to give him a cold one, but it can’t be helped.) Then, pay a visit to my cow — cut up a pumpkin or two for her, & stand by to see her eat it — for it’s a pleasant sight to see a cow move her jaws — she does it so mildly and with such a sanctity. — My own breakfast over, I go to my work-room & light my fire—then spread my M.S.S. [manuscript] on the table — take one business squint at it, & fall to with a will. At 2 ½ P.M. I hear a preconcerted knock at my door, which (by request) continues till I rise & go to the door, which serves to wean me effectively from my writing, however interested I may be. My friends the horse & cow now demand their dinner — & I go & give it to them.“ (Melville to Evert Duyckinck, August 1850)

Sounds like a good life to me.

What museums, parks, or monuments have you studied or visited in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Come, here’s the map: If you turn to plate 44 in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) you’ll be able to locate the town of Pittsfield in western Massachusetts — far away from the ocean — and also the coastal town of New Bedford and the island of Nantucket where Melville’s famous whaling novel Moby-Dick begins. 🐳

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Museums & Monuments posts. Add your name to our free 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 28 July 2019

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-28

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.

🗓 NEW CALENDARS! As we announced last week, our new calendars of educational events for the coming 2019–2020 school year are now available on our main calendar page! They are all one-page printable (pdf) documents, easy to use and post on your homeschool bulletin board. Print them out today, share them with your homeschool friends, and follow along with us throughout the coming year. 😊

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Arizona, and our COUNTRIES are Uzbekistan 🇺🇿, Vanuatu 🇻🇺, Vatican City 🇻🇦, and Venezuela 🇻🇪. (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 a waning crescent, heading toward new on the 31st — a 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, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 28 July) — Today is the 209th day of 2019; there are 156 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 great English polymath Robert Hooke (1635–1703). Hooke was one of the pioneers of microscopy and was the first person to apply the world “cell” to the basic structural units of living things. 🔬 And one of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was born on this day in 1844. ✒️

Monday (29 July) — The seven-mile-long Cape Cod Canal first opened on this day in 1914, significantly reducing sailing time between Boston and New York (and markedly increasing safety). 🚢

Tuesday (30 July) — Today is the birthday of the great (and largely homeschooled) English writer Emily Bronte (1818–1848), author of Wuthering Heights. ✒️ It’s also the birthday of the American engineer and industrialist Henry Ford (1863–1947). 🚗

Wednesday (31 July) — On this day in 1964 the Ranger 7 probe transmitted the first close-up images of the moon taken by an American spacecraft, just minutes before it was intentionally crash-landed on the lunar surface. 🚀

Thursday (1 August) — Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great American writer Herman Melville (1819–1891), author of Moby-Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener, and many other works. In his honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this first week of August, and also our weekly toast, is the perfect little toast-poem “To the Master of the Meteor,” appearing below. 🐳 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Friday (2 August) — The first United States census, conducted under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, commenced on this day in 1790. The total count was 3,929,214. 🇺🇸

Saturday (3 August) — The famous opera house “La Scala” opened on this day in 1778 in Milan, Italy. 🎵 Today is also the birthday of the Pulitzer Prize–winning World War II journalist Ernie Pyle (1900–1945). 🗞 And since this is the first Saturday 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. 🔭

Sunday (4 August) — The great English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792. ✒️ It’s also the birthday of the great American trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong (1901–1971). 🎺

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: In honor of the bicentennial of the great American writer Herman Melville (1819–1891), our weekly toast and weekly poem are one and the same: Melville’s ringing toast-poem “To the Master of the Meteor.” The Meteor was a sailing ship, and the master (captain) of the Meteor was Herman’s brother Thomas Melville:

Lonesome on earth’s loneliest deep,
Sailor! who dost thy vigil keep —
Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep
Over monstrous waves that curl and comb;
Of thee we think when here from brink
We blow the mead in bubbling foam.

Of thee we think, in a ring we link;
To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink,
And the Meteor rolling home.

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

The Chirchiq River in Uzbekistan. (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: Arizona, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, and More

by Bob O'Hara

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

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 our 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Arizona State Quarter
    ARIZONA (the 48th state, 14 February 1912) — The Grand Canyon State. Capital: Phoenix. Arizona can be found on page 564 in your almanac and on plates 38 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Spanish version of Pima Indian word for ‘little spring place’ or Aztec arizuma, meaning ‘silver-bearing’” (almanac page 430). State bird: Cactus Wren (bird guide page 390). Website: az.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 a host of 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:

  • 🇺🇿 UZBEKISTAN in central Asia. Population: 30,023,709. Capital: Tashkent. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.gov.uz (in Uzbek, English, and several other languages).
  • 🇻🇺 VANUATU in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Population: 288,037. Capital: Port-Vila. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: parliament.gov.vu (in English).
  • 🇻🇦 VATICAN CITY, an enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. Population: 1,000. Capital: Vatican City. Website: w2.vatican.va (in Italian, English, and several other languages).
  • 🇻🇪 VENEZUELA in northeastern South America. Population: 31,689,176. Capital: Caracas. Government: Federal presidential republic. Website: presidencia.gob.ve (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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦋 MONITORING MONARCHS This Week in Your Homeschool

by Horace the Otter 🦦

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

Friday is our usual Natural History Day in the River Houses and today we’re happy to announce that all this coming week from 27 July (tomorrow!) to 4 August (next Sunday) is the International Monarch Monitoring Blitz!

Adult Monarch (Danaus plexippus) feeding on milkweed. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) are a migratory species that winters in Mexico and breeds across the United States and southern Canada. Scientists are monitoring the distribution and abundance of Monarchs in North America, and you and your homeschool students can help!

The Monarch Larva Monitoring Project of the University of Minnesota, along with a number of other scientific organizations, is sponsoring the 2019 International Monarch Monitoring Blitz from 27 July – 4 August 2019. You can find all the instructions for participating right here:

What you’ll be doing is looking for Monarchs in your neighborhood in different life stages — eggs, caterpillars, chrysalises, and flying adults — and reporting the location and number of individuals that you see, along with details of the plants that they are on. Check the page above for exactly how to make your report — depending on whether you’re in the eastern or western U.S., or Canada or Mexico, there are different websites to use.

All the records that are submitted will be combined and analyzed to help researchers understand Monarch distribution and migration across North America, and how Monarch conservation efforts should be best directed. You’ll not only be learning a bit of butterfly biology for yourselves, you’ll also be helping scientists in three countries to better understand the whole Monarch life cycle.

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 😊

🖋 🔔 WONDERFUL WORDS: As Kingfishers Catch Fire

by Bob O'Hara

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

This coming Sunday is the birthday of one of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1899), a name every homeschool literature student should know. In Hopkins’ honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this final week of July is one of his masterpieces: “As Kingfishers Catch Fire.”

Hopkins was a religious poet and he is famously difficult, but if you approach him with the right attitude — an almost scientific, puzzle-solving attitude — you’ll be richly rewarded. If your high-school homescholars can learn to decode Hopkins they’ll be more than ready for college-level work.

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is —
Christ — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men’s faces.

Like Emily Dickinson in America, Gerard Manley Hopkins in Britain was seemingly born in the wrong century. The vast majority of his work, like Dickinson’s, was not published until some years after his death, and it was only after World War I that he came to be recognized as one of the great poets of the Victorian era.

Hopkins grew up in an exceptionally creative family, full of artists and illustrators and musicians and writers — a family that was also devoutly religious in the Anglican tradition. Gerard himself rejected his Anglican upbringing, eventually converting to Catholicism and becoming a Jesuit priest, which led to estrangement from his family.

Hopkins’ poetry is regarded as difficult because it bends English grammar and syntax almost to the breaking point. He likes to change nouns into verbs and he likes to coin new words to express abstract philosophical ideas.

Beginners sometimes think Hopkins’ writing sounds like a jumble, but in fact it’s just the opposite. In this week’s poem, before you try to work out the meaning, look first at the intricate structure. Far from being chaotic, “Kingfishers” is actually a perfectly regular sonnet, one of the most tightly fitted of all poetic forms. More specifically, it’s what’s called a Petrarchan sonnet, divided into an eight-line octave that sets up a topic, and then a six-line sestet that resolves or concludes the topic. The rhyme-scheme is regular and precise: ABBA ABBA CDCDCD.

But what’s it about? You almost have to translate Hopkins back into ordinary English first, to get the basic meaning, and then return to the original to appreciate how the meaning plays out. This poem expresses an idea in Hopkins’ Catholic theology: that all human beings are made in Christ’s image. The octave sets up the idea by describing the lesser mortal things of this world — animals and inanimate objects — and how they all give voice to some inner essence that is distinctive of themselves. Here’s my prose “translation”:

Just as kingfishers “catch fire” (flash color);
Just as dragonflies “draw flame” (glint iridescence);
Just as stones ring when they tumble into deep wells;
Just as the string on an instrument, when plucked, speaks its distinct sound;
Just as a bell, when rung, rings out its own name;
Just so, all mortal things in this world express their own inner selves:
They shout “this is what I am — to do this is why I am here.”

Now Hopkins makes the religious turn in the sestet: what about us? Do we also express our inner essence like all those lesser beings? We do. And what is that inner essence? For Hopkins the Catholic theologian, our inner essence is the image of Christ and His righteousness. Here’s a prose translation of the sestet:

But we humans do even more than these lesser beings;
We enact justice in our lives (Hopkins makes the noun “justice” into a verb);
We enact Christ’s grace in our lives — that is how God sees us;
Christ’s image is reflected (“plays”) in all we do,
And everything we are is beautiful to God,
Just as a child’s face is forever beautiful to its father.

Hopkins was a master of sound — his poems are meant not just to be read, but to be heard. Go back from my translation to the original text and listen to how he makes his words “speak” the things themselves in lines like “tumbled over rim in roundy wells / Stones ring” (you can almost hear the stone bouncing off the walls and echoing all the way down); or in “each hung bell’s / Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name” — the line itself almost vibrates like a giant bell. (How many “-ng” sounds can you count?)

Hopkins was not only a religious poet, but he was also quite a nature poet in many ways. If “Kingfishers” captures your imagination, fly over to “The Windhover” next, another Hopkins masterpiece that has captivated many a student’s heart.

What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ As kingfishers catch fire: 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 Hopkins) 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. 📖

🚀 🌎 APOLLO 11 RETURNED TO EARTH 50 Years Ago Today

by Bob O'Hara

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

The first men to walk on an alien world returned safely to earth 50 years ago today. Getting to the moon and landing on it was a challenge, but if the Apollo 11 crew could not make it back home, then all would have been lost. Here’s a professionally done animation you can show your students this week to explain all the steps involved in getting from the surface of the moon back to earth:

➔

The most hazardous phase of the return flight is reentry into the earth’s atmosphere, when friction produces incredible temperatures on the bottom surface of the capsule. (The same effect causes most meteoroids — “shooting stars” — to burn up in the atmosphere.) During this reentry phase there is a also nerve-wracking radio blackout for a brief interval before contact is reestablished, the parachutes open, and the capsule safely strikes the water.

The Apollo 11 capsule Columbia safely floating in the Pacific with the astronauts awaiting transfer to the U.S.S. Hornet, 24 July 1969. (Image: NASA.)

The Apollo 11 crew and the Columbia capsule were fished out of the Pacific by the crew of another fine ship, the U.S.S. Hornet aircraft carrier. The Hornet is now a floating museum in San Francisco Bay that you and your homescholars can perhaps visit someday:

Here’s one more interesting historical anecdote you can share with your students about the Columbia capsule. That tiny room — think of it as a room — was an intense workshop and laboratory, with all three astronauts engaged in difficult operational and scientific activity throughout the mission. It turns out that during their daily work they scribbled quite a bit of stuff on the walls and instrument panels: navigational calculations, notes about the equipment, and more. After their safe splashdown and recovery, Mike Collins got the urge to go back into the capsule and write a note of thanks, which he did, and which can be seen there to this day.

Command Module Pilot Michael Collins’ note of thanks written on the inside of the Columbia capsule shortly after its safe return: “Spacecraft 107 – alias Apollo 11 / alias ‘Columbia’ / The Best Ship to Come Down the Line / God Bless Her / Michael Collins / CMP.” (Image: NASA.)

The Columbia capsule is now housed at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, but the museum’s website says it is not currently on display — so if you want to see it in person you may have to wait for a future opportunity.

What other grand historical anniversaries are you studying in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Come, here’s the map: If you turn to plate 109 in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) you’ll be able to locate the section of the Pacific Ocean about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii — notably empty, of course — where Apollo 11 made its final splashdown. 🌎

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our regular Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🌍 🇬🇧 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Ironbridge Gorge in the United Kingdom

by Bob O'Hara

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

The United Kingdom is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of the UK’s World Heritage Sites: Ironbridge Gorge.

The Iron Bridge over Ironbridge Gorge. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Ironbridge Gorge is one of the key sites in the origin of the Industrial Revolution that transformed the world in the nineteenth century:

“The Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage property covers an area of 5.5 km2 (550 ha) and is located in Telford, Shropshire, approximately 50 km north-west of Birmingham. The Industrial Revolution had its 18th century roots in the Ironbridge Gorge and spread worldwide leading to some of the most far-reaching changes in human history.

“The site incorporates a 5 km length of the steep-sided, mineral-rich Severn Valley from a point immediately west of Ironbridge downstream to Coalport, together with two smaller river valleys extending northwards to Coalbrookdale and Madeley.

“The Ironbridge Gorge provided the raw materials that revolutionised industrial processes and offers a powerful insight into the origins of the Industrial Revolution and also contains extensive evidence and remains of that period when the area was the focus of international attention from artists, engineers, and writers. The property contains substantial remains of mines, pit mounds, spoil heaps, foundries, factories, workshops, warehouses, iron masters’ and workers’ housing, public buildings, infrastructure, and transport systems, together with the traditional landscape and forests of the Severn Gorge.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #371)

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 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. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read UNESCO’s one-paragraph description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical and geographical information. 🇬🇧

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

🌕 A LUNAR SAMPLE COLLECTION for Your Local Library?

by Bob O'Hara

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

Tuesday is our regular Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and since we’ve been celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing for the last few days, here’s a rare educational opportunity you might be able to work on with your local library: borrowing some actual moon rock samples for students to examine.

This is not a homeschool program specifically — in fact, it’s a rather tightly controlled NASA education program that is open only to paid employees of educational institutions who attend a special training program at a NASA site. But professional librarians do qualify, and if this catches your imagination you might consider working with your local library to make it into a special community education activity.

Students examining rock and soil samples from the moon. (Image: NASA.)

The program and the application process are quite elaborate — they’re outlined on NASA’s educational materials website:

If homeschoolers were to collaborate with their local library they might not only be able to bring this distinctive educational opportunity to their community, but they could also generate favorable publicity for all concerned. (“Moon Rocks Coming to Town,” the local paper will shout.) 😊

Lunar and meteorite sample disks. (Image: NASA.)

Here’s a NASA video that describes the sources of the samples, the sample program, and the procedures involved in requesting and storing the borrowed materials:

➔

This isn’t a simple weekend project — you’d have to work on it in association with a local library over a period of several months. But it’s an exceptional opportunity to bring genuine samples from an alien world right into your students’ hands. That makes it worth exploring. 🚀

What treasures have you discovered at your library lately? 😊

❡ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❡ 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 21 July 2019

by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-21

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.

🗓 NEW CALENDARS! Our new calendars of educational events for the coming 2019–2020 school year are now available on our main calendar page! They are all one-page printable (pdf) documents, easy to use and post on your homeschool bulletin board. Print them out today, share them with your homeschool friends, and follow along with us throughout the coming year. 😊

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is New Mexico, and our COUNTRIES are the United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪, the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, the United States 🇺🇸, and Uruguay 🇺🇾. (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 great time for moon-walking! 😊 You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 21 July) — Today is the 202nd day of 2019; there are 163 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). ⬩ The American novelist and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. 🖋 And the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, −128.6 ºF (−89.2 ºC), was measured on this day in 1983 at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica. ❄️

Monday (22 July) — On this day in 1793, the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie (1764–1820) reached the Pacific Ocean, having completed the first transcontinental crossing of North America. 🇨🇦 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of July is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” for summer, and for Hopkins, born 28 July 1844. 🔔 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Tuesday (23 July) — On this day in 1995, what would become one of the brightest comets of the twentieth century was discovered independently by American astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. Comet Hale–Bopp was visible to the naked eye through much of 1996 and 1997, but if you missed it, you’re out of luck, because it won’t be back for another 2500 years. ☄️

Wednesday (24 July) — Fifty years ago today, the Apollo 11 capsule carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. 🌎 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 🚀 🌕 🚀 🌏 And on this day in 1847, a group of Mormon pioneers under the leadership of Brigham Young (1801–1877) arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and established the settlement that became Salt Lake City, Utah. 🏞

Thursday (25 July) — Today is the birthday of the German medical researcher Paul Langerhans (1847–1888), who discovered the insulin-secreting cell clusters of the pancreas, known today as the islets of Langerhans. 🔬 Today is also the birthday of the English biochemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958), who played a key role in the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA. 👩‍🔬

Friday (26 July) — The great painter of the American West, George Catlin, was born on this day in 1796. 🎨 And today is also the birthday of the polemical Irish playwright and Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950). 🎭

Saturday (27 July) — The inimitable Bugs Bunny made his screen debut on this day in 1940 in a short animated film called A Wild Hare. Elmer Fudd couldn’t catch him then, and hasn’t to this day. 🐰

Sunday (28 July) — Today is the birthday of the great English polymath Robert Hooke (1635–1703). Hooke was one of the pioneers of microscopy and was the first person to apply the world “cell” to the basic structural units of living things. 🔬 And one of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was born on this day in 1844. 🖋

(And looking ahead to a major literary anniversary: next Thursday, 1 August, will be the 200th birthday of the great American writer Herman Melville. 🐳)

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, wrapping up our Apollo 11 celebration, for the Apollo crew and also the crew of the U.S.S. Hornet, who fished them out of the sea: “A steady heart, a stout ship, and a good captain for every sailor.”

❡ 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: Uruguay is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Rosario River (Río Rosario), an important tributary of the Río de la Plata. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Rosario River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Rosario River in Uruguay at Puerto Concordia. (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: New Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, and More

by Bob O'Hara

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

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 our 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    New Mexico State Quarter
    NEW MEXICO (the 47th state, 6 January 1912) — The Land of Enchantment. Capital: Santa Fe. New Mexico can be found on page 579 in your almanac and on plates 38 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Spaniards in Mexico applied term to land north and west of Rio Grande in the 16th century” (almanac page 430). State bird: Roadrunner (bird guide page 80). Website: www.newmexico.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 a host of 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:

  • 🇦🇪 UNITED ARAB EMIRATES in the Middle East. Population: 9,701,315. Capital: Abu Dhabi. Government: Federation of monarchies. Website: www.government.ae (in Arabic and English).
  • 🇬🇧 UNITED KINGDOM in western Europe. Population: 65,105,246. Capital: London. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gov.uk (in English).
  • 🇺🇸 UNITED STATES in North America. Population: 329,256,465. Capital: Washington, D.C. Government: Constitutional federal republic. Website: www.usa.gov (in English).
  • 🇺🇾 URUGUAY in southern South America. Population: 3,369,299. Capital: Montevideo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.gub.uy (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. 🇺🇸 🌎