Archives for September 2019

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 29 September 2019

29 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-09-29

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 Connecticut, and our COUNTRIES are Belgium 🇧🇪, Belize 🇧🇿, Benin 🇧🇯, and Bhutan 🇧🇹. (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 waxing crescent, just past new (yesterday) — an excellent time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 29 September 2019) — Today is the 272nd day of 2019; there are 93 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 Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). 🇪🇸 It’s also the birthday of the pioneering Austrian–American economic philosopher Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). 💵 And not only that, it’s also the birthday of the great Italian–American physicist and Nobel laureate Enrico Fermi (1901–1954). ⚛️

Monday (30 September 2019) — Today is the birthday of William Wrigley, Jr. (1861–1932), founder of the Wrigley chewing gum company. 👦🏻👧🏼 And the Hoover Dam on the Arizona–Nevada border was dedicated on this day in 1935. 🍾

Tuesday (1 October 2019) — The first Ford Model T automobile was put on sale on this day in 1908. The price was $825. 🚗 Since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: Class 000 (General Works). 📚 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of October is “To Autumn” by John Keats, perhaps the most famous fall poem in the English language and a work every student of literature should know. 🍂 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Wednesday (2 October 2019) — Today is the birthday of Indian lawyer, philosopher, and political leader Mohandas Gandhi (1869–1948). 🇮🇳 And the comic strip Peanuts premiered on this day in 1950. 📰

Thursday (3 October 2019) — Today is the birthday of English veterinarian James Herriot (1916–1995), author of All Creatures Great and Small and other popular books on animals. 🐑🐂🐓🐖🐐

Friday (4 October 2019) — On this day in 1582, the Gregorian calendar was adopted on the European continent by decree of Pope Gregory (of course) XIII. Today was the 4th of the month, and tomorrow was declared to be the 15th. (The English-speaking world didn’t make the change for almost two more centuries.) 🗓 Our Friday Bird Families this week are two very different groups of aquatic birds, the Grebes and Flamingos. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us throughout the year. 🐦

Saturday (5 October 2019) — Today is the birthday of the American engineer Robert Goddard (1882–1945), inventor of the liquid-fueled rocket. 🚀 And since Goddard’s birthday also happens to be the first Saturday of the month, we’ll appropriately enough post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (6 October 2019) — Today is the birthday of the Norwegian explorer and ethnographer Thor Heyerdahl (1914–2002). 🌊

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May truth and liberty prevail throughout the world.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Perfect Gentleman; or, Etiquette and Eloquence (New York, 1860). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌍 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Belgium is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Yser River, which flows through Belgium and part of France and empties into the North Sea at Nieuwpoort, Belgium. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Yser River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Yser River in the Belgian province of West Flanders. (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: Connecticut, Belgium, Bhutan, and More

29 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

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. Our annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and we go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 429), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Connecticut State Bird and Flower
CONNECTICUT (the 5th state, 9 January 1788) — The Constitution State, the Nutmeg State. Capital: Hartford. Connecticut can be found on page 566 in your almanac and on plates 44 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Mohican and other Algonquin words meaning ‘long river place’” (almanac page 430). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: portal.ct.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for 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 an extended unit-study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to look into the primary source materials for teachers available at the Library of Congress.

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

🇧🇪 BELGIUM in western Europe. Population: 11,570,762. Capital: Brussels. Government: Federal parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.belgium.be (in English, French, Dutch, and German).
🇧🇿 BELIZE in Central America. Population: 385,854. Capital: Belmopan. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.belize.gov.bz (in English).
🇧🇯 BENIN in western Africa. Population: 11,340,504. Capital(s): Porto-Novo and Cotonou. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.gouv.bj (in French).
🇧🇹 BHUTAN in southern Asia. Population: 766,397. Capital: Thimphu. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.bhutan.gov.bt (in English).

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 exercise their critical reading and thinking skills. 🕵

❡ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — is one of the best educational gifts you can give them. Why not look up any one of our selected states or countries each week in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) and see if your students can locate rivers, lakes, marshes, water depths, mountains and their elevations, highway numbers, airports, oil fields, railroads, ruins, battle sites, small towns, big cities, regional capitals, national capitals, parks, deserts, glaciers, borders, grid references, lines of longitude and latitude, and much more. There is so much information packed into professional maps of this kind that a magnifying glass is always helpful, even for young folks with good eyesight. The endpapers of the atlas and the information on Plate 2 will guide them in their voyages of discovery. 🔍

❡ 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 an educational tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the homeschool year. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦃 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: The “Gallinaceous” Birds

27 September 2019 by Horace the Otter 🦦

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

Every Friday we invite you and your students to learn about a different group of North American birds from your recommended homeschool bird guide (riverhouses.org/books) — it’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule. (We started this new feature at the beginning of this month with an introduction to your bird guide.)

This week’s group of families has a wonderful ten-dollar name: the “gallinaceous” birds, encompassing (1) the New World Quail; (2) the Curassows and Guans; and (3) the Partridges, Grouse, Turkeys, and Old World Quail (bird guide pages 54–67). Gallus is the Latin word for chicken, so the gallinaceous birds are the chicken-like birds, with generally plump bodies, small heads, short beaks, and rounded wings.

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

If you’re teaching smaller children, you can take our Friday Bird Families posts as opportunities to just use your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes looking at all the wonderful wildlife. With older students, one of our objectives is to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with dense information. Here are the introductions to these bird families, written in the guide’s customary telegraphic style — you’ll find them on pages 54 and 58:

“NEW WORLD QUAIL — Family Odontophoridae. New World Quail are their own family. All have chunky bodies and crests or head plumes. In N.A. [North America], most live in the West. Species: 33 World, 6 N.A.“

“CURASSOWS · GUANS — Family Cracidae. These tropical-forest arboreal birds have short, rounded wings and long tails. Generally secretive but highly vocal. One species of this family is found in the United States. Species: 54 World, 1 N.A.“

“PARTRIDGES · GROUSE · TURKEYS · OLD WORLD QUAIL — Family Phasianidae. Ground dwellers with feathered nostrils; short, strong bills; and short, rounded wings. Flight is brief but strong. Males perform elaborate courting displays. In some species, courting birds gather in communal grounds, known as leks. Species: 178 World, 18 N.A.“

When you’re training young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their field guide the very first questions any naturalist would ask about a new group — a group such as, for example, the curassow family. How many species are known? (54.) Are there any near us? (Only one occurs in North America; the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Tropical forest dwellers, secretive, arboreal, long tailed — and so on.)

Many of the gallinaceous birds have played important roles in human culture for thousands of years. The domestic chicken is descended from the Red Junglefowl (Gallus gallus), a member of the Phasianidae that is native to Asia. Different species of pheasants, quail, grouse, and partridges are raised or hunted for food and ornament all around the world.

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

Pick a representative species to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, why not investigate the state bird of Pennsylvania: the Ruffed Grouse (page 62).

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief Ruffed Grouse species description in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is this bird? (17 inches long.) What’s its scientific name? (Bonasa umbellus.) What does it sound like? (A vocal clucking, but also a loud drumming with the wings by the males.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.)

The drumming courtship call of the male Ruffed Grouse is one of the characteristic sounds of northern North American forests.

[See attached blog post for images and sounds]

You can do a little ten-minute lesson like this with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. If you live in Alaska why not pick out the Willow Ptarmigan (the state bird), or if you’re in California, the California Quail (the state bird there). The domestic turkeys we eat are all descendants of the wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo), the largest gallinaceous bird in North America (and the species that would have become the U.S. national bird had Ben Franklin had his way).

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We hope also to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

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

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations on the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) as a nature reference, but a comprehensive dictionary will define many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should learn to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand and remember their meaning. 📖

❡ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography — the science of the geographical distribution of living things. 🌎

❡ Rivers in the sky: How many birds are migrating this week? You can find out from the BirdCast website, also sponsored by Cornell University, which offers daily bird migration forecasts in the spring and fall for the entire United States. 🦅

❡ State birds: Six members of this week’s bird families are United States state birds: the Ruffed Grouse (PA), California Quail (CA), Willow Ptarmigan (AK), and Ring-necked Pheasant (SD), and the Rhode Island Red Hen (RI) and Delaware Blue Hen (DE). The last two you won’t find in your bird guide, however, as it includes only wild, not domestic, species. 🇺🇸

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts. Why not print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us, and add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🦃

🇧🇭 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Qal’at al-Bahrain, the Ancient Capital of Dilmun in Bahrain

25 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

(A new homeschool year has begun and so has a new tour of World Heritage Sites around the globe! Print your own River Houses World Heritage Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us every Wednesday.)

Bahrain in the Middle East is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Bahrain’s World Heritage Sites: Qal’at al-Bahrain, the Ancient Harbor and Capital of Dilmun.

Remains of Qal’at al-Bahrain, the “Bahrain Fort.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

One of the richest archeological sites in Bahrain, the Qal’at al-Bahrain location was occupied for more than 3000 years:

“Qal’at al-Bahrain is a typical tell — an artificial mound created by many successive layers of human occupation. The strata of the 300 × 600 m tell testify to continuous human presence from about 2300 BC to the 16th century AD. About 25% of the site has been excavated, revealing structures of different types: residential, public, commercial, religious and military. They testify to the importance of the site, a trading port, over the centuries. On the top of the 12 m mound there is the impressive Portuguese fort, which gave the whole site its name, qal’a (fort). The site was the capital of the Dilmun, one of the most important ancient civilizations of the region. It contains the richest remains inventoried of this civilization, which was hitherto only known from written Sumerian references.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1192)

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.

The UNESCO World Heritage Centre also has a free and comprehensive World Heritage education kit for teachers and a wonderful full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites (available for the cost of shipping). Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures will you be exploring 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, geographical, and cultural information. 🇧🇭

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring historic sites of international importance. Download your own copy of our River Houses World Heritage Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

📰 KAPOW! Comic Art at the Library of Congress

24 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Do you have comics-crazy kids in your homeschool? Why not take educational advantage of their interests with some help from a new exhibition at the Library of Congress: Comic Art: 120 Years of Pages and Panels.

Comics are a highly creative art form with a rich history. This exhibition presents that history using the Library’s extensive collection of comic-related materials.

“Welcome to the world of comic art, where a wide variety of visual and narrative storytelling styles have evolved from panels in early newspapers to contemporary comic images. Through unique original drawings and printed pages, this exhibition features the artistic skills of master artists and emerging talents who have created some of the most famous, funny, and frightening characters to appear in print.

“One early comic figure, the Yellow Kid, debuted in a full-size panel in the color pages of the New York World newspaper in 1895 and sparked the rise of comics as a popular new American art form. By the mid-1900s, in addition to the growing number of mainstream comic creators, diverse independent artists were creating comic art that examined their own life stories and commented on culture and politics. These innovators and change makers expanded the art form to include mini comics, graphic novels, fanzines, and web comics.

“The lively visual content, dramatic narrative, and strong character development found in comics have attracted devoted audiences who follow the latest installment in whatever format the story appears. Over time, comic art and its characters have permeated film, television, books, and marketing — making characters familiar to viewers who may or may not read comics themselves.“ (Library of Congress)

You can find more details and a collection of online exhibits for your students to explore at the Library of Congress exhibition website:

➢ COMIC ART: 120 Years of Panels and Pages at the Library of Congress

From the Yellow Kid, Gasoline Alley, and Krazy Kat, to Dick Tracy, Peanuts, and Pogo, to Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman, there are hundreds of worlds to explore and just as many lessons in history, art, and culture.

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. 📰

🍃 WONDERFUL WORDS: “Our Summer made her light escape”

23 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

The Chimney Swifts are gone. (That’s how it is in my neighborhood.) The Kingbirds too. Did you notice? In the spring when they arrive the sound strikes your ear like a fresh spark. But when they depart — have they departed? — they slip away silently in the night.

As we pass today’s equinox and summer comes to its end, Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) provides us with a pensive homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of September.

As imperceptibly as Grief
The Summer lapsed away —
Too imperceptible at last
To seem like Perfidy —

A Quietness distilled
As Twilight long begun,
Or Nature spending with herself
Sequestered Afternoon —

The Dusk drew earlier in —
The Morning foreign shone —
A courteous, yet harrowing Grace,
As Guest, that would be gone —

And thus, without a Wing
Or service of a Keel
Our Summer made her light escape
Into the Beautiful.

If your students are learning how to read poetry — and poetry requires a special kind of reading, different from prose reading — tell them not to read too quickly or expect everything to be clear on the first pass through. Getting to know a poem is like getting to know a person: some things are apparent on the surface, but there are new things to discover over time with repeated engagement. If you make the effort you’ll often discover that good poems, like good people, can become friends for life.

[Emily Dickinson Homestead] — The Emily Dickinson Homestead, Amherst, Massachusetts. (Image: Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism.)

For traditionally styled poems like this one, the first thing to do as you make the poem’s acquaintance is not to think about meaning or abstract symbolism; instead, just count syllables. As imperceptibly as Grief (eight). The Summer lapsed away (six). Too imperceptible at last (eight). To seem like Perfidy (six). 8-6-8-6. The other three stanzas are shortened versions of that pattern: 6-6-8-6.

“Eights-and-sixes” is one of the most common hymn meters in the Protestant tradition, and Emily Dickinson learned her very precise prosody from the church hymns she grew up with. Compare the rhythm of the first stanza above with this familiar verse:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I see.

A perfect match (8-6-8-6). Whenever you encounter Emily Dickinson in your homeschool reading — and I hope that will be often — start by counting syllables and you’ll gain a new appreciation for the details of her craft.

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

❡ Our summer made her light escape: 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. 🍃

❡ Looking in the lexicon: There’s some great vocabulary in this week’s poem to look up in your family dictionary (riverhouses.org/books): imperceptible, perfidy, distilled, sequestered, harrowing, keel, lapsed. Send your students to the dictionary also for any poetical terminology they encounter: stanza, couplet, quatrain, sonnet, pentameter, hexameter, iambic, dactylic, and more — wonderful words, every one. 🔎

❡ Explore more: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Emily Dickinson) 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. 📖

🍂 FALL is Here! (And Spring for Antipodeans)

23 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Today is the September equinox — we call it the autumnal or fall equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the vernal or spring equinox. The autumnal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of fall, just as the vernal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of spring.

❡ Little lessons: “Autumnal and vernal are beautiful words. Let’s look them up in our dictionary (riverhouses.org/books).”

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

➢ The September Equinox: Equal Day and Night, Nearly

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23º). The solstices occur at the points in the orbit when the axis of rotation is tilted either most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter) or most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur when the earth’s axis of rotation is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary — solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website.

What calendrical events and astronomical transitions will you be marking in your homeschool this season? 😊

❡ Thirty days hath September: This is one of our regular Homeschool Terms & Calendars posts (riverhouses.org/topics/calendars). Print your own River Houses Calendars (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year, and add your name to our free mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞 🗓

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 22 September 2019

22 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-09-22

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Georgia, and our COUNTRIES are Bahrain 🇧🇭, Bangladesh 🇧🇩, Barbados 🇧🇧, and Belarus 🇧🇾. (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 — an increasingly good time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 22 September 2019) — Today is the 265th day of 2019; there are 100 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 On this day in 1776, American spy Nathan Hale, age 21, was executed by the British in New York City. His final words were said to be, “I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.” 🇺🇸 Today is also Hobbit Day! 🌋 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of September, as astronomical summer becomes fall, is Emily Dickinson’s equinoctial lyric “As imperceptibly as Grief.” 🍃 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Monday (23 September 2019) — Happy First Day of Fall! 🍂 Today is the September Equinox, also known as the Autumnal or Fall Equinox in the northern hemisphere and the Vernal or Spring Equinox in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of spring). 🗓 Today is also the birthday of Gaius Octavius Thurinus, better known as Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of the Roman Empire (63 B.C. – A.D. 14). 🏛

Tuesday (24 September 2019) — On this day in 1789, the U.S. Congress, acting under the new Constitution, established the federal judiciary system and specified a structure for the Supreme Court (with six, not the current nine, justices). ⚖️ And … it’s National·Punctuation·Day!@*&(#)&*@!

Wednesday (25 September 2019) — Today is the birthday of the great American geneticist and Nobel Prize laureate Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945), who established the role of chromosomes in the process of inheritance. 🔬 It’s also the birthday of American poet and children’s author Shel Silverstein (1930–1999). 📚 And the great Canadian classical pianist Glenn Gould was born on this day in 1932. 🎹

Thursday (26 September 2019) — On this day in 1687, during the Venetian siege of Athens, a bomb fell on the Parthenon, which was being used by the Ottoman Turks for munitions storage. The roof, parts of the frieze, and many of the columns, which had stood for more than two thousand years, were destroyed. 🏛 Today is the birthday of American nurseryman and folk hero John Chapman (1774–1845), better known as Johnny Appleseed. 🍎 It’s also the birthday of American poet and Nobel Prize laureate T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), author of (among other things) Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a wonderful read-aloud book for children. 🐈

Friday (27 September 2019) — On this day in 1941, the S.S. Patrick Henry, the first of a fleet of nearly 3000 “Liberty Ships” that transported supplies and troops during World War II, was launched in Baltimore, Maryland. ⚓️ And our Friday Bird Families this week will be the New World Quail, the Curassows & Guans, and the Partridges, Grouse, Turkeys, & Old World Quail. 🦃

Saturday (28 September 2019) — On this day in 1066, William II, Duke of Normandy, landed at Pevensey in Sussex and commenced the Norman conquest of England. ⚔️ On this day in 1928, Scottish microbiologist Alexander Fleming noticed that mold growing on some of his laboratory samples was killing colonies of bacteria. The result of this chance observation was the discovery of the first antibiotic, penicillin. 🔬

Sunday (29 September 2019) — Today is the birthday of the great Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616). 🇪🇸 It’s also the birthday of the pioneering Austrian–American economic philosopher Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). 💵

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May freedom’s fire never go out.”

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: The small island nation of Barbados is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Constitution River, a small waterway that passes through the capital city of Bridgetown. You can explore Barbados in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about the Constitution River in the Constitution River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

“The Constitution River, from the Charles Duncan O’Neal Bridge located next to the Fairchild Street Bus Terminal,” Bridgetown, Barbados. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

🇺🇸 🌎 SUNDAY STATES: Georgia, Bahrain, Belarus, and More

22 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

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.

🇺🇸
Georgia State Bird and Flower
GEORGIA (the 4th state, 2 January 1788) — The Peach State. Capital: Atlanta. Georgia can be found on page 568 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Named by colonial administrator James Oglethorp for King George II of England in 1732” (almanac page 430). State bird: Brown Thrasher (bird guide page 418). Website: georgia.gov.

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning an extended unit-study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to look into the primary source materials for teachers available at the Library of Congress.

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

🇧🇭 BAHRAIN in the Middle East. Population: 1,442,659. Capital: Manama. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.bahrain.bh (in Arabic and English).
🇧🇩 BANGLADESH in southern Asia. Population: 159,453,001. Capital: Dhaka. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: bangladesh.gov.bd (in Bengali and English).
🇧🇧 BARBADOS in the West Indies. Population: 293,131. Capital: Bridgetown. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gov.bb (in English).
🇧🇾 BELARUS in eastern Europe. Population: 9,547,543. Capital: Minsk. Government: Presidential republic (in name). Website: www.president.gov.by (in Belarusian, Russian, and English).

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

🔭 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES: A Cygnus Skyscape

21 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-ap190725

Deneb in the constellation Cygnus is our Great Star of the Month for September, the first month of Cygnus Term, the opening term of our homeschool year. This magnificent image of the Cygnus region is one of the many treasures available on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website:

[See attached blog post for images]

A Cygnus skyscape. Deneb, the swan’s tail, is the bright star at the top, just left of center, and the cross that forms the body and wings of the swan is pointing downward to the right. The dark region directly below Deneb is called the Coal Sack. (Image: Alistair Symon via apod.nasa.gov.)

For a great ten-minute astronomy lesson, have your students read aloud this detailed explanation of the image from the APOD astronomers, and have them look up any new terms and concepts they encounter in your recommended backyard star guide or family dictionary (riverhouses.org/books):

“In brush strokes of interstellar dust and glowing hydrogen gas, this beautiful skyscape is painted across the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy near the northern end of the Great Rift and the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Composed with three different telescopes and about 90 hours of image data, the widefield mosaic spans an impressive 24 degrees across the sky. Alpha star of Cygnus, bright, hot, supergiant Deneb lies near top center. Crowded with stars and luminous gas clouds, Cygnus is also home to the dark, obscuring Northern Coal Sack Nebula, extending from Deneb toward the center of the view. The reddish glow of star forming regions NGC 7000, the North America Nebula, and IC 5070, the Pelican Nebula, are just left of Deneb. The Veil Nebula is a standout below and left of center. A supernova remnant, the Veil is some 1,400 light years away, but many other nebulae and star clusters are identifiable throughout the cosmic scene. Of course, Deneb itself is also known to northern hemisphere skygazers for its place in two asterisms — marking the top of the Northern Cross and a vertex of the Summer Triangle.“ (apod.nasa.gov)

You can find Deneb and Cygnus high overhead in the evening now, just a little east of the zenith at sunset and passing to the west as the night goes on — looking beautiful indeed but not quite as dramatic as they do in this specialized long-exposure image.

What astronomical alignments are you examining in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Choose something like a star: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas (riverhouses.org/books) both contain charts of the constellations that will show you all the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌌

❡ Star bright: If you’d like some more simple homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us month by month as we get to know twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular homeschool astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭

🦆 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Ducks, Geese, and Swans (II)

20 September 2019 by Horace the Otter 🦦

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

Every Friday in the River Houses we invite you and your students to learn about a different group of North American birds from your recommended homeschool bird guide (riverhouses.org/books) — it’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule. (We started this new feature at the beginning of this month with an introduction to your bird guide.)

This week’s family is (again) the Ducks, Geese, and Swans — the Anatidae (bird guide page 14). Usually we’ll cover one or two families each week, but we’re spreading the ducks, geese, and swans over two weeks because there are so many of them: about 160 species around the world, and 66 in North America. Last week we said a few words about geese and swans; this week we’ll turn to the ducks.

[Follow attached blog link for images and sounds]

With smaller children, you can take our Friday Bird Families posts as opportunities to just use your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes looking at all the wonderful wildlife. For older students, one of our objectives is to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with dense information. Here’s the introduction to this bird family — you’ll find it on page 14:

“DUCKS · GEESE · SWANS — Family Anatidae. Worldwide family. Web-footed, gregarious birds, ranging from small ducks to swans. Largely aquatic, but geese, swans, and some ‘puddle ducks’ also graze on land. Species: 160 World, 66 N.A. [North America].“

In larger families, such as the ducks, geese, and swans, your bird guide will also often have separate subheadings for notable subgroups within the family — for example, the “dabbling ducks” (page 26):

“DABBLING DUCKS. Surface-feeding members of the genus Anas: the familiar ‘puddle ducks’ of freshwater shallows and, chiefly in winter, salt marshes. Dabblers feed by tipping, tail up, to reach aquatic plants, seeds, and snails. They require no running start to take off but spring directly into flight. Most species show a distinguishing swatch of bright color, the speculum, on the secondaries. Many are known to hybridize.“

Pick a representative species to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, why not investigate one of the most familiar of all ducks, a species found throughout the entire northern hemisphere: the Mallard (page 26).

[Follow attached blog link for images and sounds]

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief Mallard species description in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is this bird? (23 inches long.) What’s its scientific name? (Anas platyrhynchos.) What does it sound like? (Quack! But then you already knew that. 😊) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.)

From the illustrations you can see that the Mallard is sexually dimorphic (“two-formed”): that is, the males and females are different in appearance, with the males having an iridescent green head, chestnut breast, and silvery-gray flanks. A little browsing will show you that most duck species are dimorphic, whereas most geese and swans are sexually monomorphic (“one-formed”): the males and females are similar in appearance, and just by looking you can’t tell them apart.

[Follow attached blog link for images and sounds]

One of the most beautiful hidden features of many dabbling ducks, as noted in the description above, is the speculum (Latin, “mirror”) — the swatch of iridescence on the secondary feathers (the inner wing feathers that attach to the bird’s forearm). The speculum is plainly visible when the bird is in flight, but it’s usually hidden at rest, unless the bird happens to stretch its wings a bit.

And of course Mallards have provided the soundtrack — accurately or not — for just about every duck that has ever appeared in film and television. 🔊

[Follow attached blog link for images and sounds]

Browse through the many other duck species in your bird guide and take note of (and delight in) the many wonderful duck names that enrich the English language: gadwall, merganser, pochard, eider, teal, canvasback, scaup, pintail, and more.

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

🇦🇺 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Sydney Opera House in Australia

18 September 2019 by Bob O'Hara

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

Australia is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Australia’s World Heritage Sites: the Sydney Opera House.

The Sydney Opera House in Sydney Harbor, Australia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Many World Heritage Sites are ancient, but some, like the famous Sydney Opera House, are almost brand new:

“Inaugurated in 1973, the Sydney Opera House is a great architectural work of the 20th century that brings together multiple strands of creativity and innovation in both architectural form and structural design. A great urban sculpture set in a remarkable waterscape, at the tip of a peninsula projecting into Sydney Harbour, the building has had an enduring influence on architecture. The Sydney Opera House comprises three groups of interlocking vaulted ‘shells’ which roof two main performance halls and a restaurant. These shell-structures are set upon a vast platform and are surrounded by terrace areas that function as pedestrian concourses. In 1957, when the project of the Sydney Opera House was awarded by an international jury to Danish architect Jørn Utzon, it marked a radically new approach to construction.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #166)

What world treasures will you be exploring in your homeschool this week? 😊