🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 1 November 2020

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-11-01

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. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week, and visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is New Hampshire, and our COUNTRIES are the Central African Republic 🇨🇫, Chad 🇹🇩, Chile 🇨🇱, and China 🇨🇳. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌖 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning — a good time for moon watching! You can 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 a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (1 November 2020) — Today is the 306th day of 2020; there are 60 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different kinds of calendars on pages 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 William Shakespeare’s play The Tempest was first performed on this day in 1611. 🎭 And today is the birthday of the German geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener (1880–1930), who developed the theory of continental drift. 🌍 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of November is Robert Frost’s “A Leaf-Treader,” for the falling leaves. 🍂 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Monday (2 November 2020) — Today is the birthday of the American frontiersman and folk-hero Daniel Boone (1734–1820). 🐻

Tuesday (3 November 2020) — Today is Election Day in the United States, the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November. This is a presidential election year when (at the federal level) the office of President is open, along with all House seats and a third of the seats in the Senate. 🗳 Today is also the birthday of the great Italian artist and sculptor Benvenuto Cellini (1500–1571). 🎨 On this day in 1534, the English Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, declaring King Henry VIII (rather than the Pope) to be the head of the English church. 👑 And 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: the Philosophical 100s. 📚

Wednesday (4 November 2020) — Today is the birthday of “Oklahoma’s favorite son,” the American actor and humorist Will Rogers (1879–1935). 🤝 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Lakes of Ounianga in Chad. 🇹🇩

Thursday (5 November 2020) — On this day in 1605, the Gunpowder Plot to bomb the opening session of the English Parliament and assassinate King James I was foiled and the plotter Guy Fawkes and his co-conspirators were arrested. (“Remember, remember, the Fifth of November.”) 💣 Today is also the birthday of British poet and playwright James Elroy Flecker (1884–1915). 🖋

Friday (6 November 2020) — On this Election Day in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected the 16th President of the United States of America, and one year later, on this Election Day in 1861, Jefferson Davis was elected the first President of the Confederate States of America. 🗳 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the long-legged Stilts, Avocets, and Oystercatchers. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (7 November 2020) — On this day in 1492, a meteorite struck the earth near the village of Ensisheim, France. The Ensisheim meteorite is the oldest recovered meteorite with a known date of impact. 🌠 Today is also the birthday of the Polish-French physicist and Nobel laureate Marie Curie (1867–1934). ⚛️ 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 watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (8 November 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great English mathematician and astronomer Edmund Halley (1656–1742), of comet fame. ☄️ It’s also the birthday of Irish novelist Bram Stoker (1847–1912), the inventor of Count Dracula. 🧛 And on this day in 1895, German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen accidentally discovered X-rays. 👨‍⚕️ (And that makes this also World Radiography Day!) 💀 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this second week of November is Laurence Binyon’s “For the Fallen,” for Veterans Day (Armistice Day). 🕊 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is from Walt Whitman, for the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November: “America’s choosing day.” 🇺🇸

❡ 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 unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌍 🇹🇩 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Chad in central Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Bragoto River in southern Chad. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Bragoto River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Daughters of Ocean: 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. 🗓