Archives for February 2020

☀️ 🌍 Copernicus and His Revolutions (on his birthday!)

19 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-copernicus

Today is the birthday of one of the most important figures in the history of science: the great Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). In his honor, why not take a few homeschool minutes today to introduce your students to Copernicus’ great work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium), first published in 1543.

[Copernicus' heliocentric system] — The heliocentric model of Copernicus, from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Note the sun (Sol) at the center, and the earth (Terra) in the third orbit, along with earth’s moon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Copernicus was an extraordinary scholar whose work extended far beyond the astronomical research for which he is best known. He spoke five languages, translated Greek poetry, studied medicine, mathematics, economic theory, and more. And he did this while serving for much of his adult life as a canon — a senior church administrative officer — in Poland’s Frombork Cathedral. (Frombork is home today to a Copernicus Museum and research center.)

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, or “De Rev” as history of science geeks call it, is one of the most important books ever published because it laid out a comprehensive sun-centered or heliocentric picture of the solar system, replacing the earlier earth-centered or geocentric picture.

Fewer than 300 copies of the original 1543 edition of De Revolutionibus survive today. But we live in a truly fortunate age, when a young student can sit at home and examine up close some of the rarest and most important books in history — books that just a few years ago would have been accessible only to professional scholars in the world’s largest libraries.

Here is a copy of the “De Rev” that has been scanned and made available by RareBookRoom.org, a wonderful site that provides online access to some of the most important books ever written. The scans are very high resolution so all the pages can be examined one by one in great detail, right down to the handwritten notes in the margins and to the texture of the paper as it was impressed by the metal type. Spend a few homeschool minutes today with your students (at a large screen rather than a phone) exploring this bibliographic treasure:

➢ Nicolaus Copernicus, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543) (rarebookroom.org)

The text is in Latin — the language of all scientific books written at that time — and the printing is exceptionally fine. Zoom in on a few pages using the −/+ scale at the top of the page to get a full appreciation for this great work, not only of science, but of the printer’s art as well.

If you have curious science students in your homeschool, be sure they know the name of Nicolaus Copernicus and how he changed our understanding of the world.

What historico-scientific anniversaries have you been marking in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick review of the Renaissance, the historical period in which Copernicus lived, turn to pages 250–253 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books), and for an overview of the Scientific Revolution that he helped to spark see pages 266–267. It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history lesson. 📚

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries 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 Forest of the Cedars of God in Lebanon

19 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-lebanon

Lebanon 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 Lebanon’s World Heritage Sites: Ouadi Qadisha (the Holy Valley) and the Forest of the Cedars of God.

One of the remaining old specimens of *Cedrus libani* in the Forest of the Cedars of God in Lebanon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The once-majestic cedar forests of Lebanon, growing near the valley of the Qadisha (Kadisha) River, were prized by nearly every civilization in the ancient Near East. Only small remnants of these forests remain today, and they, along with the adjoining valley, are now a World Heritage Site:

“Ouadi Qadisha is one of the most important settlement sites of the first Christian monasteries in the world, and its monasteries, many of which of great age, are set in an extraordinarily rugged landscape. Nearby are the vestiges of the great cedar forest of Lebanon, highly prized in ancient times for the construction of great religious buildings.

“The Qadisha Valley site and the Forest of the Cedars of God (Horsh Arz el-Rab) are located in northern Lebanon. The Qadisha Valley is located North of [the] Mount Lebanon chain, at the foot of Mount al-Makmel and west of the Forest of the Cedars of God. The Holy River Qadisha, celebrated in the Scriptures, runs through the Valley. The Forest of the Cedars of God is located on Mount Makmel, between 1900 and 2050 m altitude and to the east of the village of Bcharré.

“The rocky cliffs of the Qadisha Valley have served over centuries as a place for meditation and refuge. The Valley comprises the largest number of monasteries and hermitages dating back to the very first spread of Christianism. The main monasteries are those of St Anthony of Quzhayya, Our Lady of Hauqqa, Qannubin and Mar Lichaa. This Valley bears unique witness to the very centre of Maronite eremitism. Its natural caves, carved into the hillsides — almost inaccessible — [are] decorated with frescoes testifying to an architecture specifically conceived for the spiritual and vital needs of an austere life. There exist numerous terraces for growing grain by the monks, hermits, and peasants who lived in the region; several of these terraces are still under cultivation today.

“Linked to the Qadisha Valley through historic reference and contiguity, the Forest of the Cedars of God is the last vestige of antique forests and one of the rare sites where the Cedrus libani still grows, one of the most valued construction materials in the antique world and cited 103 times in the Bible.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #850)

The fragrant wood of the cedars of Lebanon was used in the construction of many of the ancient world’s palaces and temples. Although the species (Cedrus libani) has long been grown in cultivation and so is not in danger of extinction, the original Lebanese cedar forests had been reduced to fewer than thirty large trees in the Early Modern period. Today, the original forest is estimated to contain between 300 and 400 old trees.

“Drone photograph of the Qadisha Valley … taken October 2019, facing almost due west from the Qannoubine Monastery (lower-left).” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

And once your students known something about the storied cedars of Lebanon, they’ll also understand the symbolism of the modern Lebanese flag.

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 feature 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 World Heritage Centre also has a free and comprehensive World Heritage education kit for teachers, as well as a wonderful full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites (riverhouses.org/2019-wh-map), available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures have you been exploring in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ 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 the WHC’s brief 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 historical and natural sites of international importance. Download a 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 weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH AND NEWS – February 2020

18 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-02-research

On the third Tuesday of each month we post a quick roundup of some recent academic publications and news about homeschooling, offered for your interest. These are typically university research papers, and they may have a positive, negative, or neutral outlook on home education — and if they don’t seem appealing, just scroll on by. The title links generally point to the full text of each publication, which is often a printable pdf file. (Facebook readers should click to the attached blog post to find these links live.) In some cases, a paid subscription may be required to read the whole article. The article abstracts below are quoted in full whenever possible, without editing. We have five items this month:

(1) On Not Teaching Addition: A Homeschooling Parent Teaches and Researches Math — M.D. Cohen (2020)

Abstract: Interactions with the humans in one’s life can have bearings on the way one interacts with one’s work — and vice versa. In particular, the ways in which a math person who is also a parent interacts with their children can correlate with the ways that person interacts with students, colleagues, and with math itself. This article describes some of that correlation in one mathmom’s life. In particular, this mathmom worked toward balancing, both as a mom and as a teacher, her beliefs and feelings with societal mindsets and practices.

(2) Homeschooling [Encyclopedia entry] — M. Gaither (2020)

Abstract: The US homeschooling movement has grown steadily since the early 1980s. In that time a robust body of academic literature has emerged to assess various aspects of the phenomenon in relation to family life. This entry summarizes the findings of the literature on the history and demography of homeschooling in the United States, parental motivation, curriculum and social networks, and its impact on the life course.

(3) Homeschooling: An Alternative Education Based on Potential of Children — N. Purwaningsih and P.Y. Fauziah (2020)

Abstract: The reason underlying homeschoolers decide on homeschooling education is because of the emergence of the desire to provide education that supports children’s competence in their field. In addition, due to factors distrust of formal schooling and the provision of religious education. Homeschooling is a positive alternative education to develop children’s potential. Through homeschooling, children and homeschoolers together communicate learning that supports children’s talents and interests. The selected curriculum adjusts the reference of education in Indonesia, but is managed flexibly based on children’s autonomy. Homeschooling children learn the teaching materials required for diploma examinations that are officially recognized by the government and can be used to continue to higher education. Homeschooling children also have more opportunities to explore and develop potential based on intelligence and learning styles that are unique to each child. The flexibility of time and material decided to be studied by children contributes to the formation of independence and attitude of responsibility of children towards their learning tasks. Educational aspects include cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains, so that the homeschool education model provides satisfaction for homeschoolers and homeschooling children because it provides tangible experiences that benefit children’s life skills.

(4) Post-Homeschooling Moms: New Season, New Growth [Book] — C. Willis (2020)

Summary: When homeschooled students graduate, what comes next for their moms? Post-Homeschooling Moms addresses the need of refilling and redirection for the next season of their lives. Is the end of your home-schooling career within sight? With a combination of memoir, insights from other women who have experienced this transition, and practical wisdom, author Carol Willis offers encouragement and new vision as you move forward.

(5) Homeschooled and Self-Cultured: The Gendering of Margaret Fuller and Caroline Dall — L. Willsky‐Ciollo (2020)

Abstract: This article examines the gendering of the human mind by nineteenth-century Unitarians and Transcendentalists or, more specifically, the employment of the doctrine of “self-culture” to encourage girls and young women to cultivate traits that would lead themselves and others to gender their intellect “masculine,” even while many proponents of self-culture maintained a traditional understanding of woman’s role: as wife and mother and the keeper of house and home. Beholden to nineteenth-century categories of masculinity and femininity, many Unitarian and Transcendentalist men — and women — were ambivalent about the practical results of self-culture for women. How could the people who promoted self-culture and self-reliance as the primary religious duties of the spiritually engaged person show only lukewarm support and occasionally outright opposition for the women who followed such advice? To answer this question, this article examines the early lives and educational experiences of Margaret Fuller and Caroline Dall, in their own words and through primary and secondary sources that highlight self-culture as a source of both empowerment and enervation. In doing so it tracks how both the process and effects of cultivating the “masculine mind” shaped these women and their respective understandings of what it meant to be whole in their own bodies.

What interesting homeschool news and research have you come across this Orion Term? 👩🏻‍🎓

❡ Explore more: If you’d like to investigate the academic literature on homeschooling, the best place to start is Google Scholar (scholar.google.com), the special academic search engine from Google. Just enter a search term or phrase of interest (“homeschool,” “unschooling,” “classical homeschooling,” “deschooling,” etc.), and Google Scholar will return a list of academic publications that mention your topic. 🔎

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our regular Homeschool Research & News 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: The Truly Great

17 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-spender

February is a month of extraordinary birthdays: Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, George Washington (observed today), Thomas Paine, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Susan B. Anthony, Dmitri Mendeleev, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Edison, Babe Ruth, Rosa Parks, and more. In their collective honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of February is Stephen Spender’s encomium on “The Truly Great”:

The Truly Great

I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.

What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.

Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fêted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

This is a beautiful and deeply philosophical poem — great for high school students — built around the ancient Greek concept of metempsychosis or “the transmigration of souls.”

Plato and other Greek philosophers taught that the individual soul was immortal, and that after one’s physical body dies, the soul returns to the spiritual realm where it chooses a new body into which it will be placed. It then drinks from the River of Forgetfulness (Lethe) so as to lose all memory of its previous life, and then returns to the mortal world in a new soul-body combination.

In this poem, Spender imagines that the truly great figures of history were great because they “remembered the soul’s history” — they didn’t partake of the waters of forgetfulness and so had lifetimes of knowledge and understanding to draw upon as they passed through the world. How else could they have accomplished what they did, with the experience of only one lifetime?

What wonderful words and philosophico-literary productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ And left the vivid air signed with their honour: 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 website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Stephen Spender) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ Comparative literature: If you have advanced high schoolers in your homeschool, one of the best ways to get them to think critically about literature is to have them compare and contrast different works on similar themes. After they’ve talked with you for a while about “The Truly Great,” invite them to take a look at “The Grandeur of Ghosts” by Siegfried Sassoon (1886–1967), an older contemporary of Spender. How do these two authors approach the theme of greatness? (One answer I might give is that Spender focuses on those who are great themselves, while Sassoon focuses on those who are small and who thereby demonstrate, by contrast, the greatness of others.) 🔍

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 16 February 2020

16 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-02-16

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 Arkansas, and our COUNTRIES are Lebanon 🇱🇧, Lesotho 🇱🇸, Liberia 🇱🇷, and Libya 🇱🇾. (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 — a 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 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 (16 February 2020) — Today is the 47th day of 2020; there are 319 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 The Great Backyard Bird Count is underway! You can participate all this weekend (14–17 February) — it’s an ideal homeschool science and nature activity. 🦅 🦃 🦆 🐦 🦉

Monday (17 February 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great Italian violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713). 🎻 And on this day in 1923, archeologist Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun (ca. 1342–1325 B.C.) and became the first person to set eyes on the pharaoh’s sarcophagus in more than three thousand years. ⚰️

Tuesday (18 February 2020) — The famous American stained-glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany was born on this day in 1848. 🎨

Wednesday (19 February 2020) — Today is the birthday of the Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), one of the great figures in the history of science. 🌞 🌍

Thursday (20 February 2020) — And today is the birthday of the great American photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984). 📷

Friday (21 February 2020) — On this day in 1918, the last individual Carolina Parakeet, the only species of parrot native to the United States, died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. 😔 🦜 And speaking of birds, our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to some fast-flying raptors: the Caracaras and Falcons. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (22 February 2020) — Today is the birthday of George Washington (1732–1799), the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And speaking of presidents, on this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first-ever radio address from the White House. 📻 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February is John Keats’ famous revelatory sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” for the anniversary of Keats’ death in 1821. 🔭 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Sunday (23 February 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great German-English composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). 🎺

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST for this Washington’s Birthday week invites you to remember that in early America, no one was toasted more often than George Washington. This 1788 musical offering by Francis Hopkinson of Philadelphia was but one among thousands:

’Tis Washington’s health — fill a bumper all round,
For he is our glory and pride.
Our arms shall in battle with conquest be crown’d
Whilst virtue and he’s on our side.

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

🌍 🇱🇷 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Liberia in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Mesurado River, which flows through the Liberian capital of Monrovia. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Mesurado River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Mesurado River in Monrovia, Liberia. (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: Arkansas, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, and Libya

16 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-arkansas

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 goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 420), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Arkansas State Bird and Flower
ARKANSAS (the 25th state, 15 June 1836) — The Razorback State. Capital: Little Rock. Arkansas can be found on page 564 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Algonquin name for Quapaw Indians, meaning ‘south wind’” (almanac page 422). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: www.arkansas.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our 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 wealth 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.

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇱🇧 LEBANON in the Middle East. Population: 5,847,294. Capital: Beirut. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: presidency.gov.lb (in Arabic).
🇱🇸 LESOTHO in southern Africa. Population: 1,966,253. Capital: Maseru. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gov.ls (in English).
🇱🇷 LIBERIA in southwestern Africa. Population: 4,937,804. Capital: Monrovia. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.emansion.gov.lr (in English).
🇱🇾 LIBYA in northern Africa. Population: 6,850,229. Capital: Tripoli. Government: “In transition” (almanac page 799). Website: www.pm.gov.ly (in Arabic).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of 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 global geographical explorations have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ 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 show your students how to 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 technical map-reading information on Plate 2 will guide you in your 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. And don’t forget to add your name to our free mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: The Woodpeckers

14 February 2020 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-woodpeckers

❡ Note: The Great Backyard Bird Count begins today and runs all weekend (14–17 February)! It’s an ideal homeschool science and nature activity. Are you participating? Here’s how: riverhouses.org/2020-gbbc.

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended 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 throughout the year.

This week’s bird family is the Woodpeckers (pages 306–318).

[See attached blog post for images and video]

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with dense information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here is the bird guide’s introduction to this week’s group, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“WOODPECKERS AND ALLIES — Family Picidae. Strong claws, short legs, and stiff tail feathers enable woodpeckers to climb tree trunks. Sharp bill is used to chisel out insect food and nest holes and to drum a territorial signal. Species: 217 World, 28 N.A. [North America]“

When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about a new group — about the Woodpeckers, for example. How many species? (217 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (28 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Sharp bills, stiff tails, forage on tree trunks, and so on.)

Pick a representative species or two 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 friendly little Downy Woodpecker (page 314), a familiar species found across almost all of North America.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is the Downy Woodpecker? (Only 6¾ inches long, our smallest North American woodpecker.) What is its scientific name? (Picoides pubescens, or Dryobates pubescens in the eBird database.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

Downy Woodpeckers are readily attracted to suet feeders — you might be able to bring one or two right into your backyard. The males have a red patch on the back of the head that is absent in the females. Black, white, and red are the most common colors in almost all woodpecker species.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick a species that is near you, or one that looks striking, or one that has a strange name, and explore. As a second species this week, why not take a look at the Northern Flicker (page 316), the state bird of Alabama (where it’s commonly called the Yellowhammer). Flickers nest in tree cavities and forage on tree trunks, like other woodpeckers, but they are also quite fond of ants and can often be seen feeding on the ground.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

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 also hope 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 observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ 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. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (riverhouses.org/books) (pages 6–13) explains a little bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book — why not have your students study it as a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts of a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. 🦉

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) as a nature reference, but a comprehensive dictionary will define and explain 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 be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them 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. 🌎

❡ State birds: One species covered this week is a United States state bird: the Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus), also called the Yellowhammer, the state bird of Alabama as noted above. 🇺🇸

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🗓 🇺🇸 🦋 LINCOLN and DARWIN (and Horace)

12 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-lincoln

There are six standard reference books that we recommend for every homeschool library — not children’s books, but family books that can support your teaching in a range of homeschool subjects for many years. One of these is the comprehensive and beautifully illustrated volume History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present (3rd edition). This book is a favorite of our River Houses mascot Horace the Otter, as you can see.

Our mascot Horace the Otter with his favorite homeschool history encyclopedia.

Horace is spending time with his history encyclopedia today because this is a notable anniversary. Two of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, were both born on this day in the same year: 1809. That’s a good time landmark for your students to know. The history encyclopedia has fully illustrated outlines of the life and times of both Lincoln (page 316) and Darwin (page 340) — just what you need for a quick review this week with your homeschool students.

Horace the Otter reads up on Abraham Lincoln in his history encyclopedia.

Darwin was one of my academic specialties, so this time period is of special interest to me. I taught a basic college writing course for a number of years using original texts from the history of science, including Darwin’s Origin of Species, a work that was first published in London in 1859, the year before Lincoln was first elected president in the United States.

Horace the Otter learns about Charles Darwin and the history of science on Darwin’s birthday.

If you’re looking for a one-volume history encyclopedia that can support your homeschool teaching across any curriculum you may be following, History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present is a great choice. Happy birthday, Abe and Charles!

What bibliographic treasures have you discovered and what historical anniversaries have you marked in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries posts. Print your own copy of our River Houses calendar of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) to follow along with us, and 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: Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain in Kyrgyzstan

12 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-kyrgyzstan

Kyrgyzstan in central Asia is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Kyrgyzstan’s World Heritage Sites: Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain.

“Sulayman Mountain in Osh, Kyrgyzstan.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain, also called Sulayman Mountain and Sulayman Rock, is one of the major landmarks along the ancient Silk Road trading routes that connected Europe and Asia for more than a thousand years:

“Sulaiman-Too Sacred Mountain [in] Kyrgyzstan dominates the Fergana Valley and forms the backdrop to the city of Osh, at the crossroads of important routes on the Central Asian Silk Roads. For more than one and a half millennia, Sulaiman was a beacon for travellers, revered as a sacred mountain. Its five peaks and slopes contain numerous ancient places of worship and caves with petroglyphs as well as two largely reconstructed 16th century mosques. One hundred and one sites with petroglyphs representing humans and animals as well as geometrical forms have been indexed in the property so far. The site numbers 17 places of worship, which are still in use, and many that are not. Dispersed around the mountain peaks they are connected by footpaths. The cult sites are believed to provide cures for barrenness, headaches, and back pain and give the blessing of longevity. Veneration for the mountain blends pre-Islamic and Islamic beliefs. The site is believed to represent the most complete example of a sacred mountain anywhere in Central Asia, worshipped over several millennia.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1230)

A Soviet-Era museum built into the side of Sulayman Mountain houses archeological and historical artifacts relating to the mountain’s history and to the history of the ancient trading city of Osh.

The National Historical and Archaeological Museum Complex Sulayman, built in 1978. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What world treasures have you been exploring in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

📜 HISTORY STUDENTS: The National Archives Wants Your Help

11 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-presidents

Here’s another terrific independent project for a homeschool history student that would look great on a high school transcript or college application. The National Archives is asking for help this month to document materials in a series of presidential libraries, in honor of Presidents Day:

➢ Presidential Libraries Road Trip (archives.gov)

This is one of the “Citizen Archivist” opportunities from the National Archives that we recommend as part of our Lunar Society project, and it will be a focus at the National Archives all this month. Your students can work on presidential library materials from Herbert Hoover to Barack Obama and every president in between.

The work is done completely online and involves examining original documents and transcribing or tagging them, according to the instructions provided, so they are more accessible to readers and searchers. Your students would gain valuable experience working with original historical materials, as well as experience making a genuine contribution to a large academic project. Why not invite them to sign up and give it a try today! 🔍

What treasures have you discovered in your library this Orion Term? 😊

❡ 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: “Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!”

10 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-valentine

During this Valentine’s Week, why not invite your students to spend a few minutes with a famous literary Valentine: the earliest poem we have by the great American writer Emily Dickinson (1830–1886). It’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of February.

Addressed to an unnamed young man when Dickinson was about twenty, the poem’s message is simple: everything in the universe eventually pairs up, you know, and my five friends and I are all charming single ladies — so don’t dilly-dally, young man: pick one of us!

Awake Ye Muses Nine

Awake ye muses nine, sing me a strain divine,
Unwind the solemn twine, and tie my Valentine!

Oh the Earth was made for lovers, for damsel, and hopeless swain,
For sighing, and gentle whispering, and unity made of twain.
All things do go a courting, in earth, or sea, or air,
God hath made nothing single but thee in His world so fair!
The bride, and then the bridegroom, the two, and then the one,
Adam, and Eve, his consort, the moon, and then the sun;
The life doth prove the precept, who obey shall happy be,
Who will not serve the sovereign, be hanged on fatal tree.
The high do seek the lowly, the great do seek the small,
None cannot find who seeketh, on this terrestrial ball;
The bee doth court the flower, the flower his suit receives,
And they make merry wedding, whose guests are hundred leaves;
The wind doth woo the branches, the branches they are won,
And the father fond demandeth the maiden for his son.
The storm doth walk the seashore humming a mournful tune,
The wave with eye so pensive, looketh to see the moon,
Their spirits meet together, they make their solemn vows,
No more he singeth mournful, her sadness she doth lose.
The worm doth woo the mortal, death claims a living bride,
Night unto day is married, morn unto eventide;
Earth is a merry damsel, and heaven a knight so true,
And Earth is quite coquettish, and beseemeth in vain to sue.
Now to the application, to the reading of the roll,
To bringing thee to justice, and marshalling thy soul:
Thou art a human solo, a being cold, and lone,
Wilt have no kind companion, thou reap’st what thou hast sown.
Hast never silent hours, and minutes all too long,
And a deal of sad reflection, and wailing instead of song?
There’s Sarah, and Eliza, and Emeline so fair,
And Harriet, and Susan, and she with curling hair!
Thine eyes are sadly blinded, but yet thou mayest see
Six true, and comely maidens sitting upon the tree;
Approach that tree with caution, then up it boldly climb,
And seize the one thou lovest, nor care for space, or time!
Then bear her to the greenwood, and build for her a bower,
And give her what she asketh, jewel, or bird, or flower —
And bring the fife, and trumpet, and beat upon the drum —
And bid the world Goodmorrow, and go to glory home!

You can just enjoy “Awake ye muses nine” as a clever literary Valentine, of course, but you can also use it to teach much more. First, show your students that the whole poem is written in couplets — rhyming pairs of lines that are delightful to read aloud: divine–Valentine, swain–twain, air–fair, one–sun, and so on. The meter is not entirely regular, but the first two lines, which introduce the poem by means of a traditional invocation of the muse(s), are perfect examples of iambic hexameter. (Most of the other lines in the poem have 13 syllables rather than 12 and they exhibit a fair amount of syncopation, just like in music.)

[Emily Dickinson] — Emily Dickinson, circa 1847. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

And who are these “muses nine”? Your River Houses dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) will answer that question and will provide you with a whole bonus sidebar on the history of the world “muse.” And don’t miss the lovely vocabulary to explore throughout: strain, damsel, swain, consort, precept, pensive, eventide, coquettish, bower — wonderful words, every one!

What other literary delights and poetical productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Sing me a strain divine: 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 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. 🖋

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – February 2020

9 February 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-02-lunar

There’s a full moon tonight, so that means it’s time for a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses.

The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and to share their results with other homeschool families.

Here’s an outline of the idea, along with a list of some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents!) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:

➢ The Lunar Society of the River Houses (riverhouses.org/lunar)

Browse through that project list and find one or two that would be a good fit for your family and a good match for your interests. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be well on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. 🔬 🔭 🖥 🦋 🔍 ⚗️ ⛏ 📖 🌲 😊

Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their accomplishments.

As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past lunar month on the two types of projects I participate in: eBird monitoring of bird populations, and distributed computing research using the Berkeley open infrastructure application. You and your students can participate right now in these projects, and in many others too.

On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I’ve been tracking the birds in a small riverside park near me (eBird hotspot L6926932) and have so far contributed a total of 667 checklists (daily observation reports) for this locality — it’s a site that had never been documented before. When all the checklists are combined and charted automatically by eBird you can really get a sense of the seasonal distribution and migration patterns for the year — take a look:

➢ Seasonal Bar Chart for Nashua River Site L6926932 (ebird.org/barchart?r=L6926932)

And here’s a recent sample checklist so you can see what they look like:

➢ Sample Checklist for Nashua River Site L6926932

You can start keeping a similar eBird list for a location near you — your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more useful results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website (ebird.org) and start exploring. (Note that the Great Backyard Bird Count, this coming weekend, is an associated project and a great way to get started.)

Distributed computing projects use idle time on your computer to perform scientific calculations on various kinds of complex data. The most popular distributed computing projects run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform (BOINC), and I contribute computer time (whenever my laptop is plugged in) to three of these: (1) the SETI@Home project, sponsored by the University of California, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (really!); (2) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; and (3) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy.

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, SETI@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually processed and how much your team has processed — they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. (And while they are running, both Einstein@Home and SETI@Home have cool screensavers that show you in real time what your computer is analyzing.) 📡

[For embedded images click to attached blog post]

And here’s another level of skill development for your high school (or even advanced middle school) students: once you’ve processed a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. Using Google Sheets, I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results, and this is what it looks like:

[For embedded images click to attached blog post]

That’s just a simple graphing exercise — nothing particularly profound. It’s something that can be refined, developed, and expanded in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in many different scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The examples above are just a few that happen to interest me — pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects in a great variety of areas that you and your family can join.

What scholarly and scientific explorations have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

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

❡ Featured this month at Zooniverse: Looking for a good place to get started? Zooniverse.org is one of the biggest clearinghouses for citizen science projects, and each month on their front page they specially feature one of their many research projects you can join. This month’s featured project is Bash the Bug — Help Fight Antibiotic Resistance! (Yes, that’s something you and your students can really work on from your home computer.) If you’re looking for a project to get yourself started, this one might be a good choice. 😊

❡ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. 📸

❡ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended backyard night-sky guide and world atlas (which has an astronomical section) will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. 🦉 🌠

❡ Whether they work together or apart: This is one of our regular Lunar Society Bulletins about the many cooperative research projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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