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🗓 ⚰️ REMEMBERING the Boston Massacre, 1770–2020

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History-minded families who will be homeschooling over the next few years are very fortunate because we are approaching the commemoration-filled 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. In fact, that long anniversary period can fairly be said to begin this coming week.

On the 5th of March in 1770, just 250 years ago this Thursday, a group of British soldiers in Boston fired into a crowd of civilians that were harassing them outside the Custom House on what was then called King Street. Three Americans were killed on the spot, two more died of their wounds shortly after, and very quickly the event came to be called the Boston Massacre. We recognize it now as one of the precipitating events of the American Revolution.

Paul Revere’s famous (and rather propagandistic) engraving of the Boston Massacre. Produced and sold within days of the event, it helped to fix a not-entirely-accurate image of the Massacre in American minds. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you want to follow the many American Revolution anniversary events that will be taking place in the next few years, a good site to bookmark is Revolution250, sponsored by a wide range of historical organizations and institutions:

For the Boston Massacre anniversary in particular, the Massachusetts Historical Society has put together an extensive site with original documents, images, and historical commentary — everything you and your students need for a homeschool unit study:

Keep your eyes open for many more excellent educational opportunities as this period of Revolutionary anniversaries continues.

What historical events have you been studying in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of American Revolution, turn to page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 📚

❡ 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. 🗞

📖 🎉 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Dord Day!

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Happy Dord Day! On this day each year we celebrate dictionaries and the people who make them — and we remind ourselves that lexicographers are human, just like us. 😊

On the 28th of February in 1939, an editor working on the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary was examining the second edition (1934) to see what entries needed to be updated. He came across the word “dord,” a synonym (according to the dictionary) for the word “density” as used in physics and chemistry. The word had no associated etymology, so the editor decided to investigate.

The definition of the word ‘dord’ as it appeared in Webster’s New International Dictionary (1934).

Upon investigation, it turned out (amusingly and embarrassingly) that there is no such word as “dord,” even though it appeared in the big Webster’s New International Dictionary. A science specialist working on the previous edition had submitted a request to have the letters “D” and “d” added as abbreviations for “density,” but the request slip was written “D or d” — and through a series of minor editorial missteps, this became “Dord” and it was added the dictionary as a word meaning “density.”

In later editions, after it had been spotted, the error was removed, leaving the dictionary more accurate, but less entertaining.

Today’s little lesson for your homeschool students: dictionaries are compiled by people just like you and me, and even though they try very hard to be accurate, sometimes they make mistakes just like we do.

What wonderful words — real or imaginary — have you discovered in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: The delightful Fun With Words website has the full story of “dord,” along with a host of other wild and woolly word-wonders to explore. 🔍

❡ Looking in the lexicon: Our recommended River Houses homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books), the American Heritage Fifth, does not, alas, include the word “dord,” but you can send your students to search nevertheless. Where would it be if it were there? Right between Dorchester and Dordogne. 📖

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Language & Literature 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. 🗞

🦜 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Parrots

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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 birds (two different families) are the Old World Parrots (pages 326–327) and the African and New World Parrots (pages 326–333).

[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 are the bird guide’s introductions to this week’s groups, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“OLD WORLD PARROTS — Family Psittaculidae. A widespread Old World family. Three species established [in North America]. Species: 184 World, 3 N.A.“

“AFRICAN AND NEW WORLD PARROTS — Family Psittacidae. Two genera and 20 species found in Africa; rest in the New World. In U.S., mostly from CA, TX, and FL, where most are descendants of escaped cage birds. Species: 167 World, 17 N.A.“

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 African and New World Parrots, for example. How many species? (167 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (17 species in North America, but most of these are descendants of escaped cage birds or are found on the extreme southern U.S. border.) What are their distinctive features? (Generally green and red, heavy hooked bills, long tails, 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, for the African and New World Parrot family, why not investigate the Nanday Parakeet (page 328), and example of a South American species that has escaped from captivity in Florida and California and become locally naturalized.

[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 Nanday Parakeet? (13¼ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Aratinga nenday.) 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. If you don’t happen to live in one of the local areas where this species has become naturalized, you’ll probably be out of luck.) 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.)

Parrots are found around the world but mainly in the tropics and the southern hemisphere. There are today no native parrot species in the United States, with the possible exception of some (such as the Green Parakeet, page 330) that may occasionally stray a short distance north across our border with Mexico. The species shown in your bird guide are almost all exotic (non-native) species that have escaped from captivity and become naturalized in areas such as Miami and Los Angeles.

Sadly, there was once a beautiful native parrot in the United States, the Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), but it became extinct in 1918. You can still find in your bird guide, however, on page 557 in the special appendix on extinct and accidental species. The Carolina Parakeet was common across much of the southeast, and while it was hunted — both for its plumage and as a fruit-orchard pest — its rapid extinction is still something of a mystery.

Carolina Parakeets (Conuropsis carolinensis), by John James Audubon (1833). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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. For a second species this week, why not take a look at the Monk Parakeet (page 328), a more cold-tolerant species that has been able to survive for a number of years as far north as the New York City region and may eventually increase and become naturalized.

[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 made 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. 🌎

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🌍 🇱🇹 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Kernavė Archaeological Site in Lithuania

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Lithuania in eastern Europe is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Lithuania’s World Heritage Sites: the Kernavė Archaeological Site.

Earthen mounds marking the locations of medieval forts at Kernavė, Lithuania. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Kernavė site contains archaeological evidence of human habitation from 8000 B.C. all the way to the Middle Ages:

“Kernavė Archaeological Site, situated in the valley of the River Neris in eastern Lithuania, provides evidence of human settlements spanning some 10 millennia. Covering an area of 194.4 ha, the property contains archaeological evidence of ancient land use from the late Palaeolithic Period to the Middle Ages. It comprises a complex ensemble of archaeological elements, including the town of Kernavė, a unique complex of impressive hill forts, unfortified settlements, burial sites and other archaeological, historical and cultural monuments.

“The property contains an extraordinarily rich concentration of archaeological evidence, encompassing natural processes of glacial retreat within a long and continuous period of human occupation and activity. The earliest evidence of human occupation between the 9th and 8th millennia B.C., and subsequent permanent inhabitation until the Late Middle Ages, can be found in several cultural layers and burial sites. The spectacular complex of five hill forts dates back to the 13th century, when Kernavė was an important feudal town of craftsmen and merchants who required the protection of such a complex defence system. The town of Kernavė was destroyed by the Teutonic Order in the late 14th century, but the site continued to be used until modern times.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1137)

Kernavė today is a major center of historical tourism in Lithuania, with outdoor exhibits, historical reenactments, and a modern archeological museum.

The Kernavė Archaeological Museum. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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. 🌍

📚 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦 A FREE CENSUS LESSON from the Library of Congress

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The year 2020 is a federal census year, so why not try out this ready-made unit study on the census from the Library of Congress.

Workers tabulating census records at the Section of Vital Statistics, circa 1930. (Image: Library of Congress.)

The U.S. Constitution calls for an enumeration of the nation’s population every ten years, and that constitutional provision has been faithfully carried out every decade since 1790. This year (2020) is a census year, and if you’d like to use the occasion for a homeschool lesson on the history of census taking in the United States, the educators at the Library of Congress have got you covered with a little unit study all ready to go:

A collection of historical photos of census workers from years gone by illustrate the counting process and how it has changed over time. Suggested discussion questions are provided to help get your students thinking about history, technology, and historical interpretation.

“Woman using a Hollerith pantographic card-punching machine.” (Image: Library of Congress.)

I’ve been seeing lots of ads for census-taker jobs in the last few weeks. If you’re seeing them too, point them out to your students and use the ads as a lead-in for this fine library history lesson. ✅

What educational discoveries have you made 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. 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website (riverhouses.org) has links to several important online library collections that we like to explore, as well as permanent links to WorldCat and the WorldCat Library Finder. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (rather than a phone) and give them a browse. 😊

❡ 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: Watchers of the Skies

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Have you noticed that our homeschool astronomy posts are often headed “Watchers of the Skies“? If you didn’t know where that title came from, today you’ll find out. 🔭

The shortest month of the year is winding down. Why not send it off with a literary flourish by introducing your students to one of the most famous poems in the English language, John Keats’ sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February:

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The “Chapman” of the title is George Chapman (ca. 1599–1634), an Elizabethan writer and Classical scholar, and this poem is an account of Keats’ first reading of Chapman’s English translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The story — a wonderful one to share — is that Keats was introduced to Chapman’s translation by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke (1787–1877), and the two young men stayed up all evening reading it to each other. The next morning, when Clarke came down to breakfast, he found this sonnet waiting for him on the breakfast table.

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a perfectly crafted example of a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines, thematically and structurally arranged into an initial group of eight (the octave) and a final group of six (the sestet). Encourage your students to map the rhyme scheme and see how tight it is: ABBA ABBA CD CD CD. The first eight lines tell of the writer’s prior experience in “realms of gold” — the imaginary (literary) landscape of ancient gods and kings and poets. He had heard tell that the greatest of the ancient poets was Homer, but it was not until he read Chapman’s translation that he truly understood why this was so. And at that point the sonnet turns: reading Chapman was like discovering a new planet, or a new ocean he had never seen before.

There’s some wonderful vocabulary here for your students to work through in your family dictionary (riverhouses.org/books): realms, bards, fealty, demesne, ken, surmise. The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 and the minor planet Ceres was discovered in 1801, so the discovery of new planets was very much a matter of public interest in Keats’ day. Unfortunately, Keats’ historical recollection was a bit off: the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa (ca. 1475–1519) — not Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) — was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama (Darien) and see the Pacific Ocean. But that’s OK; it’s a poem, not a history text.

There are a great many recordings of this sonnet available online. Here’s a good one that will help your students get the pronunciation (and so the rhymes) correct:

➤

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” has been one of the most widely read, taught, and quoted sonnets in the English language for almost two hundred years. This week, invite your young scholars to make it their friend for life.

❡ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies: 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: For a quick homeschool review of the Romantic Movement in art and literature, turn to page 338 in your homeschool history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 📚

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including John Keats) 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. 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 23 February 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-02-23

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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 (and planners!) for the entire year.

🗓 🗡 This is the last full week of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses. Leo Term, our spring term, begins next Sunday, the first of March.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Michigan, and our COUNTRIES are Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, and (North) Macedonia 🇲🇰. (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 new — that’s the best time of the month for dark-sky 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 (23 February 2020) — Today is the 54th day of 2020; there are 312 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). 📚 Today is the birthday of the great German-English composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). 🎺

Monday (24 February 2020) — On this day in 1803, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the principle of judicial (Constitutional) review. ⚖️ And today is the birthday of the American painter and illustrator Winslow Homer (1836–1910). 🎨

Tuesday (25 February 2020) — The first African-American to serve in the U.S. Congress, Hiram Rhodes Revels, Republican of Mississippi, was sworn in on this day in 1870. 🇺🇸 And today is the birthday of the great French impressionist painter and sculptor Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). 🎨

Wednesday (26 February 2020) — Today is the birthday of the German-American clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss (1829–1902). 👖 It’s also the birthday of the great American songwriter and rock-and-roll pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino (1928–2017). 🎹

Thursday (27 February 2020) — Today is the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), one of the most popular poets of the nineteenth century. 🖋

Friday (28 February 2020) — Happy Dord Day! 🎉 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Parrots! 🦜 Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (29 February 2020) — Happy Leap Day! Or, if you want to sound splendiferously vocabularic, Happy Intercalary Day! 🗓

🗓 🦁 Leo Term 2020 Begins

Sunday (1 March 2020) — Today is the first day of LEO TERM, our spring term in the River Houses, named for the Great Lion of the Heavens. 🦁 It’s also the birthday of the great Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). 🎹 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of March is a famously amusing collection of nuggets from Wallace Stevens, for migrating Red-winged Blackbirds and the coming spring thaw. 💧 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for the close of Orion Term, is adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson and A.E. Housman: “To the hunter home from the hill.”

❡ 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: Lithuania is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Šventoji River, the longest river within Lithuania. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Šventoji River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Šventoji River near Vepriai, Lithuania. (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: Michigan, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, and More

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-michigan

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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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Michigan State Bird and Flower
    MICHIGAN (the 26th state, 26 January 1837) — The Great Lakes State. Capital: Lansing. Michigan can be found on page 574 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Chippewa mici gama, meaning ‘great water,’ after lake of the same name” (almanac page 422). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: www.michigan.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:

  • 🇱🇮 LIECHTENSTEIN in central Europe. Population: 38,844. Capital: Vaduz. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.liechtenstein.li (in German).
  • 🇱🇹 LITHUANIA in eastern Europe. Population: 2,762,485. Capital: Vilnius. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: lrvk.lrv.lt (in Lithuanian).
  • 🇱🇺 LUXEMBOURG in western Europe. Population: 617,185. Capital: Luxembourg. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: gouvernement.lu (in French, German, English, and Luxembourgish).
  • 🇲🇰 MACEDONIA in southeastern Europe. Population: 2,122,693. Capital: Skopje. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.vlada.mk (in Macedonian, Albanian, and English). (Note: The country of Macedonia recently renamed itself North Macedonia, and it’s now on page 820 in your almanac. Beginning with the 2020–2021 school year this entry will be moved to the N section of the alphabet.)

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 excursions have you made 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: Caracaras and Falcons

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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 birds are the Caracaras and Falcons (pages 320–325), fast-flying birds of prey.

[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:

“CARACARAS · FALCONS — Family Falconidae. These powerful hunters are distinguished from hawks by their long wings, which are bent back at the “wrist” and, except in the Crested Caracara, narrow and pointed. Females are larger than males…. Recent genetic studies show a close relationship to parrots and songbirds. Species: 64 World, 11 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 Falcon family, for example. How many species? (64 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (11 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Powerful hunters, long pointed wings, females larger than males, 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 fastest bird in the world: the Peregrine Falcon (page 324).

[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 Peregrine Falcon? (16–20 inches long, with a wingspan of up to 44 inches.) What is its scientific name? (Falco peregrinus.) 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.)

The Peregrine Falcon is one of the most widespread bird species in the world, occurring on every continent and in all habitats except rainforest and desert. It’s also the fastest bird in the world, reaching speeds of more than 200 miles per hour in attack-dives called stoops. Peregrines hunt mainly other birds in flight, and they have been particularly prized by falconers for centuries.

[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. For a second species, why not take a look at the American Kestrel (page 322), the smallest North American falcon, about the size of a Blue Jay.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

Or if you live along the southern U.S. border, why not look at the Crested Caracara, an odd large falcon that, as its name suggests, has a crest.

[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 made 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. 🌎

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

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

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-copernicus

Sign up: riverhouses.org/newsletter

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:

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. 🗞