Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-03-22
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.
🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Wisconsin, and our COUNTRIES are Monaco 🇲🇨, Mongolia 🇲🇳, Montenegro 🇲🇪, and Morocco 🇲🇦. (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 (22 March 2020) — Today is the 82nd day of 2020; there are 284 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 English artist Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), for whom the famous Caldecott awards for illustrated children’s books are named. 🎨 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of March is Robert Frost’s lyrical meditation “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” for early spring. 🌱 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋
Monday (23 March 2020) — On this day in 1775 at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech “Give me liberty, or give me death!” 🇺🇸
Tuesday (24 March 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great Victorian artist and designer William Morris (1834–1896). 🖌 It’s also the birthday of the Hungarian-American magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926). Shazam! 🎩 🐇
Wednesday (25 March 2020) — Today is the birthday of the American agronomist and Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug (1914–2009), who may have saved more lives than any human being in history. 🌽 🌾 🌱 For some notes on his importance, see pages 464–465 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 🔍 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape in Mongolia. 🇲🇳
Thursday (26 March 2020) — On this day in 1812, the Gerrymander was born! 🗳 And on this day in 1830, The Book of Mormon was first published in Palmyra, New York. 📖 Three great writers were also born on this day: A.E. Housman (1859–1936), Robert Frost (1874–1963), and Tennessee Williams (1911–1983). 🖋
Friday (27 March 2020) — On this day in 1912, the Japanese government presented a gift of 3000 cherry trees to the United States to line the banks of the Potomac River and other sites in Washington, D.C., where they and their successors may still be seen today. 🌸 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will continue looking at the Crows and Jays. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅
Saturday (28 March 2020) — The great Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born on this day in 1483. 🎨
Sunday (29 March 2020) — Today is the birthday of two unrelated Waltons: the English composer William Walton (1902–1983), and the American businessman Sam Walton (1918–1992), the founder of Walmart. 🎼 🛒
🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May we never wear the yoke of bondage, nor put it on the neck of posterity.”
❡ 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!”). Many of our current toasts are taken from an old anthology called Clark’s Original Songs (Rye, Sussex, 1846). What will you toast this week? 🥂
🌍 🇲🇪 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Montenegro in southeastern Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Montenegro’s canyon-carving Morača River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Morača River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ 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. 🗓