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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 22 March 2020

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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.

The canyon of the Morača River in central Montenegro. (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: Wisconsin, Monaco, Morocco, and More

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-wisconsin

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:

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    Wisconsin State Bird and Flower
    WISCONSIN (the 30th state, 29 May 1848) — The Badger State. Capital: Madison. Wisconsin can be found on page 589 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Indian name, spelled Ouisconsin or Mesconsing by early chroniclers, believed to mean ‘grassy place’ in Chippewa. Congress made it Wisconsin” (almanac page 422). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: wisconsin.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:

  • 🇲🇨 MONACO on the Mediterranean coast of France. Population: 30,825. Capital: Monaco. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gouv.mc (in French and English).
  • 🇲🇳 MONGOLIA in central Asia. Population: 3,136,737. Capital: Ulaanbaatar. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: president.mn (in Mongolian and English).
  • 🇲🇪 MONTENEGRO in southeastern Europe. Population: 612,107. Capital: Podgorica. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.me (in Bosnian, Serbian, and English).
  • 🇲🇦 MOROCCO in northwestern Africa. Population: 34,637,293. Capital: Rabat. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.maroc.ma (in Arabic, English, and several other languages).

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 been making in your homeschool this Leo 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Happy Birthday Bach!

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Take a moment today to introduce your homeschool students to a four-minute musical masterpiece, the Little Fugue, written by one of the world’s greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born on this day in 1685.

Here’s a beautiful version of the Little Fugue played by Stephen Malinowski and presented in what I think is a really captivating manner for kids: a graphical animation of the notes with their pitches and durations:

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And here’s another version of the Little Fugue performed by Jonathan Scott in what might be called its natural habitat: the organ loft of a church. (Much of Bach’s music was church music written for the pipe organ, “the king of instruments.”) The video does a good job of showing the complex operation of the organ, which requires the performer to exercise not only both hands, but both feet as well:

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And here’s the Little Fugue again, but arranged this time in a very different way for a saxophone quartet by Staff Sergeant David Parks of the United States Army Field Band:

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If any of those performances catch your students’ attention, there’s a whole universe of Bach available online — more than enough to convert today’s little homeschool lesson into a week-long music festival of your own devising.

As one next step, you could watch this wonderful educational performance of a Bach concerto by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, complete with a detailed introduction from a young Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990), and with a very young Glenn Gould (1932–1982) — one of Bach’s greatest twentieth-century interpreters — at the piano:

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And here’s a remarkable thing for your students to observe: Gould plays the entire piece with no sheet music. He kept every note, every inflection, all in his head.

What musical discoveries have you made and what artistic anniversaries have you marked in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Explore more: You can find several lists of noted musical composers and performers starting on page 221 in your recommended homeschool almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Why not use those lists and make up an impromptu homeschool research project: have your students copy out separate lists of composers from different centuries, or from different countries, and find examples of their music online. Can you get a sense for how musical styles changed from century to century? Are there distinct national styles that you can recognize? 🎵

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Arts & Music posts and also a Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries post. 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. 🗞

☄️ SATURDAY STARS: There May Be a Comet Coming This Spring!

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-c-2019-y4-atlas

Here’s something to look forward to: a possible bright comet this spring!

Astronomers are keeping a close eye on a comet named C/2019 Y4 ATLAS, discovered right at the end of last December. It’s now passing near the orbit of Mars on its way toward the Sun. Comet magnitudes are notoriously difficult to predict — some comets unexpectedly brighten and become “Great Comets,” while others that seem promising fizzle out. But there are some indications that C/2019 Y4 ATLAS may put on a pretty good show toward the end of May when it will be passing through the constellations Perseus and Taurus. Here’s some semi-technical analysis from the Universe Today website:

If you miss it, you’ll have to wait quite a while for it to come around again:

“On an estimated 5,467 year orbit, Comet Y4 ATLAS last visited the inner solar system sometime back in the late 4th millennium BC, and will next grace our skies in the late 76th century AD. The comet’s orbit is inclined 45 degrees relative to the ecliptic, and it just passed opposition on February 17th. At its closest, the comet will be moving at 2 degrees per day through the sky in late May, about four times the apparent diameter of the Full Moon.“ (universetoday.com)

Some beautiful remote images of the new comet are starting to appear. The fuzzy turquoise spot below the left-center — that’s it:

Comet C/2019 Y4 ATLAS, lower left-center. (Image: Michael Jäger.)

So cross your fingers, and maybe if we’re lucky this one will go down in homeschool history as the Great Comet of 2020. ☄️

What astronomical observations are you making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 🔭

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

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

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

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Crows and Jays (I)

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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 Crows and Jays (pages 364–373). Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’re spreading the Crows and Jays out over two weeks because they’re so familiar and there are quite a few of them: 126 around the world and 21 in North America. This week we’ll look at the Crows, and next week, the Jays.

[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:

“CROWS · JAYS — Family Corvidae. Harsh voice and aggressive manner draw attention to these large, often gregarious birds. Powerful, all-purpose bill efficiently handles a varied diet. Species: 126 World, 21 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. How many species? (126 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (21 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Loud, gregarious, varied diet, and so on.) (And “gregarious” is certainly a wonderful word — be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look that one up.) 🔎

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 good old American Crow (page 372).

[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 American Crow? (17½ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Corvus brachyrhynchos.) 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 American Crow is one of the most familiar of North American birds, occurring across almost all of the United States and Canada except for parts of the desert southwest. They are common in urban, suburban, and rural environments, and since they eat almost anything, they are as often seen looking for dead fish along a beach as they are loitering around a shopping mall trash bin. Crows are vocal, sociable birds, and in the winter they often gather at night into noisy communal roosts that may contain thousands of birds.

[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 a bigger and shaggier relative of the American Crow, the Common Raven (page 372), a storied species (“Nevermore!”) that is found across all of Europe and northern and western North America.

[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 Leo 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🗓 🌷 SPRING IS HERE! (Astronomically Speaking)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students about the seasons and the stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended River Houses astronomy guide (riverhouses.org/books) has descriptions and maps of all the constellations that point out the seasonal highlights, and the astronomical section of your recommended world atlas has beautiful large charts of both celestial spheres. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🔭

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our regular posts on Homeschool Astronomy and on Homeschool Terms & Calendars. 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 homeschool year. 🍂 ⛄️ 🌷 ⛱

🌍 🇲🇺 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Aapravasi Ghat in Mauritius

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The island-nation of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Mauritius’ World Heritage Sites: the remains of the historic Aapravasi Ghat (“Immigration Depot” in Hindi).

Some of the surviving buildings of the Aapravasi Ghat (Immigration Depot) on Mauritius. (Image: traveltriangle.com.)

The Aapravasi Ghat was a focal point of labor migration in the nineteenth century, and it holds a place in the historical imagination similar in some ways to Ellis Island in the United States. Tens of thousands of people from around the borders of the Indian Ocean passed through this facility in hope of finding a better life.

“Located on the bay of Trou Fanfaron, in the capital of Port-Louis, the Aapravasi Ghat is the remains of an immigration depot, the site from where the modern indentured labour diaspora emerged. The depot was built in 1849 to receive indentured labourers from India, Eastern Africa, Madagascar, China and Southeast Asia to work on the island’s sugar estates as part of the ‘Great Experiment’. This experiment was initiated by the British Government, after the abolition of slavery in the British Empire in 1834, to demonstrate the superiority of ‘free’ over slave labour in its plantation colonies. The success of the ‘Great Experiment’ in Mauritius led to its adoption by other colonial powers from the 1840s, resulting in a world-wide migration of more than two million indentured labourers, of which Mauritius received almost half a million.

“The buildings of Aapravasi Ghat are among the earliest explicit manifestations of what would become a global economic system. The Aapravasi Ghat site stands as a major historic testimony of indenture in the 19th century and is the sole surviving example of this unique modern diaspora. It represents not only the development of the modern system of contractual labour, but also the memories, traditions and values that these men, women and children carried with them when they left their countries of origin to work in foreign lands and subsequently bequeathed to their millions of descendants for whom the site holds great symbolic meaning.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1227)

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 are you exploring in your homeschool this Leo 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. 🌍

🎵 MANY WEEKS’ WORTH of MARVELOUS MUSICAL DOCUMENTARIES

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If your social circle is going to be contracting for the next few weeks because of the coronavirus, here are two big musical documentary series that can offer you and your students hours of top-quality educational listening in the comfort of your home.

Thomas Hampson (b. 1955) is one of the world’s leading Classical singers, and his Hampsong Foundation supports a wide range of educational activities in music and music history. Two of the series he has sponsored, “Song of America” and “Singers on Singing,” include more than 40 complete programs to delight the ear and enrich the mind — and they’re all free and available online:

The “Song of America” series is a 13-part musical tour through American history and literature. Each audio program focuses on a composer or on a poet whose work has been set to music — Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Stephen Foster, and many more. A wide range of ready-made lesson plans and worksheets are available for educators.

The “Singers on Singing” series features biographical documentaries and interviews with many of the greatest Classical voices of the last hundred years — and each episode includes a rich assortment of samples of their singing. More than 30 interviews and profiles are available, and each one is accompanied by introductory notes and a complete list of all the music performed.

If your students listen to one of these programs each day for a couple of weeks, they’ll absorb a wealth of musical, literary, and historical knowledge. And if you have little ones who may not be able to follow the whole story yet, just put one of these programs on in the background while they’re building lego castles or coloring in museum coloring books — complex music is good for growing brains.

What musical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Arts & Music posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🎵

🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – March 2020

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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. 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) The Significance of Single Black Mothers Homeschooling — C. Fields-Smith (2020)

Abstract: This final chapter [of an edited volume on Black mothers and homeschooling] discusses the themes of motherhood, faith and spirituality, and race as found across each homeschool mothers’ narratives. The chapter highlights differences among the four mothers’ decision-making and homeschool practice. The chapter further discusses the unexpected finding of Black mothers’ expressions of empathy for public schools and the subsequent constructive criticism of public schools. Single Black mothers’ experience demonstrates the importance of fostering Black children’s sense of ownership and independence in their learning as well as use of child-centered, experiential learning. The chapter suggests a new conception of homeschooling as a pathway to healing.

(2) Lessons Learned From Introducing Preteens in Parent-Led Homeschooling to Computational Thinking — C. Sepúlveda-Díaz et al. (2020)

Abstract: Parents that homeschool their children ignore certain topics when they lack mastery or interest in them. Homeschool groups try to address this issue, cooperatively educating their children. We were contacted by such a group that wanted to introduce their children to computational thinking (CT). These children, aged 7–11, have showed an interest in technology, and use online educational resources. None of the parents felt capable of tutoring the group about CT. They also worried about losing control about how their children interact with technology. We report an intervention over 9 months to introduce eleven young homeschoolers to CT in a suburban environment, describing the impact on parent and children attitudes towards technology and CT. We conclude with three lessons: 1) science-related activities should be used to introduce CT among homeschoolers, 2) “success” is establishing a meaningful relationship with a homeschool group, and 3) activities designed for school children need to be adapted to the homeschooling context.

(3) First They Came for the Unschoolers: A Faircloughian Critical Discourse Analysis of Queensland Home Education Policies — R. English (2019)

Abstract: Increasing numbers of Australian parents, like me, are choosing to home educate. US estimates suggest, within home educated populations, 5 per cent of home education cohorts (Riley, 2018) follow an unschooling, or self-directed education (SDE), approach. In the past, these parents registered with the government department; however, policy changes made in Queensland in May 2018 make registration almost impossible for unschoolers and discriminate against families whose registration was based on a philosophy such as SDE. In this paper, I use Fairclough’s (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis as a tool to interrogate how changes to the Queensland Education Act (2006) in May 2018 privilege a curriculum centric approach to education by requiring families to report on their child’s ‘progress’ in relation to schooled children’s levels. I argue these changes privilege the needs of bureaucrats who are invested in presenting a ‘school’ view of education. Fairclough (2003) would describe this policy change as a change to the social order that privileges the discourse of education over the real education occurring in families that choose to follow an SDE philosophy. By undertaking a Faircloughian Discourse Analysis, the paper analyses the policy shifts in Queensland’s Education Act in regard to home educators. The concluding section of the paper suggests these changes may affect registration rates among SDE families or unschoolers which has both practical and philosophical effects. Practically, the changes affect family support and benefits payments because registration is required to access government support payments. Philosophically, there are wider cultural and social impacts by legitimating government overreach and further entrenching school models of education.

(4) Healing Through Unschooling — D. Michaud (2019)

Abstract: A parent of children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), this author began homeschooling one of her children when he was unable to cope in the mainstream system. When the supports that were working for the child at school were removed, he became violent and aggressive causing him to face multiple suspensions. Together she and her child explored homeschooling, then unschooling where they found hope and healing.

(5) Awakening the Designer: An Exploratory Study of One Homeschool Parent’s Use of Design Thinking to Tackle the “Wicked Problem” of Teaching-and-Learning Reading With a Struggling Learner — B.K. Murphy (2019)

Abstract: This study tells the story of one homeschool parent as she attempted to solve her son’s reading problems. It also investigates whether she intentionally or intuitively engaged in design thinking to create the processes she used to teach-and-learn reading with her son. Homeschool parents assume full responsibility for their children’s educational outcomes, including learning to read. When a homeschool child struggles to read, parents are often at a loss as to how to teach them to become readers. To address the reading-related struggles that homeschool children and parents encounter, this exploratory qualitative research seeks to discover whether design thinking methods could be useful to a homeschool parent to improve her ability to teach her child to read well. Design thinking involves methods that designers use to solve real-world problems. Increasingly, non-design sectors like business, medicine, and education have adopted design thinking methods to solve many types of problems. To that end, this research followed the narrative inquiry methodology based on the Vision in Product design method (Hekkert & van Dijk, 2011) and guided by Riessman’s (2008) dialogic/performative approach and Clandinin and Connelly’s three-dimensional narrative inquiry space (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000). Data collection spanned over a nine-month period and involved several hours of video recording of participant child and parent interactions surrounding reading. The narrative data is reported in the form of a play performance. The study revealed two findings from the analysis. First, the homeschool parent engaged in three teaching-and-learning processes: emotional, intellectual, and practical. Second, she enacted design-thinking and -doing activities along a continuum that can be identified as a design quotient. Design quotients range from intentional awareness of design and acting like a designer, to unawareness of design and not acting like a designer.

What interesting homeschool news and research have you come across this Leo 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 Ides of March

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Yesterday was the Ides of March, the famous day on which Julius Caesar was assassinated in 44 B.C. by members of the Roman senate. Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this Ides of March week is a reflective commemoration of that event by Constantine Cavafy called, naturally enough, “The Ides of March,” and translated here from Cavafy’s original Greek by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard:

The Ides of March

My soul, guard against pomp and glory.
And if you can’t curb your ambitions,
at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously.
And the higher you go,
the more searching and careful you need to be.

And when you reach your summit, Caesar at last —
when you assume the role of someone that famous —
then be specially careful as you go out into the street,
a conspicuous man of power with your retinue;
and should a certain Artemidoros
come up to you out of the crowd, bringing a letter,
and say hurriedly: “Read this right away.
There are important things in it concerning you,”
be sure to stop; be sure to postpone
all talk or business; be sure to brush off
all those who salute and bow to you
(they can be seen later): let even
the Senate itself wait — and find out at once
what important message Artemidoros has for you.

Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933) was one of the most prominent Greek poets of the twentieth century, and many of his poems are modern commentaries and reflections on ancient Greek and Roman literature.

Cavafy’s “The Ides of March” focuses on Artemidorus, a minor character in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar, who learns of the conspiracy and writes a letter to Caesar warning him of it. In Act 2, Scene 3, we see Artemidorus in private reading the letter aloud to himself:

“Caesar, beware of Brutus. Take heed of Cassius. Come not near Casca. Have an eye to Cinna. Trust not Trebonius. Mark well Metellus Cimber. Decius Brutus loves thee not. Thou hast wronged Caius Ligarius. There is but one mind in all these men, and it is bent against Caesar. If thou beest not immortal, look about you. Security gives way to conspiracy. The mighty gods defend thee!” (Julius Caesar, Act 2, Scene 3)

But when Artemidorus tries to get the letter to Caesar in the street he is rebuffed, and the warning is never heard. Cavafy’s narrator warns all people of ambition — and all of us — to heed the minor characters of the world: the news they carry may be the most important of all.

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you studying in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the life and times of Julius Caesar, turn to page 108 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 🗡

❡ 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. 📖