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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 3 May 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-05-03

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.

🐦 🦅 May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of extra homeschool notes on one of the world’s most wonderful natural phenomena.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Nevada, and our COUNTRIES are Portugal 🇵🇹, Qatar 🇶🇦, Romania 🇷🇴, and Russia 🇷🇺. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing, heading toward full on the 7th — a good time for moon watching! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more!

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (3 May 2020) — Today is the 124th day of 2020; there are 242 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 also is the birthday of the famous Italian Renaissance historian and political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). 👑 And on this day in 1715, Edmund Halley (of comet fame) successfully predicted, to within four minutes’ accuracy, a total solar eclipse that was visible across Europe. 🌍 🌑 ☀️

Monday (4 May 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). 🎨 And today is also International Firefighters Day! 👨‍🚒

Tuesday (5 May 2020) — The famous performance venue known today as Carnegie Hall opened in New York City on this day in 1891, with the great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) as guest conductor. 🎵 And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library (which we hope will be possible soon). This month: the Artistic 700s. 📚

Wednesday (6 May 2020) — Today is the birthday of the American admiral and polar explorer Robert Peary (1856–1920). 🎿 On this day in 1954, British athlete Roger Bannister (1929–2018) ran history’s first four-minute mile. 🏃 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the historic Garrison Border Town of Elvas and its Fortifications in Portugal. 🇵🇹

Thursday (7 May 2020) — Two great “B’s” were born on this day: the English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889) and the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). 🖋 🎼 And on this day in 1915, a German U-boat sank the passenger liner R.M.S. Lusitania, killing nearly 1200 civilians. It was one of the principal events that drew the United States into World War I. 🚢 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society (riverhouses.org/lunar). 🌕

Friday (8 May 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great Austrian-British economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992). 💰 And today in 1945 was V-E Day, the end of World War II in Europe. ✌️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of May is Anne Bradstreet’s “In Reference to Her Children,” for Mother’s Day and all homeschool moms. 👩‍👧‍👦 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the melodious Thrushes. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (9 May 2020) — Lincoln Cathedral was consecrated on this day in the year 1092. It was the first building to surpass the Great Pyramid of Giza in height and was the tallest building in the world for more than 200 years. ⛪️ And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: the pole star Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor, the Little Bear (which includes the Little Dipper). 🌟

Sunday (10 May 2020) — HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to homeschool moms everywhere! ❤️ On this day in 1775, in one of the great early successes of the American Revolution, a small group of colonial militia under the command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold (not yet a traitor) seized British-held Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain “in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!” 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1869 at Promontory Point, Utah, a golden spike joined east and west and completed the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States. 🚂

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May courage ever be united with humanity.”

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

“A footbridge over the Alcantarilha river which leads to the Alcantarilha saltmarshes close to the town of Armação de Pera, Algarve, Portugal.” (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: Nevada, Portugal, Russia, and More

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-nevada

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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Nevada State Bird and Flower
    NEVADA (the 36th state, 31 October 1864) — The Silver State, the Sagebrush State. Capital: Carson City. Nevada can be found on page 578 in your almanac and on plates 37 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Spanish, meaning ‘snow-clad’” (almanac page 422). State bird: Mountain Bluebird (bird guide page 408). Website: nv.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:

  • 🇵🇹 PORTUGAL in southwestern Europe. Population: 10,328,384. Capital: Lisbon. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.portugal.gov.pt (in Portuguese).
  • 🇶🇦 QATAR in the Middle East. Population: 2,406,676. Capital: Doha. Government: Absolute monarchy. Website: portal.www.gov.qa (in English and Arabic).
  • 🇷🇴 ROMANIA in southeastern Europe. Population: 21,381,356. Capital: Bucharest. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.gov.ro (in Romanian, English, and French).
  • 🇷🇺 RUSSIA in eastern Europe and Asia. Population: 141,944,641. Capital: Moscow. Government: Semi-presidential federation. Website: government.ru (in Russian and English).

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 (real or virtual) 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. 🇺🇸 🌎