Archives for June 2020

🌠 JOIN AN ASTEROID RESEARCH PROJECT for International Asteroid Day!

30 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-tunguska

Today is International Asteroid Day! (Bet you didn’t know that, did you.) In honor of this important occasion, why not join a real scientific research project called Asteroids@Home, sponsored by the Astronomical Institute of Charles University in Prague. It’s one of the distributed computing projects we recommend as part of our “Lunar Society” idea to get homeschoolers involved in the many scientific projects that are now available online:

➢ About Asteroids@Home (asteroidsathome.net)

➢ Join Asteroids@Home (asteroidsathome.net/boinc)

Participating in Asteroids@Home involves downloading a small application that runs in the background on your computer — the Berkeley network computing “BOINC” application — and then “attaching” to the Asteroids@Home project. Then, while you’re working or napping or eating, your computer will be doing scientific calculations on the shapes, sizes, and orbits of asteroids. (Cool, yes?) If you have high school students with a serious interest in science, they can explore the Asteroids@Home website and learn all sorts of advance asteroidal astronomy. If not, you can just pat yourself on the back that your little home academy is contributing to the advancement of space science.

I’ve been running Asteroids@Home on my computer for a while now, and I’ve created a placeholder for a River Houses team right here:

➢ River Houses Asteroids@Home Team

Get Asteroids@Home running on your homeschool computer and you can join! 😊

But why is today International Asteroid Day? Because June 30th is the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia, one of the most mysterious astronomical events ever recorded.

U.S.S.R. stamp from 1958 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Tunguska Event and the work of Soviet scientist Leonid Kulik (1883–1942) who tried to identify its cause.

Scientists still dispute what happened over the remote Tunguska River area on this day back in 1908, but it’s generally believed that an asteroid perhaps 300 feet in diameter exploded in the atmosphere and leveled all the trees over an area of 800 square miles. No impact crater has ever been found, so it’s thought that the object vaporized several miles above the ground, although some researchers believe it was following a glancing trajectory and passed through the atmosphere almost horizontally. The Tunguska explosion, had it occurred in a populated area, would have easily destroyed a large city.

The Asteroids@Home project seeks to increase our knowledge of the thousands of asteroids that orbit the sun along with us. You can contribute to that effort in your homeschool, and there’s no better day to begin than International Asteroid Day! 😊

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in a variety of scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects, in addition to Asteroids@Home, that you and your family can join.

What scientific discoveries will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

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

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 28 June 2020

28 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-06-28

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.

🌞🌏🌕 A PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE will be visible this coming Saturday–Sunday night (4–5 July) over much of the United States. It’s only a penumbral eclipse and won’t be especially dramatic, but it’s certainly worth watching if you have clear skies. Check the eclipse page at timeanddate.com to find the exact timing for your specific location, and go out with your young astronomers and take a look!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Wyoming, and our COUNTRIES are Tanzania 🇹🇿, Thailand 🇹🇭, Timor-Leste (East Timor) 🇹🇱, and Togo 🇹🇬. (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 at its first quarter — 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 (28 June 2020) — Today is the 180th day of 2020; there are 186 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). 📚 On this day in 1914 the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo set World War I in motion, and on this day in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles brought that war to an end. (See pages 370–375 in your homeschool history encyclopedia for an overview of “The Great War.”) ⚔️ 🕊

Monday (29 June 2020) — The famous French economist and freedom-philosopher Frédéric Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. 🇫🇷 And today is the birthday of the French writer and air force pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), author of The Little Prince. 🐘

Tuesday (30 June 2020) — Today is International Asteroid Day, marking the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska Event when a meteoroid perhaps a much as 600 feet long exploded in the atmosphere and flattened more than 700 square miles of forest in Siberia. 🌠

Wednesday (1 July 2020) — Midnight tonight (1–2 July) is the mid-point of this leap year: 183 days have passed, and 183 days remain. 🗓 Today is the birthday of the great German mathematician and polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). 🧠 It’s also the birthday of the German–Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865), “the savior of mothers,” who discovered that deaths from childbed fever could be dramatically reduced by requiring physicians delivering babies to wash their hands. 👨‍⚕️ On this day in 1863, the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg began. Over three days of fighting, Union and Confederate forces suffered more than 40,000 casualties. ⚔️ And the devastating World War I Battle of the Somme began on this day in 1916. ⚔️ Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Historic City of Ayutthaya in Thailand. 🇹🇭 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of July is William Ralph Emerson’s American anthem “A Nation’s Strength,” for Independence Day. 🇺🇸 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Thursday (2 July 2020) — On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution, declaring the Thirteen Colonies independent of Great Britain. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993), the first African American appointed to the United States Supreme Court. 👨🏾‍⚖️ And, the first Walmart store opened on this day in 1962 in Rogers, Arkansas! 🛒

Friday (3 July 2020) — On this day in 1775, on orders from the Continental Congress and a year before Independence was declared, George Washington took command of the thousands of New England militiamen encamped outside of Boston, and the Continental Army was born. 🇺🇸 Today is the birthday of the early American painter John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), who memorialized many prominent figures of the American Revolutionary period. 🎨 And today is also the birthday of the American songwriter, actor, and Yankee Doodle Dandy George M. Cohan (1872–1942). 🎵 One of the most mysterious archeological objects in the world, the Phaistos Disk, was discovered on this day in 1908 in the ancient Minoan palace of Phaistos on Crete. Believed to be about 3500 years old, it is covered with a spiral of stamped symbols that appear to represent an unknown form of writing. 𐇵 You can learn more about the Minoan civilization that produced the Phaistos disk (and see a picture of it) on page 76 of your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 🐬 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the brilliant Tanagers and the peculiar Western Spindalis. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (4 July 2020) — HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! 🎆 On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1802, the United States Military Academy opened at West Point, New York. ⚔️ The great American novelist and short-story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on this day in 1804. 🖋 On this day in 1826, on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson died in Virginia and John Adams died in Massachusetts. 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1872, Calvin Coolidge, 30th President of the United States, was born in Plymouth Notch, Vermont. ⛰ And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (5 July 2020) — One of the most famous books in the history of science, Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), was published in London on this day in 1687. 📖 And somewhat less sublime: the canned luncheon meat SPAM was first introduced to the American market on this day in 1937! 🍽

🥂 THIS WEEK’S TOAST is one of our traditional offerings for Independence Day:

To the memory of the man
That owned the land,
That raised the corn,
That fed the goose,
That bore the quill,
That made the pen,
That wrote the Declaration of Independence.

❡ 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: The island nation of Timor-Leste (East Timor) in southeast Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the wildlife-rich Irabere River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Irabere 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. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Wyoming, Tanzania, Togo, and More

28 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-wyoming

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:

🇺🇸
Wyoming State Bird and Flower
WYOMING (the 44th state, 10 July 1890) — The Cowboy State, the Equality State. Capital: Cheyenne. Wyoming can be found on page 590 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Algonquin words for ‘large prairie place,’ ‘at the big plains,’ or ‘on the great plain.’” (almanac page 422). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website: www.wyo.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:

🇹🇿 TANZANIA in eastern Africa. Population: 56,985,045. Capital(s): Dodoma and Dar es Salaam. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.tanzania.go.tz (in Swahili and English).
🇹🇭 THAILAND in southeastern Asia. Population: 68,804,427. Capital: Bangkok. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.thaigov.go.th (in Thai and English).
🇹🇱 TIMOR-LESTE (East Timor) in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Population: 1,352,718. Capital: Dili. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: timor-leste.gov.tl (in Timorese, Portuguese, and English).
🇹🇬 TOGO in southwestern Africa. Population: 8,390,953. Capital: Lomé. Government: Presidential republic. Website: primature.gouv.tg (in French).

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 Hercules 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🔭 ☄️ CHARLES MESSIER and the Most Beautiful Objects in the Universe

26 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-messier

Today in the birthday of a famous French astronomer who cataloged the most beautiful objects in the universe — so he could ignore them.

Charles Messier (1730–1817) was a comet hunter. He spent hours at his telescope looking for faint fuzzy blobs that were slightly moving against the distant stellar background — the sure sign of a comet that might be on its way toward us. But Messier was often distracted, sometimes for days, by faint fuzzy blobs that turned out to be not moving, and so were not comets.

He decided to compile a catalog of these not-comet objects to prevent himself and others from wasting time on them, and the now-famous Messier Catalog was born.

What Messier compiled, without realizing it, was a catalog of many of the most spectacular astronomical objects in the sky — nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies — objects that were poorly understood from a scientific point of view in his own day. (The nature of galaxies, for example, as independent “island universes,” was not understood until well into the twentieth century, more than a hundred years after Messier’s death.)

You can find a spectacularly illustrated modern collection of all the Messier objects at the Hubble Space Telescope’s website:

➢ The Hubble Space Telescope’s Catalog of Messier Objects

And if you have a small homeschool telescope, you can spot many of them on a dark night from your own backyard. 🔭

So, happy birthday, Charles! 🎉 You didn’t become especially famous for your comets. ☄️ But you did become very famous for your not-comets. 😊

What celestial sights and astronomical apparitions will you be examining in your homeschool this Hercules 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 regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Wood-Warblers (II)

26 June 2020 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-warblers-ii

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 (once again) the Wood-Warblers (pages 452–485), the little jewels of the American forests. Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’re spreading the Wood-Warblers out over two weeks because there are so many of them: about 109 in the western hemisphere (the only place they occur) and 57 in North America.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these weekly overviews is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes every Friday 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 information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here again is the bird guide’s introduction to this week’s group, written in the customary telegraphic style:

“WOOD-WARBLERS — Family Parulidae. About half of the many species in this colorful New World family occur in N.A. [North America] Most are highly migratory; a few reach central S.A. [South America] Species: 109 World, 57 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. How many species? (109 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (57 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Small, colorful, highly migratory, 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 Common Yellowthroat (page 464), a little masked warbler with a loud voice.

[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 Common Yellowthroat? (5 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Geothlypis trichas.) 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.)

Many warbler species live high up in the tree canopy, but Yellowthroats typically prefer low brush and thickets, often near water. Their loud and repetitive call — wichity wichity wichity — is often heard long before the bird is seen. The males have the characteristic black mask that gives them away; the females are much plainer and can be difficult to distinguish from other female warblers, especially in the fall.

For a second species in the Wood-Warbler family this week, take a look at the Yellow-rumped Warbler (page 472), another species that is common across the entire United States. Yellow-rumps are highly migratory like most warblers, but they are one of the few species that will occasionally overwinter in northern areas if they have a good supply of food available — bayberries are one favorite in the northeast, as is suet at a birdfeeder.

[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 one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore. For a third warbler this week, instead of a common species why not take a look at one of the rarest birds in North America: Kirtland’s Warbler (page 478). Kirtland’s Warblers nest only in young stands of Jack Pine in northern Michigan, and nowhere else in the world. Current estimates put the total population at about 5,000 individuals.

[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 Hercules 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 Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland

24 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-switzerland

Switzerland in west-central Europe is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Switzerland’s World Heritage Sites: the Abbey of St. Gall.

The Abbey of St. Gall was one of the focal points of intellectual life on the European continent during the middle ages:

“The Abbey of St. Gall is located in the town of St. Gall in the north-eastern part of Switzerland, and largely owes its present appearance to the construction campaigns of the 18th century. It is an impressive architectural ensemble comprising different buildings regrouped around the main square of the abbey: the west side includes the ancient abbatial church (the present cathedral), flanked by two towers and the ancient cloister, which today houses the abbatial Library; located on the east side is the ‘Neue Pfalz,’ the present seat of the canton authorities. The northern part of the square is composed of buildings of the 19th century: the ancient arsenal, the Children’s and Guardian Angels’ Chapel and the former Catholic school.

“The Abbey of St. Gall is an outstanding example of a large Carolingian monastery and was, since the 8th century until its secularisation in 1805, one of the most important cultural centres in Europe. It represents 1200 years of history of monastic architecture and is a typical and outstanding ensemble of a large Benedictine convent. Almost all the important architectural periods, from High Middle Ages to historicism, are represented in an exemplary fashion. Despite the diversity of styles, the conventual ensemble gives the impression of overall unity, bordered on the north and to the west by edifices of the town of St. Gall that are, for the most part, intact.

“The High Baroque library represents one of the most beautiful examples of its era, and the present cathedral is one of the last monumental constructions of Baroque abbatial churches in the West. In addition to the architectural substance, the inestimable cultural values conserved at the Abbey are of exceptional importance, notably: the Irish manuscripts of the 7th and 8th centuries, the illuminated manuscripts of the St. Gall School of the 9th and 11th centuries, documents concerning the history of the origins of Alemannic Switzerland as well as the layout of the convent during the Carolingian era (the only manuscript plan of that time remaining worldwide, conserved in its original state, representing a concept of monastic organisation of the Benedictine order).“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #268)

The Abbey’s library houses one of the richest collections of medieval manuscripts in the world.

Library of the Abbey of St. Gall, Switzerland. (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 will you be exploring in your homeschool this Hercules 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. 🌍

📜 🇺🇸 CELEBRATE THE FOURTH OF JULY at the National Archives (Online!)

23 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-archives-fourth

We’ve all missed out on many social opportunities this year because of the coronavirus pandemic, but one benefit has been that many previously local events have been made available online. The National Archives in Washington — home of the Declaration of Independence — has always celebrated Independence Day, but if you couldn’t get to the nation’s capital to attend, you were out of luck. But this year, for the first time, the party will be available online for everyone!

➢

You can find the whole schedule of events, educational, historical, and celebratory, at the ArchivesJuly4.org website:

“Join the National Archives for its first-ever virtual July 4th celebration! For 50 years, the Archives has celebrated the founding of the United States that includes a traditional reading ceremony of the Declaration of Independence on the Museum steps. This year, the National Archives will lift the words of the Declaration of Independence off of its well-worn parchment and bring them to homes across the country online, while providing a host of educational activities for the whole family!“ (archivesjuly4.org)

It’s an ideal homeschool family activity for the upcoming holiday — no matter where you may be!

What other educational treasures have you discovered, online or offline, in your library this Hercules 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: “The Swing” for Summer

22 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2020-the-swing

Many of the weekly poems we write about here at the River Houses are aimed at high-school–level homeschoolers, but this week’s poem, for the fourth week of June, is just easy summer fun for all ages: Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Swing,” for summertime play.

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside —

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown —
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

“The Swing” was published in Stevenson’s classic collection A Child’s Garden of Verses, one of the best-loved children’s books of all time.

Illustration for “The Swing” by E. Dorothy O’Reilly, *A Child’s Garden of Verses* (1908).

What wonderful words and poetical productions will you be studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Up in the air and down: 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. 😊

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Robert Louis Stevenson) 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 21 June 2020

21 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-06-21

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Idaho, and our COUNTRIES are Switzerland 🇨🇭, Syria 🇸🇾, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯. (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 (21 June 2020) — HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads everywhere! 👨‍👧‍👦 Today is the 173rd day of 2020; there are 193 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 also the birthday of American painter and illustrator Rockwell Kent (1882–1971). 🎨

Monday (22 June 2020) — On this day in 1633, the Catholic Church forced Italian scientist Galileo Galilei to “abjure, curse, and detest” the view he formerly supported, namely that the earth revolved around the sun and was not fixed at the center of the universe. 🔭 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of June is Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Swing,” for summertime play. 🌞 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Tuesday (23 June 2020) — The great English mathematician Alan Turing was born on this day in 1912. His pioneering work in computer science and cryptanalysis was instrumental in the breaking of German codes during World War II. 🖥

Wednesday (24 June 2020) — On this day in the year 1497, the Italian-English explorer John Cabot (ca. 1450–1500) landed in Newfoundland and became the first European since the Vikings, centuries before, to set foot in North America. ⚓️ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland. 🇨🇭

Thursday (25 June 2020) — On this day in 1876, the combined forces of several Plains Indian tribes under the command of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated a U.S. Army regiment under the command of George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known ever since as “Custer’s Last Stand.” ⚔️ And today is the birthday of American children’s book illustrator Eric Carle (b. 1929), author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and founder of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. 👨‍🎨

Friday (26 June 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great French astronomer Charles Messier (1730–1817), who accidentally documented and numbered many of the most beautiful objects in the universe. 🔭 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will once again visit with the Wood-Warblers. (There are a lot of them!) Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (27 June 2020) — Today is the birthday of the pioneering African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). ✒️ And it’s also the birthday of the American children’s entertainer Bob Keeshan (1927–2004), better known as Captain Kangaroo! 📺

Sunday (28 June 2020) — On this day in 1914 the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo set World War I in motion, and on this day in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles brought that war to an end. (See pages 370–375 in your homeschool history encyclopedia for an overview of “The Great War.”) 🕊

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May neither threats nor allurements have any effect on the man of principle.”

🌍 🇨🇭 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Switzerland in central Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Aare River, a tributary of the Rhine and one of the most important rivers of Switzerland. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Aare River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? 😊

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Idaho, Switzerland, Tajikistan, and More

21 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-idaho

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.

🇺🇸
Idaho State Bird and Flower
IDAHO (the 43rd state, 3 July 1890) — The Gem State. Capital: Boise. Idaho can be found on page 569 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Said to be a coined name with the invented meaning ‘gem of the mountains’; suggested for the Pikes Peak mining territory (Colorado), then applied to the new mining territory of the Pacific Northwest. Another theory suggests Idaho may be Kiowa Apache term for the Comanche” (almanac page 422). State bird: Mountain Bluebird (bird guide page 408). Website: www.idaho.gov.

❡ 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:

🇨🇭 SWITZERLAND in central Europe. Population: 8,348,737. Capital: Geneva. Government: Federal republic. Website: www.ch.ch (in English and several other languages).
🇸🇾 SYRIA in the Middle East. Population: 20,893,752. Capital: Damascus. Government: Authoritarian presidential republic. Website: www.egov.sy (in Arabic).
🇹🇼 TAIWAN off the southeast coast of Asia. Population: 23,577,456. Capital: Taipei. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.taiwan.gov.tw (in Chinese and English).
🇹🇯 TAJIKISTAN in central Asia. Population: 8,740,073. Capital: Dushanbe. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.president.tj (in Tajik, Russian, English, and Arabic).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

🗓 ⛱ SUMMER IS HERE! (Astronomically Speaking)

20 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-06-solstice

Today is the June solstice — we call it the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the winter solstice. The summer solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of summer, just as the winter solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of winter.

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

➢ The June Solstice: The Longest and Shortest Day of the Year

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 Hercules 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. 🍂 ⛄️ 🌷 ⛱

🌅 WATCH THE SUMMER SOLSTICE AT STONEHENGE

19 June 2020 by Bob O'Hara

Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-06-stonehenge

This Saturday, June 20th, is the summer solstice, and you and your students can mark this astronomically significant annual occasion with a live broadcast of sunset and sunrise from Stonehenge, the ancient astronomical landmark in southern England.

There will be a live stream of the event available via Youtube. Check it carefully for your local times. The Stonehenge sunset will take place about 3:40 p.m. Eastern U.S. time on Saturday the 20th. Sunrise will take place about 11:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. time, also on Saturday the 20th (which will be early on the morning of Sunday the 21st at Stonehenge). Notice how short the night-time interval is on this “longest day” of the year: only about seven hours at the high latitude of Stonehenge.

Stonehenge usually draws large crowds of visitors each year for the summer solstice, but this year the entire site is closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. That may permit the film crew to get especially good views this year — we shall see.

What celestial sights and astronomical alignments will you be examining in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 🔭

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular 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. 🗞

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