Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-08-30
Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two or three of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Add your name to our free weekly mailing list to get these posts delivered right to your mailbox, and visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.
๐บ๐ธ ๐๐๐ WE’VE COMPLETED our grand year-long tour of the U.S. STATES and the COUNTRIES of the worldย โ take a look at all the wonderful places we visited! Our new tour for the 2020โ2021 homeschool year will begin next week. Print your own copy of our River Houses States & Countries Calendar and follow along with us, from Delaware to Hawaii and Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
๐ THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing, heading toward full on September 2nd. 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 342โ357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more!
๐ TODAY, Sunday (30 August 2020) โ Today is the 243rd day of 2020; there are 123 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different kinds of calendars on pages 350โ356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books).ย ๐ Today is also the birthday of the novelist Mary Shelley (1797โ1851), author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). ๐ญ๐บ The great physicist and Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford was born on this day in 1871. โ๏ธ It’s also the birthday of baseball great Ted Williams (1918โ2002), the last major league player to bat over .400 in a season (1941). โพ๏ธ
Monday (31 August 2020) โ Italian educator and physician Maria Montessori was born on this day in 1870. Her approach to early childhood education remains popular in homeschools as well as in public and private schools around the world. ๐ฉ๐ผโ๐ซ
๐ก ๐ The 2020โ2021 River Houses Year Beginsย โ Let the river run!
๐ ๐ฆข Cygnus Term 2020โ2021 Begins
Tuesday (1 September 2020) โ A New River Houses Homeschool Year Begins! ๐ Today is the first day of Cygnus Term, our fall term in the River Houses, named for the Great Swan of the Heavens.ย ๐ฆข Andย for this first week of September, this first week of Cygnus Term, and this first week of the 2020โ2021 River Houses year, our homeschool poem-of-the-week will be our traditional extract from Jonathan Swift’s adaptation of the Roman poet Horace (65โ8 B.C.): “Aย handsome house to lodge aย friend, / Aย river at my garden’s end.” Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout this new (poetical!) homeschool year. ๐ And since this is also the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you and your students to learn all about your local library by starting on our twelve-month tour of the Dewey Decimal system. This month: Discovering Dewey.ย ๐
Wednesday (2 September 2020) โ On this day in 1752, nearly two centuries after the countries of Continental Europe, Great Britain and her American colonies adopted the Gregorian Calendar: Wednesday, September 2nd, 1752, was followed by Thursday, September 14th, 1752. ๐ Our Wednesday World Heritage tours that began all the way back last September are now complete! Take a look at all the world’s wonders we explored and stop by our homeschool calendar page to print a copy of the new schedule we’ll be following in the new 2020โ2021 homeschool year! ๐บ๐ณ And, thereโs a full moon tonight, so that means weโll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society (riverhouses.org/lunar).ย ๐
Thursday (3 September 2020) โ The American Revolution came to a formal end on this day in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and the new United States of America. ๐บ๐ธ๐๐ฌ๐ง
Friday (4 September 2020) โ On this day in the year 476, Emperor Romulus Augustulus was deposed by the provincial warlord Odoacer who declared himself King of Italy, bringing to an end the Western Roman Empire, which had lasted for nearly 500 years. ๐ Our Friday Bird Families post this week, the first of the 2020โ2021 homeschool year, will introduce you to your recommended bird guide. ๐ฆ Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow the flyways with us throughout the coming year.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (5 September 2020) โ In response to the Intolerable Acts, the first Continental Congress assembled on this day in 1774 in Philadelphia. ๐บ๐ธ And on this day in 1836, Sam Houston was elected the first President of the Republic of Texas. โ ๐ต 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.ย ๐ญ
Sunday (6 September 2020) โ On this day in 1522, the ship Victoria, the only survivor of the Magellan expedition, arrived back in Spain having completed history’s first circumnavigation of the world. The voyage took just over three years. ๐๐๐๐ Today is also the birthday of English scientist John Dalton (1766โ1844), one of the founders of modern chemistry. โ๏ธ
๐ฅ THIS WEEK’S SPECIAL TOAST is our traditional offering for the beginning of every new River Houses year: “Let the river run!”
โกโ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week โ 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 unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast this week? ๐ฅ
๐ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Starting next Sunday we’ll be posting a Weekly World River in this space from one of our regular countries-of-the-week. Why not do your own homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the 2020โ2021 year? You can investigate the one we select each week, or start with the river lists in your homeschool almanac (pages 691โ693), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas or in a handy encyclopedia either online or at your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you!ย ๐
What do you have planned for your homeschool this week, this month, this term, and this year?ย ๐
โกโ 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.ย ๐
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