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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 30 August 2020

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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.

🇺🇸 🌎🌍🌏 WE’VE COMPLETED our grand year-long tour of the U.S. STATES and the COUNTRIES of the world — take a look at all the wonderful places we visited! Our new tour for the 2020–2021 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.

🌔 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 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more!

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (30 August 2020) — 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 350–356 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 Today is also the birthday of the novelist Mary Shelley (1797–1851), author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). 🌭🍺 The great physicist and Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford was born on this day in 1871. ⚛️ It’s also the birthday of baseball great Ted Williams (1918–2002), the last major league player to bat over .400 in a season (1941). ⚾️

Monday (31 August 2020) — 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. 👩🏼‍🏫

🏡 🎉 The 2020–2021 River Houses Year Begins — Let the river run!

🗓 🦢 Cygnus Term 2020–2021 Begins

Tuesday (1 September 2020) — A New River Houses Homeschool Year Begins! 🗓 Today is the first day of Cygnus Term, our fall term in the River Houses, named for the Great Swan of the Heavens. 🦢 And for this first week of September, this first week of Cygnus Term, and this first week of the 2020–2021 River Houses year, our homeschool poem-of-the-week will be our traditional extract from Jonathan Swift’s adaptation of the Roman poet Horace (65–8 B.C.): “A handsome house to lodge a friend, / A 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. 🖋 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. 📚

Wednesday (2 September 2020) — 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. 🗓 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 2020–2021 homeschool year! 🇺🇳 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). 🌕

Thursday (3 September 2020) — 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. 🇺🇸🕊🇬🇧

Friday (4 September 2020) — 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. 👑 Our Friday Bird Families post this week, the first of the 2020–2021 homeschool year, will introduce you to your recommended bird guide. 🐦 Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow the flyways with us throughout the coming year. 🦅

Saturday (5 September 2020) — In response to the Intolerable Acts, the first Continental Congress assembled on this day in 1774 in Philadelphia. 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1836, Sam Houston was elected the first President of the Republic of Texas. ★ 🌵 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 (6 September 2020) — 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. 🌍🌎🌏🌍 Today is also the birthday of English scientist John Dalton (1766–1844), one of the founders of modern chemistry. ⚗️

🥂 THIS WEEK’S SPECIAL TOAST is our traditional offering for the beginning of every new River Houses year: “Let the river run!”

❡ 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 unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌎 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 2020–2021 year? You can investigate the one we select each week, or start with the river lists in your homeschool 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 at your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you! 🌏

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week, this month, this term, and this year? 😊

❡ 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. 🗓

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📚 FAMILY REFERENCE BOOKS for the New Homeschool Year

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-books

The new homeschool year is about to begin, and if you haven’t already done so, we’d like to invite you to fill up your family reference library for the year ahead.

We recommend six reference books for every homeschool library, and we refer to one or more of these books in almost all our River Houses blog and Facebook posts throughout the year. You can read more about these recommendations and about the reasoning behind them on our “Six Books” page (riverhouses.org/books). The collection includes a comprehensive dictionary, a world atlas, a world almanac, a history encyclopedia, a North American bird guide, and a backyard astronomy guide.

The specific titles we recommend are not children’s books, they are family books, and this collection can form the core of a fine family reference library. These volumes are not intended for use with a specific curriculum, but are instead permanent reference works that can support and supplement any curriculum you choose to follow. The world almanac must be renewed each year, but the others are permanent additions to your library that can strengthen your homeschool teaching for many years to come.

Look over the details of these works and think about adding one or two or all of them to your shelves in the coming weeks.

What educational adventures do you and your students have planned for the wondrous homeschool year ahead? 😊

❡ 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. 📚

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🌋 REMEMBERING the Last Days of Pompeii

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-pompeii

Although there is some debate among scholars, the 24th of August in the year 79 is believed to be the date on which the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed and buried by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The event was of course well known in ancient times — many ancient writers and historians saw it and described it — but the destruction was so complete and the surrounding region was so devastated that as the centuries passed, people gradually forgot where the two cities were located. It was not until the 1700s that Pompeii and Herculaneum were again found and correctly identified, and interest among early archaeologists — and looters and treasure hunters — began to grow.

Here’s a short and very effective professional animation of what it would have looked like from inside the city of Pompeii on that day — sufficiently realistic, perhaps, that small children might find it a bit frightening. No narration, just a series of clips from morning until the next day from a single vantage point:

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And here’s a full BBC documentary on Pompeii that tells the whole story of what is now one of the most famous archaeological sites — and one of the best-documented ancient cities — in the world:

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You can find mentions of Pompeii on pages 110–112 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books), along with lots of historical context that will let you teach an excellent little lesson on this notable anniversary.

What other historical events and anniversaries have you been studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries 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. 🗞

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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 23 August 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-08-23

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two 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.

🗓 💪 This is the last full week of Hercules Term, our Summer term in the River Houses. Cygnus Term, our Fall term, and the new 2020–2021 River Houses year, begin on Tuesday the first of September.

🌎 OUR “STATE” OF THE WEEK, wrapping up our year-long tour with a bonus, is the planet Earth itself, and our “COUNTRIES” are the Solar System and the Universe beyond! 🌌 (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 waxing 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 (23 August 2020) — Today is the 236th day of 2020; there are 130 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 1775, four months after Lexington and Concord, and two months after Bunker Hill, King George III formally proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.” ⚔️

Monday (24 August 2020) — Although there is some debate among scholars, this is generally believed to be the day on which Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, burying the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. 🌋 And speaking of destruction, on this day in 1814, during the War of 1812, British troops captured the city of Washington and burned the White House and the U.S. Capitol. 🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸

Tuesday (25 August 2020) — On the second day of the burning of Washington in 1814, the U.S. Treasury, the Library of Congress, and other public buildings were destroyed by British Troops. 🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of American illustrator Walt Kelly (1913–1973), the creator of the comic strip Pogo. 🎨 And it’s also the birthday of the great American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990). 🎵

Wednesday (26 August 2020) — Today is the birthday of one of the founders of modern chemistry, the great French scientist Antoine Lavoisier (1743–1794), who coined the names “oxygen” and “hydrogen.” ⚗️ And our Wednesday World Heritage tours that began all the way back in September are now complete! Take a look at all the wonderful places we visited and stop by our homeschool calendar page to print a copy of the schedule we’ll be following in the new homeschool year that’s about to begin. 🇺🇳

Thursday (27 August 2020) — One of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history took place on this day in 1883 in the Krakatoa archipelago in Indonesia. Over the course of the previous day an ash cloud seventeen miles high had developed over the islands, and on the 27th four massive explosions occurred, the largest of which was heard 3000 miles away in the Indian Ocean. The ash injected into the atmosphere by the Krakatoa eruption produced vivid sunsets all around the world for many months. 🌋

Friday (28 August 2020) — Today is the birthday of the American naturalist and artist Roger Tory Peterson (1908–1996), whose series of compact field guides helped to make amateur bird study popular around the world. 🦆 On this day in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. 🕊 And our Friday flights with the Families of American Birds are also now complete! Take a look at all the wonderful avian friends we made this past year and print your own Calendar of American Birds to follow during the new homeschool year that’s about to begin. 🦅

Saturday (29 August 2020) — Today is the birthday of the great philosopher of liberty John Locke (1632–1704), whose works influenced the framing of the American system of government. 📖

Sunday (30 August 2020) — Today is the birthday of the novelist Mary Shelley (1797–1851), author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818). 🌭🍺 The great physicist and Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford was born on this day in 1871. ⚛️ It’s also the birthday of baseball great Ted Williams (1918–2002), the last major league player to bat over .400 in a season (1941). ⚾️

🥂 OUR TOAST FOR THE LAST WEEK of every homeschool year is one of our traditional maritime offerings, for all our friends embarking on new voyages: “Fair winds and following seas.”

❡ 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, even the stars: The Universe is our “country” of the week for this last week of the River Houses year, so our Weekly World River is the constellation Eridanus, the Great River of the Heavens. You can chart its course in the astronomical section of your homeschool atlas and in your night-sky guide (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the comprehensive Eridanus entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The constellation Eridanus, the Great River of the Heavens, flowing from beside the feet of Orion (upper left) down below the celestial equator into the southern hemisphere. Look at all those beautiful Greek letters! Can your young scholars identify them? (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ Daughters of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week, 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. 🗓

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🌎 🌌 SUNDAY “STATES” BONUS: The Earth, the Solar System, and the Universe

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-earth

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. We’ve spent the entire past year completing our States & Countries review, and this week we conclude with the whole Earth itself and the wonderful Universe beyond:

  • 🌎 THE EARTH — The Blue Planet, Third Rock from the Sun. Capitals: 196 of them, listed here over the entire past year. The Earth as a whole can be found on plates 3–25 in your homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books). Don’t miss the opportunity to go through that wonderful set of thematic maps with your students, covering everything from topography to population to vegetation to climate to transportation to Internet connectivity and more. Your almanac, too, has facts and figures about the physical Earth on pages 348–349 and in many other locations throughout the volume.

A new River Houses tour of the world will begin next month with the new 2020–2021 homeschool year! Print out your own States & Countries Calendar on our main calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we explore the Blue Planet. 😊

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the states-of-the-week that we post each Sunday all through the year, 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, 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 world 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 in the year ahead, be sure to investigate the resources for teachers available at the Library of Congress.

And now that you’ve spent a year touring everything on the entire Earth 🌐, the whole rest of the Universe awaits you!

  • 🌌 THE UNIVERSE is beautifully illustrated in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) on plates 120–127. You’ll find star-maps for the northern and southern hemispheres, detailed maps of the Moon and Mars, a beautiful chart of the solar system and all the planets, and two amazing illustrations of the Milky Way and the scope of everything that is known. Those few plates are enough to teach an entire year of homeschool astronomy — don’t miss the opportunity to share them with your young scholars today. 🔭

If we lived in a more enlightened age, the background image of the “Universe” plate in your atlas (plate 127) would be recognized the world over as one of the most significant photographs ever taken, like Neil Armstrong’s photograph of Buzz Aldrin standing on the surface of the moon. It’s an image called the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004. The image spans a tiny sliver of the night sky, about one tenth of the diameter of the moon, in the southern constellation Fornax, and it reveals more than 10,000 galaxies, some of them approximately thirteen billion light-years away — the most distant and the most ancient objects ever seen.

The Hubble Ultra-Deep Field (2004). Nearly every spot in the image is an entire galaxy, not a nearby star of our own Milky Way. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

We hope you’ve enjoyed our geographical explorations over the 2019–2020 River Houses year. What grand geographical discoveries will you be making in the wonderful homeschool year ahead? 😊

❡ 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. 🗺

❡ 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 upcoming 2020–2021 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. 🇺🇸 🌎 🌌

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🖋 🏡 ENVOY: A Living River by the Door

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-envoy

The River Houses year is coming to a close and this is our very last homeschool poem-of-the-week for 2019–2020. We hope you and your students have enjoyed visiting with forty-eight of our favorite friends, and we hope that some of them are now your friends as well. 😊

The new school year will begin in a few days, but in the mean time, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) gives the departing year a perfect River Houses send-off:

Envoy

Go, little book, and wish to all
Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall,
A bin of wine, a spice of wit,
A house with lawns enclosing it,
A living river by the door,
A nightingale in the sycamore!

“Envoy” (or its French form, “Envoi”) is a generic title, not a specific one — it’s like “Appendix” or “Afterword.” An “Envoy” in the literary sense is a poetical passport-stamp or note of departure: a short verse that appears at the end of a longer work and that wraps up the whole and sends readers on their way.

Homeschooling, Robert Louis Stevenson style: illustration by Dorothy O’Reilly from a 1908 edition of A Child’s Garden of Verses. (Image: Library of Congress via the Internet Archive.)

As this River Houses year comes to a close, we wish all our readers and friends, by way of envoy, “Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, / A bin of wine, a spice of wit, / A house with lawns enclosing it, / A living river by the door, / A nightingale in the sycamore!”

What wonderful words and poetical productions will you and your students discover in the homeschool year ahead? 🏡

❡ A living river by the door: 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. 📖

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🌎 🇺🇳 🗺 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: A (Nearly) Free World Heritage Wall Map

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-wh-map

Every Wednesday over the past homeschool year we’ve been paying a visit to a World Heritage Site, drawn from one of our countries-of-the-week. The new 2020–2021 year is about to begin, so this is the perfect time to invite you to order a copy of the lovely full-color World Heritage Map that’s available from UNESCO for just the price of shipping (US$3.00).

Front of World Heritage Map, 31 × 20 inches. (Image: UNESCO World Heritage Centre.)

I have a copy myself, and it’s not only a great overview of World Heritage Sites, it’s an excellent general-purpose wall map of the world as well:

“This large format full-colour map features World Heritage sites and brief explanations of the World Heritage Convention and the World Heritage conservation programmes. It is available in English, French and Spanish, [and has] superb photos of World Heritage sites with explanatory captions. The dimensions of the map are 78 cm by 50 cm (31 in. by 20 in.).“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre)

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 post one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week.

Back of World Heritage Map showing complete list of sites. (Image: UNESCO World Heritage Centre.)

You can find a complete list of World Heritage Sites online at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia, and you can order a copy of the World Heritage Map right here:

We’ll be starting up a new World Heritage tour next month as the new River Houses year begins. Download a copy of our printable World Heritage Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us!

What world treasures will you be exploring in the homeschool year ahead? 😊

❡ 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. 🌎🌍🌏

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🇺🇸 🗳 THE CENTENNIAL of the Nineteenth Amendment

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The Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified on this day in 1920, exactly 100 years ago. On this important anniversary, you and your young history students won’t find a better educational resource than this extensive site developed by the U.S. National Park Service:

There are lesson plans, biographical features on the leaders of the women’s suffrage movement, tours of important historic sites, timelines of the ratification campaign, and much more. In particular, take a look at the great series of one-minute videos “Suffrage in Sixty Seconds” that are a perfect introduction for kids:

Spend a few (literal) minutes with that series of videos and you’ll have brand new history experts in your homeschool and a host of topics to talk about for days to come.

[See attached blog post for images and video]

These National Park Service pages contain enough high-quality educational material to do special unit studies through the rest of this centennial year. Take a look and explore!

What other historical anniversaries are you studying in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries 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. 🗞

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🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – August 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-08-research

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. (Facebook readers should click to the attached blog post to find these links live.) In some cases, a paid subscription may be required to read the whole article. The article abstracts and introductions below are quoted in full whenever possible, without editing.

We have four items this month, and the first is another interview with anti-homeschooling Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, who appeared here previously in May and June of this year, as well as back in June of last year, before her work began to attract widespread attention within the homeschooling community.

(1) Will Online Schooling Increase Child Abuse Risks? — E. Bartholet & J. Dwyer, interviewed by J. Neal (2020)

Editor’s introduction: As many public schools across the United States announce plans to continue online learning in the fall due to the threat of coronavirus pandemic, two leading child welfare experts are warning of increased risks of child abuse, as well as educational delays that will most directly impact lower-income families and communities of color. Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet ’65, faculty director of the HLS Child Advocacy Program, has researched and written extensively about the dangers of homeschooling for a subset of children and argued in favor of effective regulation. James Dwyer holds the Arthur B. Hanson chair at the William & Mary School of Law, was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School in fall 2019, and is co-author of the recent book, “Homeschooling: The History and Philosophy of a Controversial Practice.” They are jointly planning a summit on homeschooling.

(2) Homeschooling During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic: The Role of Students’ Trait Self-Regulation and Task Attributes of Daily Learning Tasks for Students’ Daily Self-Regulation — F. Blume et al. (2020)

Abstract: As a means to counter the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, schools were closed throughout Germany between mid-March and end of April 2020. Schooling was translocated to the students’ homes and students were supposed to work on learning tasks provided by their teachers. Students’ self-regulation and attributes of the learning tasks may be assumed to have played important roles when adapting to this novel schooling situation. They may be predicted to have influenced students’ daily self-regulation and hence the independence with which they worked on learning tasks. The present work therefore investigated the role of students’ trait self-regulation as well as task difficulty and task enjoyment for students’ daily independence from their parents in learning during the homeschooling period. Data on children’s trait self-regulation were obtained through a baseline questionnaire filled in by the parents of 535 children (Mage = 9.69, SDage = 2.80). Parents additionally reported about the daily task difficulty, task enjoyment, and students’ learning independence through 21 consecutive daily online questionnaires. The results showed students’ trait self-regulation to be positively associated with their daily learning independence. Additionally, students’ daily learning independence was shown to be negatively associated with task difficulty and positively with task enjoyment. The findings are discussed with regard to students’ daily self-regulation during the homeschooling period.

(3) Lorsque rentrer à l’école, c’est rester à la maison: Homeschooling in France as a Contemporary Critique of Social Institutions — E.T. Ponnou-Delaffon (2020)

Abstract: At first glance, homeschooling appears a fringe phenomenon in France, where it concerns some 25,000 children today — a far cry from the two million home-educated youth in the United States. Yet, this alternative educational practice merits examination due to its recent rise in popularity and the sociopolitical polemics its increased visibility has sparked. Situating these debates in their historical and contemporary context, this article reveals that while l’instruction en famille is indebted to cultural borrowings from the anglophone world, it is also shaped by specifically French developments, dynamics, and traditions. By analyzing political, legal, and media discourse, as well as personal narratives and published data on l’école à la maison, I therefore contend that the phenomenon delineates cultural fault lines which map onto — but also chart territory distinct from — debates in the better-known American context. In particular, I argue that homeschooling in contemporary France exposes crises in the perception of societal institutions and values such as parenting, the state, l’école républicaine, la laïcité, and security and freedom in an age of terrorism.

(4) Exploring the Growth of Homeschooling and Unschooling — G. Riley (2020)

Abstract: Homeschooling has grown exponentially in the past decade. Researchers estimate that almost two million students in the United States are home educated, accounting for over 3% of the school-aged population. Around 10–20% of those who homeschool define their philosophy of homeschooling as unschooling, and that number seems to be growing every day. This chapter provides a summary of the demographics of the homeschooling and unschooling movements, and discusses the tremendous growth seen in the number of diverse families choosing to unschool in the United States.

What interesting homeschool news and research have you come across this Hercules 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. 🗞

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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 16 August 2020

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-08-16

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two 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.

🇺🇸 OUR “STATES” OF THE WEEK are the special U.S. Territories of American Samoa 🇦🇸, Guam 🇬🇺, the Northern Mariana Islands 🇲🇵, Puerto Rico 🇵🇷, the U.S. Virgin Islands 🇻🇮, and the District of Columbia, and our “COUNTRIES” are the five oceans of the world. (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 (16 August 2020) — Today is the 229th day of 2020; there are 137 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 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph cable was put into service with an exchange of messages between U.S. President James Buchanan and Britain’s Queen Victoria. 🇺🇸⌁🇬🇧 Today is also the birthday of the British soldier, writer, and archeologist T.E. Lawrence (1888–1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia. 🐪

Monday (17 August 2020) — Today is the birthday of the American folk hero, soldier, and politician Davy Crockett (1786–1836). 🐻 And on this day in 1807, the world’s first commercial steamboat service was inaugurated when Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat departed New York City for Albany, 130 miles up the Hudson River. 🚢

Tuesday (18 August 2020) — On this day in 1920, exactly one hundred years ago, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified. 🇺🇸 🗳 🎉

Wednesday (19 August 2020) — On this day in 1812, during the War of 1812, the American frigate U.S.S. Constitution defeated Great Britain’s H.M.S. Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia and earned the nickname “Old Ironsides” (because cannonballs bounced off her sturdy hull). Old Ironsides is today the oldest commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy and you can pay her a visit any day you like in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. ⚓️ And speaking of ships, today is also the birthday of Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), the creator of Star Trek! 🚀 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites that began all the way back in September is done! Take a look at all the wonderful places we visited and stop by our homeschool calendar page to print a copy of the new schedule we’ll be following in the new homeschool year that’s about to begin. 🇺🇳

Thursday (20 August 2020) — Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s famous 1812 Overture debuted on this day in 1882 in Moscow. 🎆 Today is also the birthday of the American writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), author of many creepy (but popular) horror stories. 🙀 And on this day in 1975, NASA launched the Viking 1 Mars probe. Viking 1 became the first successful Mars lander and remained in operation for more than six years. (An earlier probe, the Soviet Union’s Mars 3, did successfully land on Mars in 1971, but it transmitted for only twenty seconds.) 🚀

Friday (21 August 2020) — Nat Turner’s Rebellion, one of the largest slave uprisings in early America, began on this night in 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia. ⚔️ And on this day in 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state of the Union. 🇺🇸 The Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017 took place on this day just three years ago — perhaps you saw it! 🌏 🌑 🌞 Our year-long series of Friday Bird Families posts that reviewed all the birds of North America is now complete! 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦜 🦃 🦢 Visit our main River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print a new Calendar of American Birds for the new homeschool year that’s about to begin. 🦅

Saturday (22 August 2020) — The English Civil War between the King and Parliament began on this day in 1642 when Charles I raised the royal standard at Nottingham. To make this anniversary into a nice little homeschool lesson, turn to page 264 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). 👑 ⚔️ Today is also the birthday of famed French pianist and composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918). 🎹 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of August, the last week of the 2019–2020 River Houses year, is “Envoy,” a cheerful farewell wish for happy houses and living waters from Robert Louis Stevenson. 🏡 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us all through the new homeschool year to come. 🖋

Sunday (23 August 2020) — On this day in 1775, four months after Lexington and Concord, and two months after Bunker Hill, King George III formally proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.” ⚔️

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment, is an old traditional: “To the Ballot: may it break the visible and invisible chains of slavery.”

❡ 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, Recitations, &c. (Rye, Sussex, 1846). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌊 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Last week we completed our annual tour of the countries of the world (from which we had been selecting our Weekly World Rivers), so it is only fitting this week that we look to the source of them all. The ancient Greeks believed that the whole world was encircled by a great flowing river, and they personified this universal river as the god Ὠκεανός (Okeanos, Oceanus, Ocean). Okeanos was one of the Titans, a child of Οὐρανός (Ouranos, Uranus, Heaven) and Γαῖα (Gaia, Terra, Earth), and with his sister-wife Τηθύς (Tethys), Okeanos fathered all the rivers of the world. You can read much more about this father of the waters in the comprehensive Okeanos/Oceanus entry in Wikipedia, or perhaps on your next visit to your local library. Our Weekly World River for this next-to-last week of the River Houses year is therefore the World River, Okeanos.

The ancient Greek god Okeanos (Ὠκεανός), father of all the rivers, and his wife Tethys. (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, 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. 🗓

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🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY “STATES”: U.S. Territories, World Oceans, and More

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-us-territories

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. We started our tour at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and are now approaching the end. We’ve completed all the regular states — it’s convenient to have 50 states to cover in a 52-week year! — so we’ll wind up our United States survey with the several small U.S. Territories and Possessions that are scattered around the globe. You can find them all listed in your almanac beginning on page 590:

Another important United States “territory” is our federal city, the District of Columbia, formed originally from parts of Maryland and Virginia, but by design not part of any state:

  • 🇺🇸 THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA along the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. Population: 702,455. Capital: Washington. Official bird: Wood Thrush (bird guide page 412). Website: dc.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the 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 world of new geographical and historical information, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 😊

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning a comprehensive unit-study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress.

And since we’ve now finished up the world’s land areas — the nation-states and the non-national continent of Antarctica — this week we’ll cover what is actually the largest part of the earth’s surface: the oceans. The world’s five oceans, in order of size, with links to their Wikipedia pages, are:

  • 🌊 THE PACIFIC OCEAN between the eastern hemisphere to the west, and the western hemisphere to the east. Area: 60,060,893 sq. mi. Average depth: 14,040 ft.
  • 🌊 THE ATLANTIC OCEAN between the western hemisphere to the west, and the eastern hemisphere to the east. Area: 29,637,974 sq. mi. Average depth: 11,962 ft.
  • 🌊 THE INDIAN OCEAN south of the continent of Asia. Area: 26,469,620 sq. mi. Average depth: 12,274 ft.
  • 🌊 THE SOUTHERN OCEAN surrounding the continent of Antarctica. Area: 7,848,299 sq. mi. Average depth: 14,450 ft.
  • ❄️ THE ARCTIC OCEAN covering the north polar region. Area: 5,427,052 sq. mi. Average depth: 3,406 ft.

A wealth of information and many beautiful maps of the world’s oceans can be found in your current almanac and homeschool atlas as well (riverhouses.org/books).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you made in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

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🖋 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS: “Poor, middle-agèd summer!”

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Click to: riverhouses.org/2020-jackson

Summer is showing its age and the River Houses year is winding down — late August is about to arrive. The Song Sparrows and Yellow Warblers in my neighborhood that had been singing since May have gone quiet, and the thistles and goldenrod are filling up the fields and riverbanks. There can surely be no better homeschool poem-of-the-week for us at this seasonal moment than the lovely sonnet “August” by Helen Hunt Jackson:

August

Silence again. The glorious symphony
Hath need of pause and interval of peace.
Some subtle signal bids all sweet sounds cease,
Save hum of insects’ aimless industry.
Pathetic, summer seeks by blazonry
Of color to conceal her swift decrease.
Weak subterfuge! Each mocking day doth fleece
A blossom and lay bare her poverty.
Poor, middle-agèd summer! Vain this show!
Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset
One meadow with a single violet;
And well the singing thrush and lily know,
Spite of all artifice which her regret
Can deck in splendid guise, their time to go!

Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885) is little remembered now, but she was very popular and widely read in her day. Born Helen Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, she was a childhood friend of Emily Dickinson, and she wrote for many leading magazines of the era, including The Atlantic, still in publication, where this poem first appeared in August 1876.

“Whole [late-summer] fields of golden-rod cannot offset / One [spring] meadow with a single violet.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one in a traditional form, take your time, and don’t worry about “getting” everything right away. A good poem is a friend for life, and as with any friend, it takes several meetings to get acquainted. Before you even start to think about “meaning,” take a look at the poem’s structure. “August” is a sonnet. Sonnets usually have fourteen lines that are grouped into either an octet of eight and a sestet of six (a Petrarchan sonnet), or into four quatrains of four and a couplet of two (a Shakespearean sonnet). I’d say “August” is a bit closer to the Petrarchan type in its sentence arrangement, although it’s a bit of a hybrid — and that’s fine, because creative writers can invent new forms as they please. Sonnets usually have a very precise rhyme-scheme, and you can see that here: I make it out to be ABBA ABBA CDDC DC. By showing your students these details of structure they will come to appreciate the intricate literary craftsmanship that poets put into their work.

And did your young scholars recognize a little punctuational detail that’s important to the poem’s meter and to correct pronunciation? In the phrase I pulled out for the title of this post — “Poor, middle-agèd summer” — Jackson uses a grave accent to indicate that “agèd” is pronounced as two syllables (age-ed) rather than one (aged). (Turn to page 768 in your family dictionary to find an explanation of the grave accent in English.) Each line in this sonnet is ten syllables long, and to maintain that pattern, Jackson needs “agèd” to count as two. The learnèd little  `  accomplishes just that.

What other wonderful words and poetical productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Helen Hunt Jackson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ Poor, middle-agèd summer: 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. 😊

❡ 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. 📖

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