Archives for 2020

We divide the homeschool year into four three-month terms in the River Houses. Today is the beginning of Orion Term, our winter term, named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. Orion Term runs from December through February.

Our November 2020 full-moon report on the real scientific and scholarly projects around the world that you and your students can join and contribute to from the comfort of your little home academy.

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons for the week ahead, including: Orion Term, Holiday Music Month, American authors, falling rocks, quantum physicists, Dewey decimals, West Indian rivers, a toast to the chase, and more!

Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: Rhode Island, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Egypt.

Come along on our homeschool tour of North American bird families and pick up some great science and natural history teaching ideas along the way. This week: the Sandpipers (Part II), familiar shorebirds all around the world.

Take a just moment this week to introduce your homeschool students to a beautiful four-hundred-year-old Dutch folk tune that has become a Thanksgiving classic.

“Through the air there’s a calling from far away, / There’s a voice I can hear that will lead me home.” (Some lovely music and words from Stephen Paulus and Michael Dennis Browne, for homeschool Thanksgiving.)

Why not give thanks in your homeschool this Thanksgiving week for the life of Thomas Tallis, the grand master of early polyphonic music, who died on this day in 1585.

“Oh, some like magic made by wands, / And some read magic out of books, / And some like fairy spells and charms / But I like magic made by cooks!” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Rowena Bastin Bennett, for Thanksgiving!)

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons for the week ahead, including: Thanksgiving thanks, ethereal music, famous books, free cities, literary philanthropists, Danish rivers, a toast to two great American birds, and more!

Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: North Carolina, Cyprus, Czechia (Czech Republic), Denmark, and Djibouti.

Come along on our homeschool tour of North American bird families and pick up some great science and natural history teaching ideas along the way. This week: the Sandpipers (Part I), familiar shorebirds all around the world.

“What place is this? Where are we now?” (Marking the 157th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, with help from Ken Burns and Carl Sandburg.)

Take your young astronomers outside this week and look to the constellation Leo for the annual Leonid meteor shower.

“Stars, I have seen them fall, / But when they drop and die / No star is lost at all / From all the star-sown sky.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from A.E. Housman, for the annual Leonid meteor shower.)

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons for the week ahead, including: Gettysburg addresses, shooting stars, youthful wizards, great whales, energetic matter, Costa Rican rivers, a toast to the People, and more!

Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: New York, Costa Rica, Cote d’Ivoire, Croatia, and Cuba.

Make the acquaintance of the variable star Algol this month — “the demon star” in the constellation Perseus the Hero and one of the brightest stars in the northern hemisphere sky — and make it your homeschool friend for life.

Come along on our homeschool tour of North American bird families and pick up some great science and natural history teaching ideas along the way. This week: the Lapwings, Plovers, and Jacanas.

You and your homeschool students can contribute to an important historical documentary project by interviewing American military veterans in your family or community for the Library of Congress.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: / Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. / At the going down of the sun and in the morning / We will remember them.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Laurence Binyon, for Veterans Day and Armistice Day.)