Archives for January 2021

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 31 January 2021

31 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🖍 THIS WEEK (1–5 February) is Color Our Collections Week! Download your own printable supply of free educational coloring books from museums and libraries around the world.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Alabama, and our COUNTRIES are Japan 🇯🇵, Jordan 🇯🇴, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿, and Kenya 🇰🇪. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌖 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning — 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 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (31 January 2021) — Today is the 31st day of 2021; there are 334 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of the great Austrian pianist and composer Franz Schubert (1797–1828). 🎹 It’s also the birthday of baseball great Jackie Robinson (1919–1972), the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues. ⚾️ And on this day in 1930, Scotch Tape first went on the market. 📦

Monday (1 February 2021) — On this day in 1942, at the height of World War II, the Voice of America, the official overseas radio service of the U.S. government, began broadcasting to territories in Europe controlled by the Axis powers. 📻 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of February is Robert Frost’s wintry classic “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” ❄️ Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Tuesday (2 February 2021) — Today is Groundhog Day, the historical cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. ⏚🐖 On this day in 1653, the city of New Amsterdam was incorporated. We know it today as the city of New York. 🏙 And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Linguistic 400s. 📚

Wednesday (3 February 2021) — The Soviet Union’s Luna 9 spacecraft made the first-ever soft landing on the moon on this day in 1966. 🚀 And today is the birthday of the popular American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894–1978). 🎨 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Wadi Rum Protected Area in Jordan. 🇯🇴

Thursday (4 February 2021) — On this day in 1789, the Electoral College unanimously chose George Washington to be the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of Joshua Abraham Norton (1818–1880), better known of Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, an American original. 👑

Friday (5 February 2021) — The largest gold nugget in history, nicknamed the Welcome Stranger, was discovered in Moliagul, Australia, on this day in 1869. It contained more than 200 pounds of gold. 💰 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the the colorful Trogons and Kingfishers. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (6 February 2021) — Today is the birthday of baseball great Babe Ruth (1895–1948). ⚾️ And on this day in 1959, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit chip, the component at the heart of nearly all modern electronic devices, including the one you’re using now. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for that work in 2000. 🥇 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 (7 February 2021) — Today is the birthday of two famous writers: the English novelist Charles Dickens (1812–1870), and the American novelist Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957). 🖋

🥂 ⛄️ OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for frigid February, is one of our traditional offerings: “Here’s to winter – may it always be coaled.”

❡ 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: Kazakhstan in central Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Nura River, one of the principal rivers of northern Kazakhstan. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Nura River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The lovely Nura River in northern Kazakhstan. (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 (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 699–701), 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 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 and follow along with us. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Alabama, Japan, Kenya, and More

31 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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 includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own 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 458), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Alabama State Flag
ALABAMA (the 22nd state, 14 December 1819) — The Camellia State. Capital: Montgomery. Alabama can be found on page 570 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Choctaw word for a Chickasaw tribe. First noted in accounts of Hernando de Soto expedition” (almanac page 459). State bird: Northern Flicker (bird guide page 316). Website: www.alabama.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week, using your reference library 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. 😊

❡ Maps to color: National Geographic has a large blank United States map and a blank world map, complete with flags, printable in sections and ready to receive the colored pencils of your students. Why not give them a try this week. 🖍

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇯🇵 JAPAN off the east coast of Asia. Population: 125,507,472. Capital: Tokyo. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.japan.go.jp (in English).
🇯🇴 JORDAN in the Middle East. Population: 10,820,644. Capital: Amman. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: jordan.gov.jo (in Arabic and English).
🇰🇿 KAZAKHSTAN in central Asia. Population: 19,091,949. Capital: Astana. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.government.kz (in English, Russian, and Kazakh).
🇰🇪 KENYA in eastern Africa. Population: 52,527,936. Capital: Nairobi. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.president.go.ke (in English).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 752–859; 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 Orion 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 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 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 to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦉 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Barn Owls and Typical Owls

29 January 2021 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. 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 (two different families) are the Barn Owls (pages 294–295) and the Typical Owls (pages 294–303).

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes each week 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’s how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

BARN OWLS and TYPICAL OWLS — Families Tytonidae and Strigidae. Distinctive birds of prey, divided by structural differences into two families, Barn Owls (Tytonidae) and Typical Owls (Strigidae). All have immobile eyes in large heads. Fluffy plumage makes their flight nearly soundless. Many species hunt at night and roost during the day. To find owls, search the ground for regurgitated pellets of fur and bone below a nest or roost. Also listen for flocks of small songbirds noisily mobbing a roosting owl. Species: Tytonidae, 19 World, 1 N.A. [North America]; Strigidae, 194 World, 23 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 — about the Barn Owls, for example. How many species? (19 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only one species in North America, and the guide’s map will give us more information about its range.) What are their distinctive features? (Mostly nocturnal, large heads with forward-facing eyes, fluffy plumage, cough up pellets that can be found under roosts, 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, for the Barn Owl family, why not investigate (naturally enough), the Barn Owl (page 294). (There’s only one species in North America, so no extra adjective is usually added to its name.)

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 Barn Owl? (16 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Tyto alba.) 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.)

Barn Owls occur across the country except for the top tier of states, but they are not particularly common, and because they are almost wholly nocturnal they are not often seen. Their numbers have declined in recent years, possibly because of a decline in small-scale agriculture, which provided the varied hunting and nesting habitats they preferred.

In the “Typical Owl” family — so called just to distinguish them from the Barn Owls — why not take a look at the most widespread and familiar North American owl, the Great Horned Owl (page 294). The bird’s “horns” are of course just paired feather tufts, not bony horns as in mammals. And although Great Horned Owls are found across the entire continent, because they are nocturnal they are more often heard hooting in the dark than they are seen in the daylight.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick a species that is near you, or one that looks striking, or one that has a strange name, and explore. For example, take a look at the far-northern Snowy Owl (page 296), one of the few owl species that is largely diurnal; or the tiny Elf Owl of the desert southwest (page 298), which is about the size of a soda can; and so on with as many species as you wish.

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 Orion 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, it can be made solitary or social, 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 (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 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 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 to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – January 2021

28 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

There’s a full moon tonight, so that means it’s time for a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses.

The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and to share their results with other homeschool families.

Here’s our list of just some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents!) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:

➢ The Lunar Society of the River Houses (riverhouses.org/lunar)

Browse through that project list and find one or two that would be a good fit for your family and a good match for your interests. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be well on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. 🔬 🔭 🖥 🦋 🔍 ⚗️ ⛏ 📖 🌲 😊

Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their accomplishments.

As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past lunar month on the two types of projects I participate in: eBird monitoring of bird populations, and distributed computing research using the Berkeley open infrastructure application. You and your students can participate right now in these projects, and in many others too.

On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I recently started documenting a new site, a local college campus that I frequently visit. So far I’ve contributed a total of 99 checklists (observation reports) for this locality — it’s a site that has never been documented before. As more checklists are added, and as eBird combines them and charts them automatically, you’ll be able to get a real sense of seasonal distribution and migration patterns at this location. Here’s a snippet of what that looks like in its early stages — I started keeping records in September:

And here’s a recent sample checklist so you can see what they look like:

➢ Sample Checklist for Campus Site S75408328 (ebird.org)

You can start keeping a similar eBird list for a location near you — your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more useful results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website and start exploring. (Note that the Great Backyard Bird Count, coming up in February, is an associated project and a great way to get started.)

Distributed computing projects use idle time on your computer to perform scientific calculations on various kinds of complex data. The most popular distributed computing projects run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform (BOINC), and I contribute computer time (whenever my laptop is plugged in) to three of these: (1) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; (2) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy; and (3) the Asteroids@Home project, which calculates the shapes and orbits of poorly-known asteroids. (Yes, those are projects you and your students can really contribute to.)

❡ Note: The Asteroids@Home project has unfortunately been down for several weeks now because of a hardware crash. That’s a real-world lesson for students too: in actual scientific research, people sometimes make mistakes and equipment sometimes breaks down.

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, Asteroids@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and you can also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually processed and how much your team has processed — they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. (And while it’s running, Einstein@Home has a cool screensaver that shows you in real time what your computer is analyzing.) 📡

And here’s another level of skill development for your high school (or even advanced middle school) students: once you’ve processed a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. Using an online spreadsheet I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results, and this is what it looks like:

That’s just a simple graphing exercise — nothing particularly profound. It’s something that can be refined, developed, and expanded in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in many different scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The examples above are just a few that happen to interest me — pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects in a great variety of areas that you and your family can join.

What scholarly and scientific explorations have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ The friends who made the future: You can learn more about the original Lunar Society of Birmingham in “The Lunar Men,” a fine short video from History West Midlands. 🌕

❡ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. 📸

❡ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended backyard night-sky guide and world atlas (which has an astronomical section) will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. 🦉 🌠

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

🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Happy Birthday Mozart!

27 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Happy birthday to one of history’s greatest musical composers, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born on this day in 1756!

Whenever you’re looking for a little homeschool lesson on classical music, the best place to start is always the Classics for Kids website:

➢ Classics for Kids (classicsforkids.com)

There you’ll find a giant collection of short profiles of all sorts of famous composers, including Mozart:

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born in Salzburg, Austria, where his father Leopold was a violinist and composer. Wolfgang (or Wolferl, as his family called him) was a child prodigy. He composed his first piece of music at age five; he had his first piece published when he was seven; and he wrote his first opera when he was twelve. By the time Wolfgang was six, he was an excellent pianist and violinist. He and his sister Maria Anna (known as Nannerl) traveled all over Europe performing for royalty. (classicsforkids.com)

That profile page includes links to several kid-friendly (and teacher-friendly) introductions to major works by Mozart, including this famous little “Turkish Rondo” — a great three-minute piece to play today to get everyone marching around the living room:

You’ll also find a long and detailed educator packet with lesson plans that will help you teach a comprehensive unit study on Mozart’s work if you’re so inclined:

➢ Lesson Plans for Mozart’s Music (classicsforkids.com)

Happy birthday, Wolferl!

What other historico-musical holidays and anniversaries are you marking in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Arts & Music posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🌍 🇮🇱 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Necropolis of Bet She’arim in Israel

27 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Israel in the Middle East is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Israel’s World Heritage Sites: the Necropolis of Bet She’arim.

The Necropolis of Bet She’arim is an ancient Jewish cemetery established during the early Roman Empire:

Hewed into the limestone slopes of hills bordering the Vale of Jezre’el, a series of man-made catacombs was developed from the 2nd century AD as the necropolis of Bet She’arim. It became the primary Jewish burial place outside Jerusalem following the failure of the second Jewish revolt against Roman rule and the catacombs are a treasury of eclectic art works and inscriptions in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, and Palmyrene. Bet She’arim is associated with Rabbi Judah the Patriarch, the spiritual and political leader of the Jewish people who composed the Mishna and is credited with Jewish renewal after 135 AD.

The catacombs of Bet She’arim show the influence of classical Roman art including human images, inscriptions, and decorative details, and include iconographic motifs and multi-language inscriptions testifying to cross-cultural interaction with the Greco-Roman artistic cultural world of Europe, Asia Minor and Mesopotamia, and the Jewish cultural world. The assimilation of burial types and artistic expression together with inscriptions indicating the origins of those buried in the cemetery testify to the wide dispersal of the Jewish people at that time and the incorporation into Jewish religious culture of influences from the surrounding populations. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1471)

A “necropolis” is a “city of the dead” — a synonym for cemetery and an excellent advanced vocabulary word for your homescholars. Browse your homeschool dictionary for a host of words built on the roots necro- and poli- (not to be confused with poly-). To go with necropolis, see what your students can discover about acropolis, cosmopolis, and metropolis.

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Necropolis of Bet She’arim on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

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, available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures are you exploring in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 752–859; 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 and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

🖍 ATTENTION HOMESCHOOL ARTISTS: Color Our Collections Week is Coming!

26 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

This is one of the easiest educational art opportunities you can find, for kids of all ages. It’s free, and you can make it last for months.

Calling all homeschool artists, scribblers, painters, colorists, daubers, and illuminators: this coming week (1–5 February) is Color Our Collections Week!

Color Our Collections Week is a fun, educational, international project that was started by the Library of the New York Academy of Medicine, and it now involves more than a hundred major libraries and museums around the world. These institutions have scanned historic black-and-white images from their collections of rare books and have assembled these images into coloring booklets that you and your students can illuminate as you see fit.

The new coloring pages for 2021 will begin appearing on February 1st on the Color Our Collections website. As of this writing, the booklets for 2020 are also still online and you can download them as well:

➢ Index to #ColorOurCollections Coloring Books (colorourcollections.org)

❡ Update · 3 February: The 2021 booklets have begun to appear online, and they feature everything from classical art to tropical flowers to American motorcycles and more! Additional booklets will be added all through the week by the participating libraries, so be sure to keep checking! 🎨

These wonderful free printables include everything from science to Shakespeare, architecture to medieval art, natural history to engineering, and much more. There are enough pages available for you to download a year’s worth of coloring opportunities for your young artists. And they are not only fun, they are full of educational value as well. Don’t miss this opportunity for creativity and learning.

What artistic discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular posts on Homeschool Books & Libraries and Homeschool Arts & Music. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📚

🖋 🌹 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Birthday to Robbie Burns!

25 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Take a few homeschool minutes this week to remember (and listen to) Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland, born on this day in 1759.

One of a series of 1996 British postage stamps commemorating Robert Burns on the bicentennial of his death.

The poetry of Robert Burns has been read and sung around the world for more than 200 years. Many of Burns’ poems are written in the Scots dialect of English, which is sometimes a bit difficult for beginners, but with a little practice and thought (and with occasional help from a good dictionary) their structure and imagery are easily understood. His famous poem of the departing lover who promises to return, “A Red, Red Rose,” is an excellent Burns introduction for any young poetry student. It can serve as a bonus homeschool poem-of-the-week for this last week of January.

A Red, Red Rose

O my Luve is like a red, red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
O my Luve is like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.

So fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I;
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till all the seas gang dry.

Till all the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands of life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only luve!
And fare thee weel awhile!
And I will come again, my dear,
Though it were ten thousand miles.

But “A Red, Red Rose” isn’t just a poem, it’s a song, and this fine version by the Scottish-Canadian singer John McDermott (b. 1955) may help your students understand and appreciate it more — I think it even works as a lullaby.

Happy birthday, Robbie — may your songs be remembered till all the seas gang dry!

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you studying in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ While the sands of life are run: Do your students recognize one of the most ancient, and yet still current, metaphors for the passage of time? ⏳

❡ Though it were ten thousand miles: 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 an extra bonus homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 24 January 2021

24 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Illinois, and our COUNTRIES are Ireland 🇮🇪, Israel 🇮🇱, Italy 🇮🇹, and Jamaica 🇯🇲. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing — 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 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (24 January 2021) — Today is the 24th day of 2021; there are 341 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 On this day in 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, touching off the California Gold Rush. ⛏

Monday (25 January 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759–1796), aye. 🌹

Tuesday (26 January 2021) — The world’s largest diamond, the Cullinan Diamond, was found on this day in 1905 in the Premier mine near Pretoria, South Africa. 💎 And on this day in 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park was established by an act of the U.S. Congress. 🏞

Wednesday (27 January 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). 🎼 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Necropolis of Bet She’arim in Israel. 🇮🇱

Thursday (28 January 2021) — On this day in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven members of the astronaut crew. 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👩‍🚀👩‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 Today is also the birthday of the great choral composer John Taverner (1944–2013). 🎼 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. 🌕

Friday (29 January 2021) — Today is the birthday of Revolutionary war general Moses Cleaveland (1754–1806), the founder of Cleveland, Ohio. 🏙 It’s also the birthday of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860–1904). 🖋 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Owls! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦉

Saturday (30 January 2021) — Today is the birthday of U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt (1882–1945). 🇺🇸 It’s also the birthday of pioneering computer scientist Douglas Engelbart (1925–2013), inventor of the computer mouse and many other standard features of modern computers. 🖱

Sunday (31 January 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Austrian pianist and composer Franz Schubert (1797–1828). 🎹 It’s also the birthday of baseball great Jackie Robinson (1919–1972), the first African-American to play in the Major Leagues. ⚾️ And on this day in 1930, Scotch Tape first went on the market. 📦

🥂 ⛏ OUR WEEKLY TOAST, in honor of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill this week in 1848, is a traditional miners’ toast from Yorkshire: “May all your labours be in vein.”

🌎 🇯🇲 EVERYTHING FLOWS: The island-nation of Jamaica in the West Indies is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Black River, one of the longest rivers in Jamaica. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Black 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: Illinois, Ireland, Jamaica, and More

24 January 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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.

🇺🇸
Illinois State Flag
ILLINOIS (the 21st state, 3 December 1818) — The Prairie State. Capital: Springfield. Illinois can be found on page 576 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “French for Illini or ‘land of Illini,’ Algonquin word meaning ‘men’ or ‘warriors’” (almanac page 459). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: illinois.gov.

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇮🇪 IRELAND in western Europe. Population: 5,176,569. Capital: Dublin. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.ie (in English and Irish).
🇮🇱 ISRAEL in the Middle East. Population: 8,675,475. Capital: Jerusalem. Government: Parliamentary democracy. Website: www.gov.il (in Hebrew, English, and several other languages).
🇮🇹 ITALY in southern Europe. Population: 62,402,659. Capital: Rome. Government: Parliamentary Republic. Website: www.governo.it (in Italian).
🇯🇲 JAMAICA in the West Indies. Population: 2,808,570. Capital: Kingston. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: jis.gov.jm (in English).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you been making in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

January 2021
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