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πŸ—“ QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 3 January 2020 2021!

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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.

🎡 πŸŽ„ πŸŽ… OUR HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH is approaching its close. For the past four weeks we have been sharing an assortment of seasonal favoritesΒ β€” classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and sillyΒ β€” along with a collection of easy educational notes to help you teach little musical lessons all along the way. Our grand finale will be on the Twelfth Day of Christmas (January 5th), and I bet you can guess what it will be. 🍐🌳

πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Louisiana, and our COUNTRIES are GuatemalaΒ πŸ‡¬πŸ‡Ή, GuineaΒ πŸ‡¬πŸ‡³, Guinea-BissauΒ πŸ‡¬πŸ‡Ό, and GuyanaΒ πŸ‡¬πŸ‡Ύ. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

πŸŒ– THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning β€” 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.

πŸ—“ TODAY, Sunday (3 January 2021) β€” Today is the 3rd day of 2021; there are 362 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your (brand new 2021!) River Houses almanac.Β πŸ“š Today is the birthday of the great Roman orator and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.).Β πŸ› It’s also the birthday of English writer J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973), author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.Β πŸŒ‹

Monday (4 January 2021) β€” Today is the birthday of French educator Louis Braille (1809–1852), the inventor of the famous tactile writing system for the blind. β —β “ It’s also the birthday of the original James Bond. 🐦

Tuesday (5 January 2021) β€” Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas and tonight is Twelfth Night, and that means it’s the end of our Holiday Music MonthΒ β€” and you know what song we’ll be going out with. 🍐🌳 😊 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 Social 300s.Β πŸ“š

Wednesday (6 January 2021) β€” Today is the birthday of the American poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).Β πŸ–‹ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Mount Nimba Strict Nature Reserve in Guinea. πŸ‡¬πŸ‡³

Thursday (7 January 2021) β€” On this day in 1610, Galileo Galilei first reported that he had discovered several previously unknown moons orbiting the planet JupiterΒ β€” we now call them the Galilean moons: Ganymede, Callisto, Io, and Europa. You can see them from your backyard with almost any small telescope.Β πŸ”­ Today is also the birthday of the African-American writer and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960).Β πŸ–‹

Friday (8 January 2021) β€” Today is the birthday of two great British scientists: the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913), co-discoverer with Charles Darwin of the principle of natural selection, and the physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking (1942–2018).Β πŸ¦‹Β πŸŒŒ And in another sphere of human accomplishment, today is also the birthday of Elvis Presley (1935–1977)! 🎸 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for second week of January is Gail Mazur’s “Ice,” for homeschool dads and all wintertime learners.Β β›Έ And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Storks, Frigatebirds, Boobies, Gannets, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year.Β πŸ¦…

Saturday (9 January 2021) β€” On this day in 1923, Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva made the first successful flight in an autogyro (the ancestor of the modern helicopter). 🚁 And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: Capella, the brightest star in the constellation Auriga the Charioteer. 🌟

Sunday (10 January 2021) β€” On this day in the year 49 B.C., Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon river and approached the city of Rome with his army, touching off a civil war that led to the destruction of the Roman Republic and the eventual formation of the Roman Empire.Β βš”οΈ For an illustrated overview of the life and times of Julius Caesar and his outsized impact on the Western world, see pages 108–109 in your homeschool history encyclopedia.Β πŸ“š

πŸ₯‚ OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “To long life, pure love, and boundless liberty.”

❑ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week β€” 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!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old collection that appeared in Routledge’s Manual of Etiquette (London, ca. 1870). What will you toast this week?Β πŸ₯‚

πŸŒŽΒ πŸ‡¬πŸ‡Ύ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Guyana in northern South America is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Essequibo River, Guyana’s longest river. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Essequibo River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Essequibo River in Guyana, from the air. (Image:Β WikimediaΒ 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, this month, and this wonderful new 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 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.Β πŸ—“

🌎 πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ SUNDAY STATES: Louisiana, Guatemala, Guyana, and More

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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 (page 458 in your brand new 2021 almanac), so this week’s state is:

  • πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ
    Louisiana State Flag
    LOUISIANA (the 18th state, 30 April 1812)Β β€” The Pelican State. Capital: Baton Rouge. Louisiana can be found on page 579 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Part of territory called Louisiana by RenΓ©-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle for French King Louis XIV” (almanac page 459). State bird: Brown Pelican (bird guide page 256). Website: www.louisiana.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.Β πŸ–

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

  • πŸ‡¬πŸ‡Ή GUATEMALA in Central America. Population: 17,153,288. Capital: Guatemala City. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.guatemala.gob.gt (in Spanish).
  • πŸ‡¬πŸ‡³ GUINEA on the west coast of Africa. Population: 12,527,440. Capital: Conakry. Government: Presidential republic. Website: CIA World Factbook entry (in English).
  • πŸ‡¬πŸ‡Ό GUINEA-BISSAU on the west coast of Africa. Population: 1,927,104. Capital: Bissau. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: CIA World Factbook entry (in English).
  • πŸ‡¬πŸ‡Ύ GUYANA in northern South America. Population: 750,204. Capital: Georgetown. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: parliament.gov.gy (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.Β πŸ”

❑ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps β€” not just basically competent, but fluent β€” 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.Β πŸ—Ί

❑ 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.Β βœˆοΈΒ πŸšžΒ πŸš—Β πŸ›³Β πŸŽΒ πŸ˜Š

❑ 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.Β πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡ΈΒ πŸŒŽ