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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 10 January 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.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Indiana, and our COUNTRIES are Haiti 🇭🇹, Honduras 🇭🇳, Hungary 🇭🇺, and Iceland 🇮🇸. (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 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (10 January 2021) — Today is the 10th day of 2021; there are 355 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 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. ⚔️ 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.

Monday (11 January 2021) — Today is the birthday of Alexander Hamilton (1755–1804), the first United States Secretary of the Treasury, whose portrait appears on our U.S. $10 bills. 💵 It’s also the birthday of William James (1842–1910), one of the founders of the modern field of psychology. 🧠

Tuesday (12 January 2021) — Today is the birthday of the French author Charles Perrault (1628–1703), who gave the world Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and many other beloved fairy tales. 🛌 It’s also the birthday of the American writer Jack London (1876–1916). 🐺

Wednesday (13 January 2021) — The National Geographic Society was founded on this day in 1888 in Washington, D.C. 🗺 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve in Honduras. 🇭🇳

Thursday (14 January 2021) — Today is the midpoint of Orion Term and thus one of the four cross-quarter days of the River Houses year. How are things going? 🗓 Today is also Ratification Day. On this day in 1784 in Annapolis, Maryland, Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, officially ending the American Revolutionary War. 🕊

Friday (15 January 2021) — Queen Elizabeth I of England was crowned on this day in 1559. For an illustrated outline of the historical period named for her, turn to pages 260–261 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. 👑 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the long-legged Herons, Bitterns, Ibises, and Spoonbills. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅 And our poem-of-the-week for the third week of January is James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900), for American minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., born on this day in 1929. 🇺🇸 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Saturday (16 January 2021) — On this day in the year 27 B.C., the Roman Senate conferred the title “Augustus” on the general and de facto dictator Octavian, and the last remnants of the old republic were swept away. 👑

Sunday (17 January 2021) — Benjamin Franklin was born on this day in 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. 📰 And one of the most important battles in the Southern Theater of the American Revolution, the Battle of Cowpens, took place on this day in 1781 near Cowpens, South Carolina. ⚔️

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May mankind never cease to produce heroes.”

❡ 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!”). Many of our current toasts are taken from an old anthology called Toasts and Tributes: A Happy Book of Good Cheer (New York, 1904). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌎 🇭🇹 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Haiti in the West Indies is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Artibonite River, the longest river in Haiti. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Artibonite River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Artibonite River in Haiti. (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. 🌎

AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Wednesday this month! 🙀

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: Indiana, Haiti, Iceland, 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Indiana State Flag
    INDIANA (the 19th state, 11 Dec 1816) — The Hoosier State. Capital: Indianapolis. Indiana can be found on page 577 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Means ‘land of the Indians’” (almanac page 459). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: www.in.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:

  • 🇭🇹 HAITI in the West Indies. Population: 11,067,777. Capital: Port-au-Prince. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: primature.gouv.ht (in French).
  • 🇭🇳 HONDURAS in Central America. Population: 9,235,340. Capital: Tecucigalpa. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.presidencia.gob.hn (in Spanish).
  • 🇭🇺 HUNGARY in east-central Europe. Population: 9,771,827. Capital: Budapest. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: kormany.hu (in Hungarian and English).
  • 🇮🇸 ICELAND in the northern Atlantic Ocean. Population: 350,734. Capital: Reykjavik. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.iceland.is (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. 🇺🇸 🌎