• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

  • Subscribe!
  • Home
  • Topics ▾
    • Arts & Music
    • Astronomy
    • Books & Libraries
    • Collections & Collecting
    • Friday Bird Families
    • Great Stars
    • Holidays & Anniversaries
    • Language & Literature
    • Lunar Society Bulletins
    • Maps & Geography
    • Museums & Monuments
    • Natural History
    • Poems-of-the-Week
    • Quick Freshes
    • Research & News
    • States & Countries
    • Terms & Calendars
    • Weekly World Heritage
  • Homeschool Calendars
  • Six Books
  • TWOC ▾
    • The Lunar Society of the River Houses
  • About Us ▾
    • Our Mascots
  • Shop!
You are here: Home > 2021 > February

Archives for February 2021

📖 🎉 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Dord Day!

28 February 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Happy Dord Day! On this day each year we celebrate dictionaries and the people who make them — and we remind ourselves that lexicographers are human, just like us. 😊

On the 28th of February in 1939, an editor working on the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary was examining the second edition (1934) to see what entries needed to be updated. He came across the word “dord,” a synonym (according to the dictionary) for the word “density” as used in physics and chemistry. The word had no associated etymology, so the editor decided to investigate.

The definition of the word ‘dord’ as it appeared in Webster’s New International Dictionary (1934).

Upon investigation, it turned out (amusingly and embarrassingly) that there is no such word as “dord,” even though it appeared in the big Webster’s New International Dictionary. A science specialist working on the previous edition had submitted a request to have the letters “D” and “d” added as abbreviations for “density,” but the request slip was written “D or d” — and through a series of minor editorial missteps this became “Dord” and it was added to the dictionary as a word meaning “density.”

In later editions, after it had been spotted, the error was removed, leaving the dictionary more accurate but less entertaining.

Today’s little lesson for your homeschool students: dictionaries are compiled by people just like you and me, and even though they try very hard to be accurate, sometimes they make mistakes just like we do.

What wonderful words — real or imaginary — have you discovered in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: The delightful Fun With Words website has the full story of “dord,” along with a host of other wild and woolly word-wonders to explore. 🔍

❡ Looking in the lexicon: Our recommended River Houses homeschool dictionary, the American Heritage Fifth, does not, alas, include the word “dord,” but you can send your students to search nevertheless. Where would it be if it were there? Right between Dorchester and Dordogne. 📖

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Language & Literature posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

Filed Under: Homeschool Books & Libraries, Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries, Homeschool Language & Literature

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 28 February 2021

28 February 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.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Michigan, and our COUNTRIES are Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, and Madagascar 🇲🇬. (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 (28 February 2021) — Today is the 59th day of 2021; there are 306 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. 📚 And today is Dord Day! 🎉

🗓 🦁 Leo Term 2021 Begins 🦁 🗓

Monday (1 March 2021) — Today is the first day of Leo Term, our spring term in the River Houses, named for the Great Lion of the Heavens. 🦁 It’s also the birthday of the great Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). 🎹 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of March is a famously amusing collection of photographs from Wallace Stevens, for migrating Red-winged Blackbirds and the coming spring thaw. 💧 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Tuesday (2 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of Sam Houston (1793–1863), the first president of the Republic of Texas. 🌵 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 Scientific 500s. 📚

Wednesday (3 March 2021) — The Scottish-American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1847. 📞 And on this day in 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem. 🇺🇸 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Old Quarter and Fortifications of Luxembourg City. 🇱🇺

Thursday (4 March 2021) — The first session of the First United States Congress opened on this day in Federal Hall in New York in 1789, putting the new U.S. Constitution into effect. 📜 🇺🇸

Friday (5 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594). 🗺 And on this day in 1770, British troops shot and killed five protestors on the streets of Boston in what quickly came to be known as the Boston Massacre. ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the the Tyrant Flycatchers and Becards. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (6 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo (1475–1564). 🎨 It’s also the birthday of the great English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). 🖋 On this day in 1836 during the Texas Revolution, the Alamo fell. Remember! ⚔️ 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 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great British astronomer and polymath John Herschel (1792–1871). 🔭 It’s also the birthday of the great American horticulturist Luther Burbank (1849–1926). 🥔

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is for the Texians of 1836: “Remember the Alamo!”

❡ 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: The tiny country of Luxembourg in central Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the tiny Syre River, a Luxembourgish tributary of the great Rhine. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Syre River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Syre River near Schuttrange in Luxembourg. (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. 🗓

Filed Under: Quick Freshes

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Michigan, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, and More

28 February 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Michigan State Flag
    MICHIGAN (the 26th state, 26 January 1837) — The Great Lakes State. Capital: Lansing. Michigan can be found on page 581 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Chippewa mici gama, meaning ‘great water,’ after lake of the same name” (almanac page 459). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: www.michigan.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:

  • 🇱🇮 LIECHTENSTEIN in central Europe. Population: 39,137. Capital: Vaduz. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.liechtenstein.li (in German).
  • 🇱🇹 LITHUANIA in eastern Europe. Population: 2,731,464. Capital: Vilnius. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: lrvk.lrv.lt (in Lithuanian).
  • 🇱🇺 LUXEMBOURG in western Europe. Population: 628,381. Capital: Luxembourg. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: gouvernement.lu (in French, German, English, and Luxembourgish).
  • 🇲🇬 MADAGASCAR in the Indian Ocean. Population: 26,955,737. Capital: Antananarivo. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.primature.gov.mg (in French).

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) did you make 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

Filed Under: Homeschool States & Countries

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – February 2021

27 February 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

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 have been documenting a new site, a local college campus that I frequently visit. So far I’ve contributed a total of 120 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, with reports just since 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.

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.)

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. I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results using an online spreadsheet, 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 did you make 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. 🗞

Filed Under: Lunar Society Bulletins

🦜 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Parrots

26 February 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 Old World Parrots (pages 326–327) and the African and New World Parrots (pages 326–333).

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:

OLD WORLD PARROTS — Family Psittaculidae. A widespread Old World family. Three species established [in North America]. Species: 184 World, 3 N.A.

AFRICAN AND NEW WORLD PARROTS — Family Psittacidae. Two genera and 20 species found in Africa; rest in the New World. In U.S., mostly from CA, TX, and FL, where most are descendants of escaped cage birds. Species: 167 World, 17 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 African and New World Parrots, for example. How many species? (167 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (17 species in North America, but most of these are descendants of escaped cage birds or are found on the extreme southern U.S. border.) What are their distinctive features? (Generally green and red, heavy hooked bills, long tails, 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 African and New World Parrot family, why not investigate the Nanday Parakeet (page 328), and example of a South American species that has escaped from captivity in Florida and California and become locally naturalized.

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 Nanday Parakeet? (13¼ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Aratinga nenday.) 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. If you don’t happen to live in one of the local areas where this species has become naturalized, you’ll probably be out of luck.) 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.)

Parrots are found around the world but most species occur in the tropics and the southern hemisphere. There are today no native parrot species in the United States, with the possible exception of some (such as the Green Parakeet, page 330) that may occasionally stray a short distance north across the U.S. border with Mexico. The species shown in your bird guide are almost all exotic (non-native) species that have escaped from captivity and become naturalized in areas such as Miami and Los Angeles.

Sadly, there was once a beautiful native parrot in the United States, the Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), but it became extinct in 1918. You can still find in your bird guide, however, on page 557 in the special appendix on extinct and accidental species. The Carolina Parakeet was common across much of the southeast, and while it was hunted — both for its plumage and as a fruit-orchard pest — its rapid extinction is still something of a mystery.

Carolina Parakeets (Conuropsis carolinensis), by John James Audubon (1833). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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 a second species this week, why not take a look at the Monk Parakeet (page 328), a more cold-tolerant species that has been able to survive for a number of years as far north as the New York City region and may eventually increase and become naturalized.

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 did you make 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

Filed Under: Friday Bird Families, Homeschool Natural History

🌍 🇱🇸 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Maloti-Drakensberg Park in Lesotho

24 February 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Lesotho in southern Africa is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Lesotho’s World Heritage Sites: Maloti-Drakensberg Park.

Maloti-Drakensberg Park in Lesotho. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Maloti-Drakensberg Park is both a natural and a cultural landscape of great importance:

The Maloti-Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site is a transnational property spanning the border between the Kingdom of Lesotho and the Republic of South Africa. The property comprises Sehlabathebe National Park (6,500 ha) in Lesotho and uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park (242,813 ha) in South Africa. Maloti-Drakensberg Park World Heritage Site is renowned for its spectacular natural landscape, importance as a haven for many threatened and endemic species, and for its wealth of rock paintings made by the San people over a period of 4,000 years. The property covers an area of 249,313 ha making it the largest Protected Area complex along the Great Escarpment of Southern Africa.

The Maloti-Drakensberg Park range of mountains constitutes the principal water production area in Southern Africa. The areas along the international border between the two countries create a drainage divide on the escarpment that forms the watershed for two of Southern Africa’s largest drainage basins. The Thukela River from uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park flows eastwards into the Indian Ocean. The rivers of southern Maloti-Drakensberg including Sehlabathebe National Park drain into the Senqu/Orange River which flows westwards into the Atlantic Ocean….

With its pristine steep-sided river valleys and rocky gorges, the property has numerous caves and rock shelters containing an estimated 690 rock art sites, and the number of individual images in those sites probably exceeds 35,000. The images depict animals and human beings, and represent the spiritual life of the San people, representing an exceptionally coherent tradition that embodies their beliefs and cosmology over several millennia. There are also rock art paintings dating back to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, attributable to Bantu-speaking people.

Extending along most of KwaZulu-Natal’s south-western border with Lesotho, the property provides a vital refuge for more than 250 endemic plant species and their associated fauna. It also holds almost all of the remaining subalpine and alpine vegetation in the KwaZulu-Natal province, including extensive high altitude wetlands above 2,750 m, and it is a RAMSAR site. The uKhahlamba Drakensberg Park has been identified as an Important Bird Area, and forms a critical part of the Lesotho Highlands Endemic Bird Area. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #985)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Maloti-Drakensberg Park 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 of World Heritage Sites online at the 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 have you been 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. 🌍

Filed Under: Homeschool States & Countries, Weekly World Heritage

🖋 🔭 WONDERFUL WORDS: Watchers of the Skies

22 February 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Have you noticed that our homeschool astronomy posts are often headed “Watchers of the Skies“? If you didn’t know where that title came from, today you’ll find out. 🔭

The shortest month of the year is winding down. Why not send it off with a literary flourish by introducing your students to one of the most famous poems in the English language: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats (1795–1821). It’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February.

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The “Chapman” of the title is George Chapman (ca. 1599–1634), an Elizabethan writer and Classical scholar, and this poem is an account of Keats’ first reading of Chapman’s English translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The story — a wonderful one to share — is that Keats was introduced to Chapman’s translation by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke (1787–1877), and the two young men stayed up all evening reading it aloud to each other. The next morning, when Clarke came down to breakfast, he found this sonnet waiting for him on the breakfast table.

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a perfectly crafted example of a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines, thematically and structurally arranged into an initial group of eight (the octave) and a final group of six (the sestet). Encourage your students to map the rhyme scheme and see how tight it is: ABBA ABBA CD CD CD. The first eight lines tell of the writer’s prior experience in “realms of gold” — the imaginary (literary) landscape of ancient gods and kings and poets. He had been told that the greatest of the ancient poets was Homer, but it was not until he read Chapman’s translation — Keats could not read the original Greek — that he truly understood why this was so. And at that point the sonnet turns: reading Chapman was like discovering a new planet, or a new ocean he had never seen before.

There’s some wonderful vocabulary here for your students to work through in your family dictionary: realms, bards, fealty, demesne, ken, surmise. The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 and the minor planet Ceres was discovered in 1801, so the discovery of new planets was very much a matter of public interest in Keats’ day. Unfortunately, Keats’ historical geography was a bit off: the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa (ca. 1475–1519) — not Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) — was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama (Darien) and see the Pacific Ocean. But that’s OK; it’s a poem, not a history text.

There are a great many recordings of this sonnet available online. Here’s a good one that will help your students get the pronunciation (and so the rhymes) correct:

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” has been one of the most widely read, taught, and quoted sonnets in the English language for almost two hundred years. This week, invite your young scholars to enter into that inheritance and make Keats their friend for life.

❡ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies: 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. 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the Romantic Movement in art and literature, the movement with which Keats is commonly associated, turn to page 338 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 📚

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including John Keats) 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 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. 📖

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 21 February 2021

21 February 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 is the last full week of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses. Leo Term, our spring term, begins on Monday the first of March.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Arkansas, and our COUNTRIES are Lebanon 🇱🇧, Lesotho 🇱🇸, Liberia 🇱🇷, and Libya 🇱🇾. (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 (21 February 2021) — Today is the 52nd day of 2021; there are 313 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 1918, the last individual Carolina Parakeet, the only species of parrot native to the United States, died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. 🦜 😔

Monday (22 February 2021) — Today is the birthday of George Washington (1732–1799), the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And speaking of presidents, on this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first-ever radio address from the White House. 📻 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February is John Keats’ famous sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” for the anniversary of Keats’ death in 1821. 🔭 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Tuesday (23 February 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great German-English composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). 🎺

Wednesday (24 February 2021) — On this day in 1803, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the principle of judicial review. ⚖️ Today is also the birthday of the American painter and illustrator Winslow Homer (1836–1910). 🎨 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Maloti–Drakensberg Park in Lesotho 🇱🇸.

Thursday (25 February 2021) — The first African-American to serve in the U.S. Congress, Hiram Rhodes Revels, Republican of Mississippi, was sworn in on this day in 1870. 🇺🇸 And today is the birthday of the great French impressionist painter and sculptor Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). 🎨

Friday (26 February 2021) — Today is the birthday of the German-American clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss (1829–1902). 👖 It’s also the birthday of the great American songwriter and rock-and-roll pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino (1928–2017). 🎹 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Parrots! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦜

Saturday (27 February 2021) — Today is the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), one of the most popular American poets of the nineteenth century. 🖋 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. 🌕

Sunday (28 February 2021) — Happy Dord Day! 🎉

🥂 🏡 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for the close of Orion Term, is adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson and A.E. Housman: “To the hunter home from the hill.”

❡ 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: Lebanon in the Middle East is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Kadisha River, which rises in northern Lebanon near the ancient Cedars of God. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Kadisha River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Kadisha River near Kaferkahel in northern Lebanon. (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. 🗓

Filed Under: Quick Freshes

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Arkansas, Lebanon, Libya, and More

21 February 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Arkansas State Flag
    ARKANSAS (the 25th state, 15 June 1836) — The Razorback State. Capital: Little Rock. Arkansas can be found on page 571 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Algonquin name for Quapaw Indians, meaning ‘south wind’” (almanac page 459). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: www.arkansas.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:

  • 🇱🇧 LEBANON in the Middle East. Population: 5,469,612. Capital: Beirut. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: presidency.gov.lb (in Arabic and English).
  • 🇱🇸 LESOTHO in southern Africa. Population: 1,969,334. Capital: Maseru. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gov.ls (in English).
  • 🇱🇷 LIBERIA in southwestern Africa. Population: 5,073,296. Capital: Monrovia. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.emansion.gov.lr (in English).
  • 🇱🇾 LIBYA in northern Africa. Population: 6,890,535. Capital: Tripoli. Government: “In transition” (almanac page 813). Website: pm.gov.ly (in Arabic and 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 made 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

Filed Under: Homeschool States & Countries

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Caracaras and Falcons

19 February 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 are the Caracaras and Falcons (pages 320–325), fast-flying birds of prey.

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:

CARACARAS · FALCONS — Family Falconidae. These powerful hunters are distinguished from hawks by their long wings, which are bent back at the “wrist” and, except in the Crested Caracara, narrow and pointed. Females are larger than males…. Recent genetic studies show a close relationship to parrots and songbirds. Species: 64 World, 11 N.A. [North America]

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 Falcon family, for example. How many species? (64 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (11 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Powerful hunters, long pointed wings, females larger than males, 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, why not investigate the fastest bird in the world: the Peregrine Falcon (page 324).

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 Peregrine Falcon? (16–20 inches long, with a wingspan of up to 44 inches.) What is its scientific name? (Falco peregrinus.) 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.)

The Peregrine Falcon is one of the most widespread bird species in the world, occurring on every continent and in all habitats except rainforest and desert. It’s also the fastest bird in the world, reaching speeds of more than 200 miles per hour in attack-dives called stoops. Peregrines hunt mainly other birds in flight, and they have been particularly prized by falconers for centuries.

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 a second species, why not take a look at the American Kestrel (page 322), the smallest North American falcon, about the size of a Blue Jay.

Or if you live along the southern U.S. border, why not look at the Crested Caracara, an odd large falcon that, as its name suggests, has a crest.

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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

Filed Under: Friday Bird Families, Homeschool Natural History

  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to Our Newsletter!

It’s free! Your name and email address are never shared with any third parties.

CHECK YOUR INBOX (or spam folder) to confirm your subscription. Thank you! 😊

Search the River Houses

Recent Posts

  • 🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 26 June 2022
  • 🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Idaho, Switzerland, Tajikistan, and More
  • 🖋 🚂 WONDERFUL WORDS: “It was late June”
  • 🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Wood-Warblers (II)
  • 🖋 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS: Stevenson’s “Summer Sun”
  • 🌏 🇱🇰 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Dambulla Temple in Sri Lanka
  • 🗓 ⛱ SUMMER IS HERE! (Astronomically Speaking)
  • 🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – June 2022
  • 🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 19 June 2022
  • 🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Washington, Sri Lanka, Sweden, and More
  • 🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Wood-Warblers (I)
  • 🖋 🏰 HAPPY FATHER’S DAY WEEK from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  • 🌍 🇿🇦 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Mapungubwe Sites in South Africa
  • 🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschoolers – June 2022
  • 🇺🇸 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: Happy Flag Day 2022!

Post Calendar

February 2021
S M T W T F S
« Jan   Mar »
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28  

Post Categories

  • 🎵 Homeschool Arts & Music
  • 🔭 Homeschool Astronomy
  • 📚 Homeschool Books & Libraries
  • 💰 Homeschool Collections & Collecting
  • 📅 Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries
  • 📖 Homeschool Language & Literature
  • 🌕 Lunar Society Bulletins
  • 🗺 Homeschool Maps & Geography
  • 🏛 Homeschool Museums & Monuments
  • 🏞 Homeschool Natural History
  • 🗓 Quick Freshes for Homeschool Families
  • 🔎 Homeschool Research & News
  • 🌎 🇺🇸 Homeschool States & Countries
  • 🗓 Homeschool Terms & Calendars

Astronomy

  • American Meteor Society
    • – Fireball Reporting System
  • Astronomy Picture of the Day
  • Evening Sky Maps
  • Homeschool Astronomy (Sky & Telescope)
  • Hubble Space Telescope
    • – Learning Resources
  • NASA
    • – Asteroid Watch
    • – Educator Resources
    • – Our Solar System
    • – Spot the Station
    • – Webb Space Telescope
  • The Planets Today
    • – Light-Distance to the Planets
  • The Sky This Week (USNO)
  • Space Weather
  • Stellarium Night Sky Charts
  • Time and Date
    • – Eclipses
    • – Meteor Showers
    • – Moon Phases
    • – Seasons
  • Tonight’s Sky (hubblesite.com)
  • Virtual Planisphere

Books & Libraries

  • Baldwin Library of Children’s Literature
  • Biodiversity Heritage Library
  • Classic Children’s Books (read.gov)
  • Folger Shakespeare Library
    • – Educator Resources
    • – Shakespeare’s Plays Online
  • HathiTrust Digital Library
  • In Our Time (BBC Podcasts)
  • New York Public Library Digital Collections
  • Project Gutenberg
  • US Library of Congress
    • – Children’s Book Selections
    • – Educator Resources
    • – LC Blogs
    • – LC Digital Collections
    • – Minerva’s Kaleidoscope
  • US National Archives
    • – Educator Resources
    • – Founders Online
    • – K–5 Resources
    • – Teaching With Documents
  • Vatican Library Digital Collections
  • WorldCat Library Catalog
    • – WorldCat Library Finder
  • World Digital Library

Museums, Parks, & Monuments

  • Art Collections Online
  • British Museum Collections Online
  • Google Arts & Culture Collections
  • Smithsonian Institution
    • – Educator Resources
    • – Smithsonian Museums
    • – Smithsonian Open Access
  • Timeline of Art History
  • US National Park Service
    • – Educator Resources
    • – National Memorials
    • – National Monuments
    • – National Parks
    • – Wild & Scenic Rivers Program
  • US National Wildlife Refuges
  • US State Parks
  • Watercolour World

Natural History

  • All About Birds (Cornell University)
    • – Bird Identification Guide
    • – eBird Online
  • Biodiversity Heritage Library
  • BirdCast Daily Migration Maps
  • Time and Date
    • – Seasons
  • UC Museum of Paleontology
    • – Educator Resources
  • US Fish & Wildlife Service
    • – Education Programs
  • US Geological Survey
    • – Educator Resources
    • – Latest Earthquakes
  • US National Weather Service
    • – Educator Resources
    • – Nationwide Air Quality
    • – Nationwide River Conditions
    • – Wildfire and Smoke Map
  • Wild & Scenic Rivers Program

Maps & Geography

  • Antipodes Map
  • FlightAware (Planes in the Air)
  • Mapquest World Maps
  • MarineTraffic (Ships at Sea)
  • OpenStreetMap World Maps
  • Printable Blank Maps & Flags
  • Printable Outline Maps (d-maps.com)
  • River Runner
  • USGS Topographic Maps
  • World Factbook (cia.gov)
  • World Heritage Sites (UNESCO)
    • – Educator Resources
  • Zoom Earth

Civics & Social Science

  • 1776 Unites
  • Bill of Rights Institute
  • Constitution Center
  • C-Span Classroom
  • Foundation for Economic Education
  • Free Speech Curriculum from FIRE
  • History of the Western World (I)
    • – Western World (II)
  • iCivics.org
  • Learn Liberty
  • Mises Institute Economics
  • MyMoney.gov
    • – Educator Resources
  • Online Library of Liberty
  • US Founding Documents
  • US Government Portal
    • – The Congress
    • – The Supreme Court
    • – The White House
  • US Mint
    • – Coin Activities for Kids
    • – Educator Resources
  • US Postal Museum
    • – Explore the Collections
    • – Activities for Kids
    • – Stamps Teach (from APS)
  • Visual Capitalist

Post Archives

  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • April 2017
Sign up for our free newsletter and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week!

All original content © 2017–2022 by The River Houses · The River Houses and the River Houses emblem are Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off.