Archives for March 2021

🌍 🇲🇪 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Durmitor National Park in Montenegro

31 March 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Montenegro in southeastern Europe is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Montenegro’s World Heritage Sites: Durmitor National Park.

Durmitor National Park in the alpine region of Montenegro. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Alps, one of the world’s most celebrated mountain ranges, stretches all the way across southern Europe from France in the west to Montenegro in the east:

Durmitor is a stunning limestone massif located in Northern Montenegro and belonging to the Dinaric Alps or Dinarides. It is also the name of Montenegro’s largest protected area, the Durmitor National Park, which constitutes the heart of a landscape shaped by glaciers, numerous rivers and underground streams, all of which are embedded in the much larger Tara River Basin Biosphere Reserve. Some fifty peaks higher than 2,000 metres above sea level rise above plateaus, alpine meadows and forests, including Bobotov Peak (2,525 metres above sea level). Numerous glacial lakes, locally known as “mountain eyes,” cover the landscape. Despite its many attractions, Durmitor is best known for the spectacular canyons of the Draga, Sušica, Komarnica and Tara Rivers; the latter stands out as Europe’s deepest gorge. Durmitor is a popular tourism destination, known for superb hiking, climbing, mountaineering and canoeing opportunities. The nearby town of Zabljak is Montenegro’s primary ski resort.

Besides the extraordinary landscape beauty and the fascinating geological heritage, Durmitor National Park is also home to an impressive biological diversity. At the habitat level, a rare old-growth stand of European Black Pine deserves to be mentioned. Favored by the altitudinal gradient of more than 2,000 metres and both alpine and Mediterranean climatic influences, there are more than 1,600 vascular plants in the wider Durmitor Massif. A great percentage are found in the park and many are rare and endemic species. Large mammals include Brown Bear, Grey Wolf, and European Wild Cat. Among the 130 recorded birds are Golden Eagle, Peregrine Falcon and Capercaillie. Likewise noteworthy is the rich fish fauna, which includes the endangered Danube Salmon. The park is inhabited by farmers and shepherds, traditionally using the high-altitude meadows as summer pastures. The property is well protected and its status and international recognition have helped to prevent irreparable damage from threats, such as upstream pollution and proposed dam construction. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #100)

The Tara River Gorge is one of the most beautiful montane landscapes within Durmitor National Park.

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Durmitor National 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 are you exploring in your homeschool this Leo 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. 🌍

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – March 2021

28 March 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)

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 148 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 as it’s developing, with reports since last 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 have you been making in your homeschool this Leo 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. 🗞

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

28 March 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 Wisconsin, and our COUNTRIES are Mongolia 🇲🇳, Montenegro 🇲🇪, Morocco 🇲🇦, and Mozambique 🇲🇿. (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 full — a good time to be out and about in the well-lit night! 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 March 2021) — Today is the 87th day of 2021; there are 278 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. 📚 The great Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born on this day in 1483. 🎨 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. 🌕

Monday (29 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of two unrelated Waltons: the English composer William Walton (1902–1983) and the American businessman Sam Walton (1918–1992), the founder of Walmart. 🎼 🛒

Tuesday (30 March 2021) — On this day in 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire for about two cents an acre. 🏔

Wednesday (31 March 2021) — The great French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was born on this day in 1596. 📈 And on this day in 1774, Great Britain ordered the closure of the major trading port of Boston, escalating the tensions that would eventually lead to the American Revolution. 🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Durmitor National Park in Montenegro 🇲🇪.

Thursday (1 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great seventeenth century physician William Harvey (1578–1657), who first described the circulation of the blood in the human body. ❤️ It’s also the traditional date of the annual spaghetti harvest in Ticino, Switzerland. 🍝 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of April is the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which opens with April showers. ☔️ Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Friday (2 April 2021) — The United States Mint was established on this day in 1792. 💰 And today is also the birthday of the Danish novelist and children’s author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), which means that it’s International Children’s Book Day too! 📚 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Larks and the Swallows. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (3 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet George Herbert (1593–1633). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the American naturalist and author John Burroughs (1837–1921). 🏞 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 (4 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the American Quaker artist Edward Hicks (1780–1849), famous for his “Peaceable Kingdom.” 🎨

🥂 🍝 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is the traditional toast offered each year at the Spaghetti Harvest Festival in Ticino, Switzerland (where they speak Italian): “Buon appetito!”

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

❡ 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: Wisconsin, Mongolia, Mozambique, and More

28 March 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:

🇺🇸
Wisconsin State Flag
WISCONSIN (the 30th state, 29 May 1848) — The Badger State. Capital: Madison. Wisconsin can be found on page 596 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Indian name, spelled Ouisconsin or Mesconsing by early chroniclers, believed to mean ‘grassy place’ in Chippewa. Congress made it Wisconsin” (almanac page 459). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: wisconsin.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:

🇲🇳 MONGOLIA in central Asia. Population: 3,168,026. Capital: Ulaanbaatar. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: president.mn (in Mongolian and English).
🇲🇪 MONTENEGRO in southeastern Europe. Population: 609,859. Capital: Podgorica. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.me (in Bosnian, Serbian, and English).
🇲🇦 MOROCCO in northwestern Africa. Population: 35,561,654. Capital: Rabat. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.maroc.ma (in Arabic, English, and several other languages).
🇲🇿 MOZAMBIQUE in southeastern Africa. Population: 30,098,197. Capital: Maputo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.portaldogoverno.gov.mz (in Portuguese).

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 Leo 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: Crows and Jays (Part II)

26 March 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 (once again) the Crows and Jays (pages 364–373). Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’ve spread the Crows and Jays out over two weeks: last week we looked at the Crows, and this week the Jays.

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 again is how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

CROWS · JAYS — Family Corvidae. Harsh voice and aggressive manner draw attention to these large, often gregarious birds. Powerful, all-purpose bill efficiently handles a varied diet. Species: 126 World, 21 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. How many species? (126 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (21 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Loud, gregarious, varied diet, 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 a common bird of the Rocky Mountains and the West: the Steller’s Jay (page 366).

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 Steller’s Jay? (11½ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Cyanocitta stelleri.) 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 two most common jays in the United States are the Steller’s Jay of the West and the Blue Jay of the East. In fact, these two species sometimes hybridize (cross-breed) in the eastern Rockies where their ranges overlap. As a good comparative exercise, invite your students to look also at the Blue Jay and see how these two species differ.

The Steller’s Jay is obviously darker, but note that both species are almost exactly the same size and shape, with similar behavior, matching crests, and even similar black and blue barring on the wings. They are what biologists call “sister species” — one another’s closest evolutionary relatives.

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 an additional species this week, why not take a look at the Black-billed Magpie (page 370), a large and long-tailed jay-like bird that’s found throughout much of the West. (Our Black-billed Magpie is very similar to the Eurasian Magpie of the eastern hemisphere, a bird well known in folklore and literature.)

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 Leo 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🎨 HOMESCHOOL ARTS: Introducing William Morris (1834–1896)

24 March 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Calling all artistic homeschoolers! Here’s someone to study this week for creative inspiration.

William Morris (1834–1896) was one of the most gifted and prolific artists of the Victorian period in British history. Today is his birthday, so on this happy occasion why not spend a few homeschool minutes learning about his beautiful designs.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has an extensive collection of Morris productions — it’s a perfect place to visit with your artistically or historically inclined students:

➢ WILLIAM MORRIS at the Victoria and Albert Museum (vam.ac.uk)

Morris was a polymath who wrote novels and poetry, designed textiles and stained glass windows, and established a press that produced some of the most beautiful books of the nineteenth century. His designs for fabrics, carpets, and wallpaper continue to be popular more than a century after his death.

One of the 19th century’s most famous names, William Morris is still renowned today as the designer of patterns such as ‘Willow Bough’ and ‘Strawberry Thief‘. But his wallpapers and textiles are only part of the story. Through developing many other products and working on interiors schemes (including one for the V&A’s own café), Morris also mastered many other areas of design – as well as finding time to be a social activist and celebrated author. (vam.ac.uk)

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” Morris wrote. That’s a worthy aspiration for us all. And if you want something in your house that is both educationally useful and beautiful, what could be better than a William Morris coloring book!

[Morris wallpaper] — The beautiful Acanthus wallpaper designs of William Morris. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

❡ Explore more: For a brief homeschool overview of the Victorian Period, to which William Morris belongs, turn to pages 348–349 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 📚

❡ Creative lives: Your recommended world almanac has a long list of famous artists on pages 214–217. Why not pick out a name or two to research each month, either online or on your next visit to your local library — it would be a great way to give your students a little extra artistic inspiration. 🎨

❡ Stay in the loop: This is one of our occasional posts on 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. 🗞

🌎 🇲🇽 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Rock Art of Baja California in Mexico

24 March 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Mexico is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Mexico’s World Heritage Sites: the Rock Paintings of the Sierra de San Francisco in Baja California.

The mountain ranges of the Mexican state of Baja California are home to one of the largest collections of ancient rock paintings in the world:

The central part of the Baja California peninsula is a region of Mexico that concentrates one of the most extraordinary repertoires of rock art in the country, the Rock Paintings of the Sierra de San Francisco. The region is insular-like and kept the native peoples relatively isolated from continental influences, allowing the development of a local cultural complex. One of the most significant features of the peninsular prehistory is the mass production of rock art since ancient times and the development of the rock art tradition of the Great Murals.

The Sierra de San Francisco is the mountain range which concentrates the most spectacular and best preserved Great Mural sites, scale-wise one of the largest prehistoric rock art sites in the world. Hundreds of rock shelters, and sometimes huge panels with hundreds and even thousands of brightly painted figures, are found in a good state of conservation. The style is essentially realistic and is dominated by depictions of human figures and marine and terrestrial fauna, designed in red, black, white and yellow, which illustrate the relationship between humans and their environment, and reveal a highly sophisticated culture. The paintings are found on both the walls and roofs of rock shelters in the sides of ravines that are difficult of access. Those in the San Francisco area are divided into four main groups — Guadalupe, Santa Teresa, San Gregorio and Cerritos. The most important sites are Cueva del Batequì, Cueva de la Navidad, Cerro de Santa Marta, Cueva de la Soledad, Cueva de las Flechas and Grutas del Brinco. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #714)

The dry climate of the Sierra de San Francisco mountains has helped to preserve the ancient paintings throughout this region.

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Rock Paintings of the Sierra de San Francisco on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

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

🖋 🌱 WONDERFUL WORDS: Nothing Gold Can Stay

22 March 2021 by Bob O'Hara

This coming Friday (the 26th) is the birthday of Robert Frost (1874–1963), one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. In his honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this last week of March is Frost’s little early-spring masterpiece “Nothing Gold Can Stay”:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

This is a perfect poem for memorization. Why not memorize it yourself along with your students this week. (You can take turns, alternating lines, until you have it all down.)

Like many of Frost’s poems, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” has a simple structure and a deep meaning. Invite your students to investigate the structure first. What is the rhyme scheme? We have gold–hold, flower–hour, leaf–grief, and day–stay, so I make it out as AABBCCDD — a set of four couplets. The rhythm (meter) is mostly iambic trimeter, a very compact form, with six syllables in each line (all except the last). The poem’s “end-stopped” character is also prominent: every line is either a full sentence or a full clause, making a pause in reading at the end of each line feel natural. (In more complex poems, the sentences and other grammatical units often run over the ends of the lines; such poems are said to be enjambed rather than end-stopped.)

The poem’s subject is early spring and the opening of the very first buds and flowers, which is why we chose it as this week’s poem. In temperate climes, little golden buds and tiny yellow flowers often appear on many trees before the leaves come out, but they only last for a short time until the canopy of green foliage unrolls and expands. Frost takes this simple observation and extends it to everything in the world. All the golden buds, all the early flowers — whatever they may be — give way with time. A Christian philosopher might read that as a sign of our fallen world (“So Eden sank to grief”), while a naturalist might see it as reflection of the ordinary cycles of nature all around us (“So dawn goes down to day”). Both are perfectly acceptable literary interpretations. (If you want a glorious vocabulary word for the week, send your students to your family dictionary to look up ephemerality.)

“Nature’s first green is gold.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

As you explore your homeschool neighborhood this early spring, take special note of the earliest buds and flowers that are just beginning to open. And as you do, practice a line or two with your students: “Nature’s first green is gold.” “Her hardest hue to hold.”

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

❡ So dawn goes down to day: 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. 🌱

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

🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Happy Birthday Bach!

21 March 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Take a moment today to introduce your homeschool students to a four-minute musical masterpiece, the Little Fugue, written by one of the world’s greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born on this day in 1685.

Here’s a beautiful version of the Little Fugue played by Stephen Malinowski and presented in what I think is a really captivating manner for kids: a graphical animation of the notes with their pitches and durations:

And here’s another version of the Little Fugue performed by Jonathan Scott in what might be called its natural habitat: the organ loft of a church. (Much of Bach’s music was church music written for the pipe organ, “the king of instruments.”) The video does a good job of showing the complex operation of the organ, which requires the performer to exercise not only both hands, but both feet as well:

And here’s the Little Fugue again, but arranged this time in a very different way for a saxophone quartet by Staff Sergeant David Parks of the United States Army Field Band:

If any of those performances catch your students’ attention, there’s a whole universe of Bach available online — more than enough to convert today’s little homeschool lesson into a week-long music festival of your own devising.

As one next step, you could watch this wonderful educational performance of a Bach concerto by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, complete with a detailed introduction from a young Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990), and with a very young Glenn Gould (1932–1982) — one of Bach’s greatest twentieth-century interpreters — at the piano:

And here’s a remarkable thing for your students to observe: Gould plays the entire piece with no sheet music. He kept every note, every inflection, all in his head.

What musical discoveries have you made and what artistic anniversaries have you marked in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: You can find several lists of noted musical composers and performers starting on page 250 in your recommended homeschool almanac. Why not use those lists and make up an impromptu homeschool research project: have your students copy out the names of composers from different centuries, or from different countries, and find examples of their music online. Can your students get a sense for how musical styles changed from century to century? Are there distinct national styles that they can recognize? Do they have a preference for one style or time period over another? 🎵

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional posts on 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. 🗞

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

21 March 2021 by Bob O'Hara

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Iowa, and our COUNTRIES are Mexico 🇲🇽, Micronesia 🇫🇲, Moldova 🇲🇩, and Monaco 🇲🇨. (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 at its first quarter — 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 March 2021) — Today is the 80th day of 2021; there are 285 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 also (according to the old Julian Calendar still in effect at the time) the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), one of the greatest musical composers in history. An interactive Google Doodle will keep your music students entertained on the occasion. 🎼

Monday (22 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the English artist Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), for whom the famous Caldecott awards for illustrated children’s books are named. 🎨 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of March is Robert Frost’s lyrical meditation “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” a great memorization poem for early spring. 🌱 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Tuesday (23 March 2021) — On this day in 1775 at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech “Give me liberty, or give me death!” 🇺🇸

Wednesday (24 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Victorian artist and designer William Morris (1834–1896). 🖌 It’s also the birthday of the Hungarian-American magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926). Shazam! 🎩 🐇 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Ancient Rock Paintings of the Sierra de San Francisco in Mexico. 🇲🇽

Thursday (25 March 2021) — Today is the birthday of the American agronomist and Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug (1914–2009), who may have saved more lives than any human being in history. 🌽 🌾 🌱 For some notes on his importance, see pages 464–465 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🔍

Friday (26 March 2021) — On this day in 1812, the Gerrymander was born! 🗳 And on this day in 1830, The Book of Mormon was first published in Palmyra, New York. 📖 Three great writers were also born on this day: A.E. Housman (1859–1936), Robert Frost (1874–1963), and Tennessee Williams (1911–1983). 🖋 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will once again explore the Crows and Jays, a big group! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (27 March 2021) — On this day in 1912, the Japanese government presented a gift of 3000 cherry trees to the United States to line the banks of the Potomac River and other sites in Washington, D.C., where they and their successors may still be seen today. 🌸 And the Jewish festival of Passover begins tonight at sundown (the 15th day of the month of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar). ✡️

Sunday (28 March 2021) — The great Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born on this day in 1483. 🎨 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. 🌕

🥂 🌷 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is a Shakespearean sentiment for the beginning of astronomical spring: “All days of glory, joy, and happiness.”

🌍 🇲🇩 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Moldova in eastern Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Bîc (or Bâc) River, an important Moldovan tributary of the great Dniester. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Bîc River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? 😊

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