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You are here: Home > 2021 > April

Archives for April 2021

🌳 HOMESCHOOL NATURE NOTES: Happy Arbor Day!

30 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Today is Arbor Day! Or more specifically, it’s National Arbor Day, since there are many other state Arbor Days across the U.S. (and even around the world). That makes this a great weekend to go out with your students and plant a tree — or maybe at least hug one. 😊🌳😊

Arbor Day began in the United States in Nebraska in 1872, and it’s now celebrated each year on the last Friday in April. Arbor Day is a day for planting and appreciating trees, and each year around Arbor Day the Arbor Day Foundation (arborday.org) provides millions of trees, ready for planting, to cities and towns, schools and colleges, and citizens across the country.

Why not bookmark and browse the many resources available from the Arbor Day Foundation and see how you can incorporate them into your own homeschooling activities. Here are some of the things happening near you this Arbor Day:

  • ➢ Celebrating Arbor Day Across the United States

You can also learn more about tree-planter extraordinaire J. Sterling Morton of Nebraska and the history of Arbor Day in the United States:

  • ➢ The History of Arbor Day (a great little read-aloud page)

And here are some fun educational resources, including printable activity sheets that are perfect for homeschoolers, from the Arbor Day Foundation:

  • ➢ Arbor Day for Kids

What delightful dendrological discoveries, deciduous and coniferous, have you made in your homeschool this spring? 😊🌳

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries, Homeschool Natural History

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Sylviid Warblers and Allies

30 April 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 (four different families) are the Sylviid Warblers (pages 398–399), the Leaf Warblers (pages 400–403), the Grasshopper-Warblers (pages 402–403), and the Old World Flycatchers and Chats (pages 404–407). Although this may seem like a lot of birds, it’s actually a bit of a cheat, because only one or perhaps two species in these groups are really North American; the others are all birds of Europe and Asia that only occasionally arrive on this continent, mainly in western Alaska.

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:

SYLVIID WARBLERS — Family Sylviidae. This large, almost strictly Old World family comprises 14 genera, including one New World species, the Wrentit, and one vagrant to N.A. (Lesser Whitethroat, p. 559). Many are neatly patterned, and many more are rather colorful. Species: 62 World, 2 N.A. [North America]

LEAF WARBLERS — Family Phylloscopidae. This large Old World family of small, mostly greenish birds includes the Phylloscopus and the more colorful Seicerus genera. Many are difficult to identify. Species: 77 World, 8 N.A.

GRASSHOPPER-WARBLERS — Family Locustellidae. Old World family of medium to large size, mostly skulking birds. Species: 57 World, 2 N.A.

OLD WORLD FLYCATCHERS and CHATS — Family Muscicapidae. Short-legged birds that perch upright and obtain insects primarily through flycatching. May flick wings or tail. Species of genus Ficedula nest in cavities; genus Muscicapa build exposed nests. Not related to New World tyrant flycatchers. Species: 271 World, 14 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 Sylviid Warblers, for example. How many species? (62 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only one species in North America regularly, with a second species accidental; the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (An Old World family with only one species resident in North America; many species are colorful, although our one species is not, 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 Sylviid Warbler family, why not investigate the Wrentit (page 398), a bird of the scrublands of the west coast.

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 Wrentit? (6½ inches long, including a long tail.) What is its scientific name? (Chamaea fasciata.) 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 light-eyed, long-tailed Wrentit is the only member of the Sylviid Warbler family that is resident in the United States. It inhabits brushland and chaparral along much of the west coast and is non-migratory and generally inconspicuous, more often heard than seen.

For a second species this week, why not take a look at the Northern Wheatear, the only member of the Old World Flycatcher family that is regular in North America – with “North America” in this case meaning the high arctic.

Wheatears are a diverse genus of birds (Oenanthe) found throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa, but the Northern Wheatear is the only species in the group that visits even the edges our continent. They are open-country insect eaters, and the birds that breed in northern Canada in the summer actually migrate back down over Europe and into Africa each winter.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore. For a species in the notoriously difficult Leaf Warbler family, for example, why not take a look at the Arctic Warbler (page 400), a regular visitor to Alaska from Asia; and so on with as many species as you wish.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you been making in your homeschool this 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. 🐦

❡ Enchiridion: 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: The Rock Islands Southern Lagoon in Palau

28 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

The island nation of Palau in the Pacific Ocean is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Palau’s World Heritage Sites: the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon.

“Aerial view of [the lagoon-island group of] Ngerukewid, Palau, facing south. The area includes 37 small raised coral islands that are part of the Ngerukewid Islands Wildlife Preserve, which was established in 1956.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

This collection of small islands, south of the main island of Palau, is important to the cultural and natural history of region:

The Rock Islands Southern Lagoon consists of numerous large and small forested limestone islands, scattered within a marine lagoon protected by a barrier reef. The property lies within Koror State, immediately to the south of Palau’s main volcanic island Babeldaob in the western Pacific Ocean.

The marine site covers 100,200 ha and is characterized by coral reefs and a diversity of other marine habitats, as well as 445 coralline limestone islands uplifted due to volcanism and shaped over time by weather, wind and vegetation. This has created an extremely high habitat complexity, including the highest concentration of marine lakes in the world, which continue to yield new species discoveries. The terrestrial environment is lush and at the same time harsh, supporting numerous endemic and endangered species. Although presently uninhabited, the islands were once home to Palauan settlements, and Palauans continue to use the area and its resources for cultural and recreational purposes. This is regulated through a traditional governance system that remains an important part of national identity.

The islands contain a significant set of cultural remains relating to an occupation over some five thousand years that ended in abandonment. Archaeological remains and rock art sites are found in two island clusters – Ulong and Negmelis, and on three islands – Ngeruktabel, Ngeanges, and Chomedokl.

Remains of former human occupation in caves, including rock art and burials, testifies to seasonal human occupation and use of the marine ecosystem, dating back to 3,100 BP and extending over some 2,500 years…. The abandoned islands now provide an exceptional illustration of the way of life of small island communities over more than three millennia and their dependence on marine resources. They also are seen as ancestral realms by the descendants of those who migrated to the main island of Palau and this link is kept alive through oral traditions. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1386)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon 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 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. 🌏

Filed Under: Homeschool States & Countries, Weekly World Heritage

🐦 MAY is Bird Migration Month!

27 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

This coming Saturday is the first day of May, and May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses! Why May? This is why:

Peak spring migration dates across the United States. (Source: BirdCast.info.)

The above graphical summary of peak migration dates is from the wonderful BirdCast.info website, which all homeschool naturalists should explore during migration season. BirdCast offers a “weather” forecast every day — not of winds and rain, but of migrating birds:

  • ➢ BirdCast Migration Forecasts (birdcast.info)

Although some birds in the United States begin their spring migration as far back as February, and a few continue on into June, the greatest number of species and the greatest number of individuals head north during May. The timing of spring arrivals is quite predictable week by week every year, but not necessarily day by day. Overall, the migratory timing of each species is based on the photoperiod (day-length), but local weather conditions in any given year can move things forward or back by a few days. (One year, a given species may first appear in your neighborhood on May 9th; the next year it might be May 5th; the year after, May 7th.)

If you’ve got junior naturalists in your homeschool, you can teach some great science lessons this month by reading the posts on the BirdCast blog with them. These posts cover migration predictions, unusual events, continent-wide weather patterns and their impact on migration, and much more.

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, 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, also 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. 🦆

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Homeschool Natural History posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦

Filed Under: Homeschool Natural History

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – April 2021

26 April 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 174 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 progress, 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 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. 🗞

Filed Under: Lunar Society Bulletins

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 25 April 2021

25 April 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 coming Saturday is the first day of MAY, and May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses! Throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of extra homeschool notes on one of the world’s most wonderful natural phenomena.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Kansas, and our COUNTRIES are Pakistan 🇵🇰, Palau 🇵🇼, Panama 🇵🇦, and Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬. (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, heading toward full on Monday! 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 (25 April 2021) — Today is the 115th day of 2021; there are 250 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of the English poet and novelist Walter de la Mare (1873–1956). 🖋 The World War I Battle of Gallipoli began on this day in 1915. The date is commemorated as Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand. 🇦🇺🇳🇿 And on this day in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” outlining for the first time the double-helical architecture of DNA, the molecule of heredity. 👨‍🔬👨‍🔬

Monday (26 April 2021) — On this day in 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell from the skies over L’Aigle, France, demonstrating conclusively that “shooting stars” were in fact rocks falling from the sky. 🌠 Today is also the birthday of the famous French-American naturalist and artist John James Audubon (1785–1851). 🎨 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. 🌕

Tuesday (27 April 2021) — On this day in 1667, John Milton, blind and impoverished, sold the publishing rights to his masterpiece Paradise Lost for £5. 🍎 And today is the birthday of the American artist and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse (1791–1872), the creator of Morse Code. 🎨

Wednesday (28 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the American novelist Harper Lee (1926–2016), author of the school-standard story To Kill a Mockingbird. 🖋 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Rock Islands of Palau. 🇵🇼

Thursday (29 April 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great American jazz musician and composer Duke Ellington (1899–1974). 🎹

Friday (30 April 2021) — On this day in 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, George Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1897, British physicist J.  J. Thompson announced the discovery of the electron. ⚛️ Today is also the birthday of the great American choral conductor Robert Shaw (1916–1999). 🎶 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Sylviid Warblers and their allies. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (1 May 2021) — Happy May! 🌼 May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses. Keep an eye on the season’s progress at BirdCast.info. 🐦 🦆 🦅 The world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued on this day in 1840 in the United Kingdom. 📬 And on this day in 1931, the Empire State Building was dedicated in New York City as (at the time) the tallest building in the world. 🏙 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of May is, naturally enough, “May and the Poets” by Leigh Hunt (1784–1859). 🌼 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋 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 (2 May 2021) — Peter and the Wolf, the much-loved orchestral work for children by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), debuted in Moscow on this day in 1936. 🐺

🥂 👨‍🌾 THIS WEEK’S TOAST, for all the farmers of the world, is an old traditional for the beginning of the growing season:

Good luck to the hoof and the horn!
Good luck to the flock and the fleece!
Good luck to the growers of corn!
With blessings of plenty and peace!

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

The Tuira River where it joins the Bay of San Miguel in Panama. (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: Kansas, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, and More

25 April 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Kansas State Flag
    KANSAS (the 34th state, 29 January 1861) — The Sunflower State. Capital: Topeka. Kansas can be found on page 578 in your almanac and on plates 39 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Sioux word for ‘south wind people’” (almanac page 459). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website: portal.kansas.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:

  • 🇵🇰 PAKISTAN in southern Asia. Population: 233,500,636. Capital: Islamabad. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website: pakistan.gov.pk (in English).
  • 🇵🇼 PALAU in the western Pacific Ocean. Population: 21,685. Capital: Ngerulmud. Government: “Presidential republic in free association with U.S.” (almanac page 828). Website: www.palaugov.pw (in English).
  • 🇵🇦 PANAMA in Central America. Population: 3,894,082. Capital: Panama City. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.presidencia.gob.pa (in Spanish).
  • 🇵🇬 PAPUA NEW GUINEA in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Population: 7,259,456. Capital: Port Moresby. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.pm.gov.pg (in English).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 752–859; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you been making in your homeschool this 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

Filed Under: Homeschool States & Countries

🖋 🎭 HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WILL! (Shakespeare, That Is)

23 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

It’s Shakespeare’s birthday! Well, more or less.† And that’s good enough for us!

† The thing is, we don’t really know the exact date of Shakespeare’s birth. We do know that he was baptized on the 26th of April in 1564, and so was probably born just a few days earlier. The 23rd has become the customary date of celebration, and who are we to argue with that happy tradition? 😊

We love books and libraries and language and literature in the River Houses, and if you’re planning to study Shakespeare in your home academy — today, tomorrow, or any day in the future — you should definitely bookmark and explore the free teaching materials available online from the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., one of the world’s leading centers for Shakespearean teaching and research:

  • ➢ Classroom Resources from the Folger Shakespeare Library

The Folger is located on Capitol Hill, right next to the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court — a place of high honor indeed — and you can visit and tour the library someday if you make a homeschool trip to the nation’s capital.

On the Folger’s website you’ll find the full texts of all the plays and sonnets, lesson plans for many of them (with more on the way), and helpful summaries of each plot (Hamlet, Macbeth, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, and more).

This year, in our strange time of pestilence, are you still mostly stuck at home and unable to get out and socialize? If so, the Folger’s got you covered too:

  • ➢ Celebrate Shakespeare’s Birthday at Home with the Folger Library

Here’s a properly reverential reading from Macbeth that you can use to inspire your students this week — I didn’t learn this soliloquy until I was in high school, so this kid’s definitely got the jump on me:

And here’s one of my all-time favorite performances of Henry V that should also prove educationally inspirational:

If any of your students are aiming for a scholarly career, don’t forget that it’s never too early to start exposing them to an occasional reading of Shakespeare in the original language:

So, happy birthday, Will! (More or less!) 🎉

What literary treasures have you laughed over in your homeschool this Leo Term? 🎭

❡ Explore more: Your River Houses history encyclopedia has a beautifully illustrated overview of the Elizabethan period, within which Shakespeare lived and worked, on pages 260–261. It’s just the background you need to do a wonderful homeschool history-and-literature lesson. 📖

❡ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❡ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries posts. Add your name to our 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

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Gnatcatchers, Dippers, and Kinglets

23 April 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 (three different families) are the Gnatcatchers (pages 396–397), the Dippers (pages 398–399), and the Kinglets (pages 398–399).

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:

GNATCATCHERS — Family Polioptilidae. A New World family of small, active birds with long tails, which are usually cocked. Gnatcatchers are mostly shades of blue, white, and gray. All of our gnatcatcher species are polytypic [that is, they exhibit considerable geographical variation; they have “many types” or subspecies within each species]. Species: 15 World, 4 N.A. [North America]

DIPPERS — Family Cinclidae. Aquatic birds that wade and even swim underwater in clear, rushing mountain streams to feed. Species: 5 World, 1 N.A.

KINGLETS — Family Regulidae. Small, active birds that often hover to feed. Species: 6 World, 2 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 Kinglets, for example. How many species? (6 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (2 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Small, active, sometimes hover momentarily to feed, 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 Kinglet family, why not investigate both of the North American species: the Golden-crowned Kinglet and the Ruby-crowned Kinglet (page 398).

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big are these two similar species? (Only 4–4¼ inches long.) What are their scientific names? (Regulus satrapa and Regulus calendula.) Will you be able to find these species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range maps and range descriptions 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 songs or calls do these species make? How can you distinguish them from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

Kinglets are very tiny birds — among the smallest in North America. Their colored crowns are often not visible (and only male Ruby-crowns have a ruby crown). Both species are found across the United States, and they can be easily told apart if you get a good view: the Golden-crowned has an eye-line and the Ruby-crowned has an eye-ring.

For the Gnatcatcher family, why not look at the Blue-gray Gnatcatcher (page 396), the only widespread Gnatcatcher in the United States. It’s also a very tiny species, and much of its length is in its tail.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore. In our third family this week, for example, take a look at the American Dipper (page 398), a remarkable bird of the Rocky Mountains that often feeds underwater — the only small songbird to do so.

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. 🐦

❡ Enchiridion: 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

🖋 🌸 WONDERFUL WORDS: Loveliest of Trees

22 April 2021 by Bob O'Hara

The cherry trees are blooming in my river valley this week, and Friday of next week is National Arbor Day, so that means this is the perfect week to share a famous gem from A.E. Housman (1859–1936) — it’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of April:

Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

This is a wonderful poem to memorize — why not give it a try with your students this week. It has a simple AABB rhyme scheme that’s easy to remember, and the meter is fairly regular iambic or trochaic tetrameter, which gives it a sprightly, lilting gait. There’s a bit of irregularity here and there — some lines have only seven syllables instead of the expected eight. And how many syllables does “Loveliest” have? Ordinary American English would give it three, but I’d venture that here it was originally meant to have two — something like “Lov-l’est.”

Great writers like Housman are very precise in their use of words, and that’s something you’ll want your young scholars to appreciate. Send them to the family lexicon for the exact meanings of ride (noun definition #2, page 1509, “a path made for riding on horseback, especially through woodlands”) and tide (noun definition #4, page 1818, “A time or season. Often used in combination: eventide; Christmastide; Shrovetide“). Thus “woodland ride” and “Eastertide” are precise and perfect. Be sure also that your students are culturally literate readers and recognize “threescore years and ten” as the biblical allotment for a human life, from the book of Psalms: the narrator of this spring poem is twenty (“a score”), and is imagining that he has fifty more springs to go (for a total of three score and ten, or seventy).

Why not find a cherry tree in bloom about some woodland ride near you this week, and take along a copy of Housman, and have a little homeschool literature lesson that brings the tree and the words together — that will be better than any lesson you can teach in an indoor classroom. 🌸

What other wonderful words and poetical productions have you been studying in your homeschool this Leo Term? 🦁

❡ Fifty springs are little room: 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 A.E. Housman) 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

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