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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 9 May 2021

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Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more!) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

💐 HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY to all homeschool moms everywhere! What would the world do without you? ❤️

🦅 🦆 🐦 MAY is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of extra homeschool notes on one of the world’s most wonderful natural phenomena.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Nevada, and our COUNTRIES are Portugal 🇵🇹, Qatar 🇶🇦, Romania 🇷🇴, and Russia 🇷🇺. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌘 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waning crescent — a good time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (9 May 2021) — Today is the 129th day of 2021; there are 236 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. 📚 Happy Mother’s Day! ❤️ Lincoln Cathedral was consecrated on this day in the year 1092. It was the first building to surpass the Great Pyramid of Giza in height and was the tallest building in the world for more than 200 years. ⛪️

Monday (10 May 2021) — On this day in 1775, in one of the great early successes of the American Revolution, a small group of colonial militia under the command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold (not yet a traitor) seized British-held Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain “in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!” ⚔️ 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, a golden spike joined east and west and completed the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States. 🚂

Tuesday (11 May 2021) — Today is the birthday or two great American composers: Irving Berlin (1888–1989) and William Grant Still (1895–1978). 🎼

Wednesday (12 May 2021) — Today is the birthday of famed nurse and social reformer Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). 👩‍⚕️ It’s also the birthday of legendary American actress Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003). 🎭 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Al Zubarah Archaeological Site in Qatar. 🇶🇦

Thursday (13 May 2021) — On this day in 1861, astronomer John Tebbutt of Windsor, Australia, discovered C/1861 J1, better known as the Great Comet of 1861. ☄️

Friday (14 May 2021) — On this day in 1973, the United States’ first space station, Skylab, was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 🚀 And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the loquacious Mockingbirds and Thrashers. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (15 May 2021) — Today is the birthday of American children’s author L. Frank Baum (1856–1919), the creator of the Wizard of Oz. ✍️ And on this day in 1928, the Walt Disney character Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in a silent short called “Plane Crazy.” 🐭 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of May is Robert Frost’s “Birches,” for springtime play and growing up. 🍃 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Sunday (16 May 2021) — Today is the birthday of American educator Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804–1894), who established the first public kindergarten in the United States. 🏫

🥂 👩‍👧‍👦 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for Mother’s Day, is a Shakespearean traditional that we offer to all the mothers of the world: “May heaven give you many, many merry days.”

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

The Neva River flowing through St. Petersburg, Russia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ Daughters of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 699–701), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you. 🌍

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

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

❡ Lively springs: This is one of our regular “Quick Freshes” posts looking at the homeschool week ahead. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events and follow along with us. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Nevada, Portugal, Russia, and More

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Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.

Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and our recommended homeschool reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 458), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    Nevada State Flag
    NEVADA (the 36th state, 31 October 1864) — The Silver State, the Sagebrush State. Capital: Carson City. Nevada can be found on page 585 in your almanac and on plates 37 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Spanish, meaning ‘snow-clad’” (almanac page 459). State bird: Mountain Bluebird (bird guide page 408). Website: nv.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:

  • 🇵🇹 PORTUGAL in southwestern Europe. Population: 10,302,674. Capital: Lisbon. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.portugal.gov.pt (in Portuguese and English).
  • 🇶🇦 QATAR in the Middle East. Population: 2,444,174. Capital: Doha. Government: Absolute monarchy. Website: hukoomi.gov.qa (in English and Arabic).
  • 🇷🇴 ROMANIA in southeastern Europe. Population: 21,302,893. Capital: Bucharest. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.gov.ro (in Romanian, English, and French).
  • 🇷🇺 RUSSIA in eastern Europe and Asia. Population: 141,722,205. Capital: Moscow. Government: Semi-presidential federation. Website: government.ru (in Russian and English).

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

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you 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 (10th and 11th eds.) 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🖋 👩‍👧‍👦 WONDERFUL WORDS: Anne Bradstreet for Mother’s Day

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Happy Mother’s Day to all homeschool moms everywhere! The early American poet Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672) was the mother of eight (!) children, and she memorialized all of them in a wonderful long “ornithological” poem in 1659. It’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of May:

In Reference to her Children, 23 June 1659

I had eight birds hatcht in one nest,
Four Cocks were there, and Hens the rest.
I nurst them up with pain and care,
No cost nor labour did I spare
Till at the last they felt their wing,
Mounted the Trees and learned to sing.

Chief of the Brood then took his flight
To Regions far and left me quite.
My mournful chirps I after send
Till he return, or I do end.
Leave not thy nest, thy Dame and Sire,
Fly back and sing amidst this Quire.

My second bird did take her flight
And with her mate flew out of sight.
Southward they both their course did bend,
And Seasons twain they there did spend,
Till after blown by Southern gales
They Norward steer’d with fillèd sails.
A prettier bird was no where seen,
Along the Beach, among the treen.

I have a third of colour white
On whom I plac’d no small delight,
Coupled with mate loving and true,
Hath also bid her Dame adieu.
And where Aurora first appears,
She now hath percht to spend her years.

One to the Academy flew
To chat among that learned crew.
Ambition moves still in his breast
That he might chant above the rest,
Striving for more than to do well,
That nightingales he might excell.

My fifth, whose down is yet scarce gone,
Is ’mongst the shrubs and bushes flown
And as his wings increase in strength
On higher boughs he’ll perch at length.

My other three still with me nest
Until they’re grown, then as the rest,
Or here or there, they’ll take their flight,
As is ordain’d, so shall they light.

If birds could weep, then would my tears
Let others know what are my fears
Lest this my brood some harm should catch
And be surpris’d for want of watch
Whilst pecking corn and void of care
They fall un’wares in Fowler’s snare;
Or whilst on trees they sit and sing
Some untoward boy at them do fling,
Or whilst allur’d with bell and glass
The net be spread and caught, alas;
Or lest by Lime-twigs they be foil’d;
Or by some greedy hawks be spoil’d.
O would, my young, ye saw my breast
And knew what thoughts there sadly rest.
Great was my pain when I you bred,
Great was my care when I you fed.
Long did I keep you soft and warm
And with my wings kept off all harm.

My cares are more, and fears, than ever,
My throbs such now as ’fore were never.
Alas, my birds, you wisdom want
Of perils you are ignorant.
Oft times in grass, on trees, in flight,
Sore accidents on you may light.
O to your safety have an eye,
So happy may you live and die.
Mean while, my days in tunes I’ll spend
Till my weak lays with me shall end.
In shady woods I’ll sit and sing
And things that past, to mind I’ll bring.
Once young and pleasant, as are you,
But former toys (no joys) adieu!
My age I will not once lament
But sing, my time so near is spent,
And from the top bough take my flight
Into a country beyond sight
Where old ones instantly grow young
And there with seraphims set song.
No seasons cold, nor storms they see
But spring lasts to eternity.

When each of you shall in your nest
Among your young ones take your rest,
In chirping languages oft them tell
You had a Dame that lov’d you well,
That did what could be done for young
And nurst you up till you were strong
And ’fore she once would let you fly
She shew’d you joy and misery,
Taught what was good, and what was ill,
What would save life, and what would kill.
Thus gone, amongst you I may live,
And dead, yet speak and counsel give.
Farewell, my birds, farewell, adieu,
I happy am, if well with you.

Anne Bradstreet’s first book of poems was The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America, and it was published in London in 1650. The New York Historical Society’s library has a copy of the rare first edition, and you can read about it, and about Anne Bradstreet’s life, in this post by one of the library’s rare book catalogers:

(Actually, the volume’s full title, in good seventeenth-century style, is: The Tenth Muse Lately sprung up in America. Or Several Poems, compiled with great variety of Wit and Learning, full of delight. Wherein especially is contained a complete discourse and description of the Four Elements, Constitutions, Ages of Man, Seasons of the Year. Together with an Exact Epitomie of the Four Monarchies, viz., The Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, Roman. Also a Dialogue between Old England and New, concerning the late troubles. With divers other pleasant and serious Poems. By a Gentlewoman in those parts. See if your students can take one of their own modern books and fill out its title in this classic, expansive style.)

Anne Bradstreet’s Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America (1650). (Image: New-York Historical Society.)

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

❡ I happy am, if well with you: 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 Anne Bradstreet) 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. 📖

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Polaris for May

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I am constant as the northern star,
Of whose true-fix’d and resting quality
There is no fellow in the firmament.

—Shakespeare

May is the third month of Leo Term in the River Houses, and as our monthly star calendar will tell you, May’s Great Star is Polaris, the Pole Star in the constellation Ursa Minor, the Little Bear (which includes the asterism called the Little Dipper). Its formal designation is α Ursae Minoris — “alpha of Ursa Minor.” Ursa Minor, the Little Dipper, and Polaris are up in the north all year long, marking the location of the celestial pole, the point in the sky directly above earth’s north pole. The angular elevation of Polaris above the horizon corresponds to your latitude.

Polaris at the center of a time-lapse image of the north celestial pole. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you want to introduce your students to Polaris and Ursa Minor you can start with some basic astronomy and astronomical mythology from your backyard star guide:

This northernmost constellation is visible year-round to star-watchers in the Northern Hemisphere. Its value as a navigational tool was recognized long ago, and travelers still look to the Little Dipper to locate Polaris. Other stars in the sky rotate around the celestial pole, making Polaris and the Little Dipper reliable constants in the night sky not only for travelers but also for those navigating the stars. Earlier cultures even used it as a clock, marking time as the constellation swung around the seemingly fixed point of the North Star. (Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, page 198)

That’s plenty for beginning students — your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Polaris is packed with additional information on everything from astrometry to cultural history.

Polaris and the surrounding stars of Ursa Minor. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Polaris we see as a single star is in fact a triple star system. The primary star of the system — the source of nearly all the light that comes to us — is a yellow supergiant more than 30 times the diameter of the sun. It has a tiny close companion that can only be detected in powerful telescopes, and a more distant companion that can be fairly easily resolved by amateur observers. The Polaris system is about 400 light-years distant — the light we see when we look at Polaris was actually emitted by the star about 400 years ago.

The Big Dipper (part of Ursa Major), the Little Dipper (part of Ursa Minor), and the pointer stars that will lead you to Polaris. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

One of the easiest ways to locate Polaris is to find the Big Dipper (which is more conspicuous in the sky than the fainter Little Dipper), and then trace along from the two “pointer stars” to Polaris. Once you’ve located Polaris in the familiar surroundings of your neighborhood or backyard (“just above and to the left of the red maple tree”) you’ll never need search for it again, because unlike the seasonal stars that cross the sky through the night, Polaris will always be in the same place, winter and summer, spring and fall. (“I am as constant as the northern star,” says Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.)

The constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Bear) and the adjacent constellation Draco the Dragon, in an imaginative illustration from Urania’s Mirror (1824). Polaris is here labeled with one of its old names, “Cynosura” or “the Dog’s Tail.” Ursa Major and the Big Dipper are out of view to the lower left. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Sometime this month, take your homeschool students out at dusk and introduce them to this great celestial landmark, and teach them its name, and so give them a new friend for life.

What stellar observations have you made in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular names — Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so on — as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572–1625) devised the formal system of star designations that is still in common use today. In Bayer’s system, the stars in each constellation, from brightest to dimmest, are assigned a lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet: α (alpha, brightest), β (beta, second brightest), γ (gamma, third brightest), δ (delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the name of the constellation in its Latin possessive (genitive) form: Lyra becomes Lyrae (“of Lyra”), Canis Major becomes Canis Majoris (“of Canis Major”), and so on. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the star Vega) thus becomes α Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes α Canis Majoris (“alpha of Canis Major”), and so on, through all 24 Greek letters and all 88 constellations. How bright would you expect, say, the σ (sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright — it’s far down the alphabet — but σ Orionis happens to mark the top of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still notable and easy to locate on a dark night. ✨

❡ Star bright: The brightness of a star as we see it in our night sky is its magnitude — or more properly, its apparent magnitude. The scale of star magnitudes was developed long before modern measuring instruments were invented, so it can be a little bit confusing for beginners. Originally, the brightest stars in the sky were called “first magnitude” and the less-bright stars “second magnitude,” “third magnitude,” and so on, down to the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye, which were called “sixth magnitude.” In the nineteenth century the star Vega (our August star) was chosen as the standard brightness reference and its value on the magnitude scale was defined to be zero (0.0). Five steps in magnitude (from 0.0 to 5.0 or from 1.0 to 6.0) was defined to be a change in brightness of 100 times: a star 100 times dimmer than Vega (0.0) was defined to be a magnitude 5.0 star. Vega is not quite the brightest star is the sky, however, so the scale also had to be extended into negative numbers: Sirius (our March star), for example, is magnitude –1.5, about three times brighter than Vega (at 0.0). The planet Venus at its brightest is about magnitude –4.2; the full moon is about magnitude –12.9; the sun is magnitude –26.7. By contrast, the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye in a populated, light-polluted area are about magnitude 3.0; the dimmest stars visible under very dark conditions are about magnitude 6.5. The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit around the earth has photographed distant stars and galaxies below magnitude 30, the dimmest celestial objects humans have seen so far. 🌃

❡ And all dishevelled wandering stars: How far away are the stars? Do they all occupy a single celestial “dome” that rotates through the heavens (as some ancient and medieval astronomers believed), or are they scattered through space at different individual distances? Astronomers had long suspected that the fixed stars existed at different distances from us, but early attempts to measure those distances failed. It was not until the early 1800s that instruments and measuring techniques became precise enough to allow the first stellar distances to be calculated using the technique of parallax. Parallax is the displacement in the apparent position of an object with respect to the background when an observer moves from side to side. It’s an ordinary phenomenon you experience every day — it’s how we judge distances as we move through the landscape. Stellar parallaxes are extremely small — fractions of an arc-second (one 3600th of a degree) — and they are calculated by measuring a star’s position against the background at opposite sides of the earth’s orbit, six months apart. (That’s the astronomical equivalent of taking one step to the side.) Vega, our August star, was one of the first stars to have its parallax measured; modern estimates put it at about 0.13 arc-seconds. Apply some trigonometry, and that yields a distance of about 25 light-years. 🔭

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. We recommend the handy Backyard Guide to the Night Sky as a general family reference — it will help you identify all the northern hemisphere constellations and will point out many highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Your recommended world atlas also has beautiful maps of the whole northern and southern hemisphere night skies on plates 121–122 (10th and 11th eds.). Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌌

❡ First star I see tonight: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts featuring twelve of the most notable stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. Download and print your own copy of our River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us as we visit a different Great Star each month — and make each one of them a homeschool friend for life. 🌟

🖥 SIGN UP for Harvard University’s Online Homeschool Conference

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Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government is hosting an online conference about homeschooling law, policy, and politics, and you (yes, you!) can attend at no charge. All the details are available here:

The live sessions take place every Thursday at noon Eastern time — the first one was this past Thursday (May 6th) and there will be six more through the middle of June. The presentations are being recorded and will be posted after each session is concluded, but closed-captioning is being added before the recordings are made available so the reposting will not be immediate.

Registration for all the live sessions is free, but you have to supply an email address to which they can send a Zoom link for the live broadcast. (You can watch in your browser; you don’t have to use the Zoom application.)

The Kennedy School is Harvard’s graduate school of government and politics, and this is very much an academic-style conference: it’s not about homeschooling curriculum or methods, but rather about law and public policy. Topics for the upcoming sessions include: “Growth and diversity in post-pandemic homeschooling,” “Are homeschoolers prepared for life?,” “Are homeschoolers socially isolated?,” “Is child abuse greater at school or homeschool?,” “Is homeschooling an international movement?, and “Parents’ experiences with homeschooling.”

The full program with the names and affiliations of all the presenters is available at the link above. I watched the first session this past Thursday and it was lively and interesting. I hope you’ll join me and watch the remaining sessions each Thursday through the spring.

What interesting homeschool news and research have you come across this Leo Term? 👩🏻‍🎓

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

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Thrushes

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Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.

This week’s birds are the melodious Thrushes (pages 408–417).

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:

THRUSHES — Family Turdidae. Eloquent songsters of many habitats that feed mainly on insects and fruit. Some species, especially in the genus Catharus, are difficult to identify. Species: 181 World, 26 N.A. [North America]

When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about a new group — about the Thrush family, for example. How many species? (181 worldwide — a large group.) Are there any near us? (26 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Good singers, found in many habitats, eat fruit and insects, 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. The Thrush family contains some of America’s best-loved birds — why not begin with the American Robin (page 414), a familiar species found all across the continent. There may be one outside your window today.

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 American Robin? (10 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Turdus migratorius.) 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.)

Robins are familiar insect-eaters and worm-eaters on suburban lawns all across the United States, but they also eat berries and fruits, especially in winter. They build nests of grass-covered mud — a distinctive feature — and their bright eggs even give us a special color-name: “Robin’s-egg blue.” Like many members of the Thrush family they are persistent singers that produce a liquid, melodious song all through the day.

For a second species in the Thrush family, take a look at the beautiful Mountain Bluebird, one of the three species of bluebirds (genus Sialia) in North America.

And if you want to learn about one of the world’s great singers, look up the Wood Thrush (page 412), a summer forest bird in much of the eastern United States.

The persistent, complex, liquid song of the Wood Thrush echoing through shady woods is always a delight to the ear.

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. If you’re in the east rather than the west, why not take a look at the Eastern Bluebird (page 408) rather than the Mountain Bluebird; if you’re up for a challenge, see if you can learn how to distinguish a Hermit Thrush from a Swainson’s Thrush (both page 410); 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 you made 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. 🌎

❡ State birds: Five species in the popular Thrush family are United States state birds: the Eastern Bluebird (Missouri and New York), the Mountain Bluebird (Idaho and Nevada), the Hermit Thrush (Vermont), the Wood Thrush (District of Columbia), and the American Robin (Connecticut, Michigan, and Wisconsin). 🇺🇸

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE – May 2021: “Arthropods” and “Water Sport”

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Calling all homeschool photographers! One of the independent projects we recommend to homeschool students is the monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. The May challenge is now open and the announced themes are “Arthropods Other Than Insects” and “Water Sport.” You can see sample photos and learn how to submit your own entry here:

The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge encourages people to take and submit high-quality images for the public Wikimedia Commons database, the source from which Wikipedia and many other websites draw their images. Once you’ve registered and submitted an entry, you can also participate in the selection of future themes and in the voting for the monthly winners.

A sample entry for the theme “Arthropods Other Than Insects” from this month’s Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you have talented young photographers in your home academy, why not encourage them to sign up and submit an entry. Working on a specific theme over a period of a few weeks is a great way for students to develop both their technical camera skills and their visual composition skills. And if you submit a number of entries over time you can assemble a personal portfolio page to show off your work — that would be good experience in how to create a professional presentation of yourself for future employment or college admissions.

A sample entry for the theme “Water Sport” from this month’s Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

You can find more ideas for independent homeschool projects in a wide range of scientific and scholarly fields on our River Houses Lunar Society page.

What photographic, artistic, and scientific discoveries have you been making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac has a long list of famous artists on pages 214–217, and that list includes famous photographers. 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 photographic inspiration! 📸

❡ Follow along with us: This is one of our regular “Lunar Society” posts about the many independent projects we recommend to homeschool students. 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: Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in the Philippines

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The Philippines in southeastern Asia are one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of the Philippines’ World Heritage Sites: Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park.

An entrance into the caverns at Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in the Philippines. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Puerto Princesa National Park preserves one of the most extensive underground river systems in the world:

Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park encompasses one of the world’s most impressive cave systems, featuring spectacular limestone karst landscapes, pristine natural beauty, and intact old-growth forests and distinctive wildlife. It is located in the south-western part of the Philippine Archipelago on the mid western coast of Palawan, approximately 76 km northwest of Puerto Princesa and 360 km southwest of Manila.

The property, comprising an area of approximately 22,202 ha, contains an 8.2 km long underground river. The highlight of this subterranean river system is that it flows directly into the sea, with its brackish lower half subjected to tidal influence, distinguishing it as a significant natural global phenomenon. The river’s cavern presents remarkable, eye catching rock formations. The property contains a full mountain-to-sea ecosystem which provides significant habitat for biodiversity conservation and protects the most intact and noteworthy forests within the Palawan biogeographic province. Holding the distinction of being the first national park devolved and successfully managed by a local government unit, the park’s effective management system is a symbol of commitment by the Filipino people to the protection and conservation of their natural heritage. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #652)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Puerto Princesa Subterranean River 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. 🌏

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Artistic 700s

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Tuesday is our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your young scholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can adopt one major class each month and survey the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for May is the 700s, which covers Arts & Recreation. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 700s” means the numbers running from 700 to 799.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the Artistic 700s:

  • CLASS 700 – ARTS & RECREATION
    • 700 – Arts (General)
    • 710 – Area Planning & Landscape Architecture
    • 720 – Architecture
    • 730 – Sculpture, Ceramics, & Metalwork
    • 740 – Graphic Arts & Decorative Arts
    • 750 – Painting
    • 760 – Printmaking & Prints
    • 770 – Photography, Computer Art, Film, Video
    • 780 – Music
    • 790 – Sports, Games, & Entertainment

Each of these “tens” divisions is subdivided further of course. For example, in the 750s (Painting) you’ll find works on Techniques (751), Color (752), Symbolism (753), History of Painting (759), and so on.

So if you’ve got a future architect in your homeschool, the 720s are the place to go this month. A future photographer? Head for the 770s. A future musician? Try the 780s. A future high-stakes gambler? Go and explore 795 (or maybe not). 🎲😊🎲

❡ Dewey Detectives at home: If you’re still locked out of your local library because of the current pestilence, why not become a Dewey Detective at home! There may actually be Dewey decimal numbers hidden all around your house right now. Here are some tips on how to find them. 🔎

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, sculpture, you’ll find it in the 730s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. If you have an opportunity to make field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to demonstrate that in practice and get your students accustomed to orienting themselves by reading the numbers aloud as you walk together down the ranges: “710 … 720 … 725 … here it is, 730.”

Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

What delightful decimals and textual treasures have you discovered in your library this Leo Term? 📚

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 700s, one in the 710s, one in the 720s, one in the 730s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 700) and the very last book in the class (the highest 799). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your three favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this month-by-month, over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb and how many academic skills they will develop without even realizing it. 🔎

❡ 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. 📚

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 2 May 2021

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Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more!) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🦅 🦆 🐦 MAY is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and 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 West Virginia, and our COUNTRIES are Paraguay 🇵🇾, Peru 🇵🇪, the Philippines 🇵🇭, and Poland 🇵🇱. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌖 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waning — a good time for moon watching! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (2 May 2021) — Today is the 122nd day of 2021; there are 243 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. 📚 Peter and the Wolf, the much-loved orchestral work for children by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), debuted in Moscow on this day in 1936. 🐺

Monday (3 May 2021) — Today is the birthday of the famous Renaissance historian and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). 👑 And on this day in 1715, Edmund Halley (of comet fame) successfully predicted, to within four minutes’ accuracy, a total solar eclipse that was visible across much of Europe. 🌍 🌑 🌞

Tuesday (4 May 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). 🎨 Today is also International Firefighters Day! 🚒 And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Artistic 700s. 📚

Wednesday (5 May 2021) — The famous performance venue known today as Carnegie Hall opened in New York City on this day in 1891, with the great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) as guest conductor. (New York tourist: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” New Yorker: “Practice, young man! Practice!”) 🎵 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in the Philippines. 🇵🇭

Thursday (6 May 2021) — Today is the birthday of the American admiral and polar explorer Robert Peary (1856–1920). 🎿 And on this day in 1954, British athlete Roger Bannister (1929–2018) ran history’s first four-minute mile. 🏃

Friday (7 May 2021) — Two great “B’s” were born on this day: the English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889) 🖋 and the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). 🎼 And on this day in 1915, a German U-boat sank the passenger liner R.M.S. Lusitania, killing nearly 1200 civilians. It was one of the principal events that drew the United States into World War I. 🚢 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the melodious Thrushes. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (8 May 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Austrian-British economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992). 💰 And today in 1945 was V-E Day, the end of World War II in Europe. ✌️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of May is Anne Bradstreet’s “In Reference to Her Children,” for Mother’s Day and all homeschool moms. 👩‍👧‍👦 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋 And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: the pole star Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor, the Little Bear (which includes the Little Dipper). 🌟

Sunday (9 May 2021) — Happy Mother’s Day to all homeschool moms everywhere! What would the world do without you? ❤️ Lincoln Cathedral was consecrated on this day in the year 1092. It was the first building to surpass the Great Pyramid of Giza in height and was the tallest building in the world for more than 200 years. ⛪️

🥂 🐦 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is for Bird Migration Month: “To the early bird that catches the worm.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To unpredictability in toasting!”). Many of our current toasts are taken from an old collection that appeared in Routledge’s Manual of Etiquette (London, ca. 1870). What will you toast this week? 🥂

🌎 🇵🇾 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Paraguay in central South America is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Salado River, a tributary of the great Paraguay River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Salado River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Salado River (Río Salado) in Paraguay. (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. 🗓