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🌅 WATCH THE SUMMER SOLSTICE AT STONEHENGE

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This Sunday, June 20th, is the summer solstice, the astronomical beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere, and you and your homeschool students can mark this significant annual occasion with a live broadcast of sunset and sunrise from Stonehenge, the ancient astronomical landmark in southern England.

The English Heritage organization, the caretaker of the Stonehenge site, sponsors the live broadcast via YouTube. Check it carefully to confirm your local times. The Stonehenge sunset will take place about 4:30 p.m. Eastern U.S. time on Sunday the 20th (which is about 9:30 p.m. local time at Stonehenge). Sunrise will take place about 11:50 p.m. Eastern U.S. time, also on Sunday the 20th (which will be about 4:50 a.m. on the morning of Monday the 21st at Stonehenge). Notice how short the night-time interval is on this “longest day” of the year: only a little more than seven hours at the high latitude of Stonehenge.

Stonehenge usually draws large crowds of visitors each year for the summer solstice. Last year the site was closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, but this year it is open again, although with some restrictions. We shall see what the local turnout is this year.

What celestial sights and astronomical alignments will you be examining in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 🔭

❡ Star bright: If you’d like some light and easy homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us month by month as we make twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟

❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older students, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages, posted each Tuesday, usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school astronomy students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and then narrate a summary back to you. 🌌

❡ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Wood-Warblers (I)

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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 Wood-Warblers (pages 452–485), the little jewels of the American forests. Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’re spreading the Wood-Warblers out over two weeks because there are so many of them: about 109 in the western hemisphere (the only place they occur) and 57 in North America.

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:

WOOD-WARBLERS — Family Parulidae. About half of the many species in this colorful New World family occur in N.A. [North America] Most are highly migratory; a few reach central S.A. [South America] Species: 109 World, 57 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. How many species? (109 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (57 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Colorful, highly migratory, and so on.)

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, why not investigate the Yellow Warbler (page 468), one of the commonest and most widespread warbler species in the United States.

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 Yellow Warbler? (5 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Setophaga petechia.) 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.)

Yellow Warblers breed across almost all of the United States and Canada except for the deep south, a region they only pass through on migration. They generally prefer damp areas around the edges of ponds, lakes, and rivers, and their variable song — remarkably loud for such a small bird — is regularly heard in spring and summer across the landscape.

For a second species in the Wood-Warbler family this week, take a look at the American Redstart (page 466), a flashy little black and orange bird that also occurs widely across North America, except for the far west.

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 yellow, black, and orange aren’t to your taste, for example, how about blue? (There’s a warbler of almost every color!) Take a look next at the lovely Cerulean Warbler (page 466), and learn a wonderful new vocabulary word in the process: cerulean. And so on, through 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 will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🌍 🇪🇸 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Old Town of Segovia in Spain

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Spain in western Europe is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Spain’s World Heritage Sites: the Old Town of Segovia and its Aqueduct.

The ancient Roman aqueduct in Segovia, Spain. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Segovia’s two thousand year old aqueduct is one of the best-preserved examples of ancient Roman engineering:

The Old Town of Segovia is located in the centre of Spain, in the Autonomous Community of Castile and León. The centre is crowded together on the rocky bluff delineated by the confluence of the Eresma and Clamores rivers.

Segovia is symbolic of a complex, historical reality. Its neighbourhoods, streets, and houses are laid out in accordance with a social structure in which hierarchy was organized and dominated by belonging to one of the different cultural communities. Moors, Christians, and Jews coexisted for a long period of time in the medieval city and worked together during the 16th century manufacturing boom. The evidence of this cultural process can be seen in the large number of outstanding monuments in the city, among which, the Roman Aqueduct stands out. Other important monuments can be found in the property: the Alcázar, begun around the 11th century; several Romanesque churches; noble palaces from 15th and 16th centuries; the 16th-century Gothic cathedral, the last to be built in Spain in this style; and the Segovia Mint, the oldest industrial building still existing in Spain.

The Roman Aqueduct of Segovia, probably built c. 50 BC, is remarkably well preserved. This impressive construction, with its two tiers of arches, forms part of the magnificent setting of the historic city of Segovia. It is an enormous construction of masonry, 813 m in length, consisting of four straight segments and two superimposed arcades borne by 128 pillars. At the lowest point of the valley, the Aqueduct stands at a height of 28.5 m above ground.

The 221 colossal pillars bear witness to the magnitude of the Aquae Atilianae in the province of Zaragoza while in other parts of Spain, only remnants of the Roman aqueducts of Sevilla, Toledo, and Calahorra have survived. The impressive monuments that survive in Mérida, Tarragona, and Segovia illustrate the political determination, which following the steps of the victorious armies, greatly increased the number of aqueducts which Frontinus described as ‘the most solemn testimony of the Empire.’ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #311)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Old Town of Segovia 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 will you be exploring in your homeschool this Hercules 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. 🌍

🖋 👨‍👧‍👧 HAPPY FATHER’S DAY WEEK from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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This coming Sunday (the third Sunday in June) is Father’s Day! Happy Father’s Day to all homeschool dads everywhere!

Edith, Alice, and Allegra Longfellow, by Thomas Read. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
In honor of this happy holiday, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of June is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour” (1863), which stars Henry’s three daughters: Alice Mary, Anne Allegra, and Edith. Longfellow was the most popular poet of nineteenth-century America, and “The Children’s Hour,” which was once widely taught in American schools, is a good illustration of why that was so.

The scene of the poem is the study in Longfellow’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, now a National Historic Site that you and your students can visit someday on your homeschool travels around the United States. It’s evening, and Papa Longfellow is at his desk.

The Children’s Hour

Between the dark and the daylight,
 When the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
 That is known as the Children’s Hour.

I hear in the chamber above me
 The patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
 And voices soft and sweet.

From my study I see in the lamplight,
 Descending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
 And Edith with golden hair.

A whisper, and then a silence:
 Yet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
 To take me by surprise.

A sudden rush from the stairway,
 A sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
 They enter my castle wall!

They climb up into my turret
 O’er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
 They seem to be everywhere.

They almost devour me with kisses,
 Their arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
 In his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!

Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
 Because you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
 Is not a match for you all!

I have you fast in my fortress,
 And will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
 In the round-tower of my heart.

And there will I keep you forever,
 Yes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
 And moulder in dust away!

What other wonderful words and poetical productions will you be studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ In the round-tower of my heart: 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 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. 🖋

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

🔎 HOMESCHOOL RESEARCH & NEWS – June 2021

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On the third Tuesday of each month we post a quick roundup of some recent academic publications and news about homeschooling, offered for your interest. These are typically university research papers, and they may have a positive, negative, or neutral outlook on home education. The title links generally point to the full text of each publication, which is often a printable pdf file. In some cases, a paid subscription may be required to read the whole article. The article abstracts or introductions below are quoted in full whenever possible, without editing.

In addition to the academic papers below, homeschoolers may also be interested in an encouraging news essay by homeschool advocate Kerry McDonald: “Two Grown-Up Homeschoolers Explain How Alternative Education Helped Them Get Ahead.” A homeschool graduate declares: “the uniqueness of a homeschooler’s repertoire of knowledge is an advantage in life and business, not a disadvantage.”

We have four regular items this month.

(1) Unconventional Education: The Homeschooled Student College Experience — D. Amaddeo (2021)

Introduction: Homeschooled students are unique in a college environment. Without adhering to a traditional school system, homeschooled students possess various learning opportunities outside of the classroom. However, because they lack the formal educational prerequisites held by traditional students, their achievements and experiences may differ. Stereotypes also exist for these students; they are often perceived as socially inept due to lack of prior socialization, for example. Institutions interested in including homeschooled students in campus diversity initiatives should develop a better understanding of their experiences. Once institutions understand the homeschooled student experience, then programming and resources can be offered to increase diversity initiatives. This article will also highlight the importance of parent and family services and how they can be incorporated in programming and resources.

(2) Homeschooling Gifted Learners: An Australian Experience — M.L. Conejeros-Solar & S.R. Smith (2021)

Abstract: Homeschooling has been a growing movement worldwide since the 1970s and a research topic for the last 30 years in Australia. Despite this body of knowledge, no studies have focused specifically on gifted homeschooling in this country. Using a qualitative approach, 10 mothers of 10 gifted children were interviewed; data were analysed using qualitative content analysis methodology. Five major themes emerged: (1) homeschooling motivations, (2) giftedness challenges, (3) homeschooling provision, (4) facilitators for homeschooling, and (5) barriers to homeschooling. In the findings, it was suggested that homeschooling is chosen for the majority of families as a healing process from a school system that has damaged them emotionally and cognitively. Families of gifted children value the freedom and flexibility of the homeschooling option to encourage their gifted children’s abilities and interests. The outcomes of this study present a clearer understanding of the decisional and implementation processes of homeschooling carried out by families of gifted learners and its effect on their lives.

(3) Four Key Barriers Affecting the Choice to Homeschool: Evidence from a Fragile Community — B.D. Ray, M.D. Shakeel, F. Worth, & V. Bryant (2021)

Abstract: Homeschooling has witnessed an upsurge in the United States since the movement for school choice gained momentum in the 1990s. Most research on homeschooling has been on non-representative samples of median-income white Americans, making it difficult for policymakers to accept its reliability. In addition, homeschoolers now include other ethnic groups and families with low socio-economic status, who existing research has largely ignored. We also know little about the families’ perceptions of barriers to homeschooling. In this paper, we address these gaps in homeschooling research by analyzing a state-representative sample of homeschooling families in Georgia belonging to a fragile community (e.g., household income $40,000 or less, disproportionately African American, children ages 2–18) recruited to the panel through randomized double-blind methods. Cross-sectional findings suggest that demographic variables do not explain much of the variation in homeschooling. Four perceived barriers stand out as significant negative predictors of both outcomes (i.e., now homeschooling and desire to homeschool). These barriers are parents not understanding homeschool laws, having various concerns about their children (e.g., concern social services agency may bother them if they homeschool), apprehensions about the socialization of their children, and unease about their own knowledge to homeschool. Findings suggest that policymakers should differentiate between the barriers to homeschooling faced by fragile families that do not already homeschool their children versus those that currently homeschool.

(4) Educational Needs Assessment for African Americans with Homeschooled Children — K.L. Rhyne Byrd (2021)

Abstract: Trends in homeschooling show that enrollment for K–12 students is on the rise, particularly with African American families. For families choosing to homeschool their children, there is greater flexibility and range of choice in curriculum programs and instructional practices. Data from this phenomenological case study was collected using interviews and surveys in an effort to understand and identify the educational needs of African American families who homeschool their children. Using interviews, this study explored the homeschooling needs and experiences of African American families through shared experiences. This study also analyzed the need to include Afrocentric and multicultural teachings as part of a homeschool curriculum. By using constant comparative to analyze the data, the researcher was able to and identify trends across the homeschool experience for African Americans and define five major themes: 1) Accessibility and Availability of Resources, 2) Homeschool Setting and Structure, 3) Instructional Support, 4) Working Parents and Homeschooling, and 5) Cultural Representation in Education. Two minor themes emerged as well: 1) Problem Based Learning and 2) Socialization outside of the Home. The results of this study are crucial to the development and implementation of curriculum, the use of instructional practices, and the access and availability of educational resources within a homeschool setting.

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

❡ Explore more: If you’d like to investigate the current academic literature on homeschooling yourself, the best place to start is Google Scholar, the special academic search engine from Google. Just enter a search term or phrase of interest (“homeschool,” “unschooling,” “classical homeschooling,” “deschooling,” etc.), and Google Scholar will return a list of academic publications that mention your topic. 🔎

❡ Explore more: For a comprehensive review of homeschooling research prior to 2020, see the paper by Kunzman and Gaither that is linked as the first item in our Research & News post for July 2020. 📖

❡ 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. 🗞

🇺🇸 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: Happy Flag Day 2021!

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Flag Day, June 14th every year, celebrates the day in 1777 when Congress established the Stars & Stripes as the national flag of the new United States:

Resolved, that the Flag of the thirteen United States shall be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white on a blue field, representing a new constellation. (Journals of the Continental Congress)

Flag Day was first recognized nationally by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 through a presidential proclamation, and Wilson’s proclamation was later extended by legislation that was signed by President Harry Truman in 1949.

“The Birth of Old Glory” (1917), after a painting by Edward Percy Moran (1862–1935). (Image: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division.)

The Library of Congress has a complete rundown on this history of Flag Day and a wide range of educational resources that you and your students can explore today:

What other holidays and historical anniversaries will you be marking in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ The emblem of the land I love: Flags are wonderful subjects for students to investigate, and your recommended homeschool almanac and world atlas both have many pages of flag illustrations. Why not open them up today and explore! 🇦🇫 🇦🇱 🇩🇿 🇦🇸 🇦🇩 🇦🇴 🇦🇮 🇦🇬 🇦🇷 🇦🇲 🇦🇼 🇦🇺 🇦🇹 🇦🇿 🇺🇸

❡ Stay up to date: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries 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 13 June 2021

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

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Montana, and our COUNTRIES are Somalia 🇸🇴, South Africa 🇿🇦, South Sudan 🇸🇸, and Spain 🇪🇸. (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 waxing 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 (13 June 2021) — Today is the 164th day of 2021; there are 201 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 great Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1939). ⚛️ It’s also the birthday of the great Irish poet William Butler Yeats (1865–1939). 🖋

Monday (14 June 2021) — Today is Flag Day! 🇺🇸 On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Army. ⚔️ And on this day in 1777, the United States Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the American national flag. 🇺🇸

Tuesday (15 June 2021) — And speaking of solar eclipses, Assyrian scribes recorded the occurrence of a total solar eclipse on this day in the year 763 B.C. The date of that eclipse serves a fixed reference point for much of ancient Mesopotamian chronology. 🌏 🌑 🌞 And on this day in 1215, King John of England set his seal to Magna Carta, the Great Charter that is the historical foundation of English (and so American) law. ⚖️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of June is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour,” for Father’s Day, observed each year on the third Sunday in June. 👨‍👧‍👦 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋

Wednesday (16 June 2021) — Today is the birthday of the American geneticist and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock (1902–1992). 👩‍🔬 And on this day in 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (b. 1937) became the first woman in space. 👩‍🚀 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Old Town of Segovia in Spain. 🇪🇸

Thursday (17 June 2021) — The Battle of Bunker Hill, the first coordinated encounter between opposing armies during the American Revolution, took place on this day in 1775 across the river from Boston. (See page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia for a Revolutionary review.) ⚔️ And today is the birthday of one of the giants of American, nay, of world history, to wit, Ruth Graves Wakefield (1903–1977), the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie! 🍪

Friday (18 June 2021) — On this day in 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain. ⚔️ And on this day in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the presidential election of 1872. 🗳 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to those jewels of the American forests, the Wood Warblers! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (19 June 2021) — On this day in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Union troops announced to slaves still living in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. The date is celebrated in Texas and several other states as Juneteenth Independence Day. 🎉

Sunday (20 June 2021) — HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads everywhere! 👨‍👧‍👦 And Happy First Day of Summer! 🌞 Today is the June Solstice, known as the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of winter). 🗓 The University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, received its royal charter on this day in the year 1248. 🎓 And the United States Congress approved the design of the Great Seal of the United States on this day in 1782. (You may well have a copy of it in your pocket right now.) 💵

🥂 🇺🇸 THIS WEEK’S TOAST is our traditional offering for Flag Day: “To the Star-spangled Banner: long may it wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

❡ 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: South Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Amanzimtoti River in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Amanzimtoti River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

“Amanzimtoti River at the lower parking area of Ilanda Wilds” in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. (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 Sunday 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: Montana, Somalia, Spain, 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:

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    Montana State Flag
    MONTANA (the 41st state, 8 November 1889) — The Treasure State. Capital: Helena. Montana can be found on page 584 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Latin or Spanish for ‘mountainous’” (almanac page 459). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website: mt.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:

  • 🇸🇴 SOMALIA in eastern Africa. Population: 11,757,124. Capital: Mogadishu. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website: villasomalia.gov.so (in English and Somali).
  • 🇿🇦 SOUTH AFRICA in southern Africa. Population: 56,463,617. Capital: Pretoria/Cape Town. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.za (in English).
  • 🇸🇸 SOUTH SUDAN in east-central Africa. Population: 10,561,244. Capital: Juba. Government: Presidential republic. Website: CIA World Factbook entry (in English).
  • 🇪🇸 SPAIN in southwestern Europe. Population: 50,015,792. Capital: Madrid. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.lamoncloa.gob.es (in Spanish).

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) will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Spica for June

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June is the first month of Hercules Term in the River Houses, and as our monthly star calendar will tell you, June’s Great Star is Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo the Virgin. Its formal designation is α Virginis — “alpha of Virgo.” Spica (in Latin) is the ear of grain — the spike — in the hand of the harvest maiden Proserpine (Persephone in Greek).

The constellation Virgo, showing the location of its alpha star, Spica, representing the ear of grain in the harvest maiden’s hand. The dashed red line is the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets follow across the sky. Arcturus, our July star, appears in the upper left. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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

Virgo is another of the zodiacal constellations that straddles the ecliptic band and the only one representing a woman. It was first cataloged by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century. The magnitude-1 star Spica can be located by star hopping. From the end of the handle of the Big Dipper, move south in the “arc to Arcturus” [our July star] in the constellation Boötes, then “speed on to Spica” directly beneath it.

Located some 263 light-years from Earth, brilliant blue-white Spica is the fifth brightest star in the entire heavens, a blue giant about 14 times the mass of our own sun and 2,000 times more luminous. While it may look like a single star, it is in fact a double. Both are hot blue giants that orbit each other only 11 million miles (18 million km) apart. (Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, page 202)

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

Conjunction of Spica and Venus on 21 November 2018. (Image: Marion Haligowski via Sky & Telescope.)

Blue-white Spica and its companion star are so close to each other — closer than the sun and Mercury — that they are deformed by gravity and are more egg-shaped than spherical. The primary star is about seven times the diameter of the sun; the companion is about four times the diameter of the sun. Spectroscopic analysis shows that they orbit each other with a period of about four days. The Spica system is also quite young: about 12.5 million years old.

As noted above, Spica is very close to the ecliptic, the path followed by the moon, sun, and planets as they cross the earth’s sky, and so on rare occasions it is briefly covered by them — an event called an occultation. The last occultation of Spica by Venus occurred in the year 1783, and the next will occur in 2197.

The constellation Virgo, in an imaginative illustration from Urania’s Mirror (1824), showing its alpha star Spica, also known by its Arabic name Azamech or Azimech, marking the spikes of grain in the harvest maiden’s left hand. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Careful measurements of Spica’s position are believed to have led the ancient astronomer Hipparchus to discover the precession of the equinoxes.

Spica has given its name to a World War II cargo ship, a teenage detective in a Japanese manga series, and (of course!) the South Korean pop group Spica:

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

What stellar observations will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules 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. 🌟

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Finches, Longspurs, and Snow Buntings

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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 (two different families) are the Fringillid Finches (pages 434–445) and the Longspurs and Snow Buntings (pages 446–451).

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:

FRINGILLINE AND CARDUELINE FINCHES — Family Fringillidae. Seed-eating birds with undulating flight. Many nest in the North; in fall, flocks of “winter finches” may roam south. Species: 231 World, 25 N.A. [North America]

LONGSPURS · SNOW BUNTINGS — Family Calcariidae. Recent molecular work using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA has shown that longspurs and snow buntings are well differentiated at the molecular level from Emberizidae (mostly our sparrows) and belong in their own family. They are gregarious in the non-breeding season and prefer open country. Some are secretive; others less so. They often flush in groups to avoid predators. Species: 6 World, 6 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 Fringillid Finch family, for example. How many species? (231 worldwide, a big group!) Are there any near us? (25 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Seed eaters, undulating flight, many nest in northern forests, and so on.) (And “undulating” is certainly a wonderful word — be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look that one up!) 🔎

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 Finch family, why not investigate the House Finch (page 438), one of the most widespread members of this group in North America.

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 House Finch? (6 inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Haemorhous mexicanus.) 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.)

House Finches are familiar birds of cities, suburbs, and farmlands across much of North America. Their song is a long and somewhat squeaky warble, and they readily nest in and around buildings and human habitations.

For a second species in the Finch family, take a look at the American Goldfinch (page 442), a tiny bird that makes up for its small size with an extra dose of bright color.

In the Longspur and Snow Bunting family this week, why not look at the Snow Bunting itself (page 450), a northern bird of open country that most people living in the lower 48 states will only see in its brown and white winter plumage — to see the black and white breeding males you’ll have to go to Alaska or northern Canada.

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 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 will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules 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: Two species in this week’s families are United States state birds: the Purple Finch (New Hampshire), a somewhat larger and rosier relative of the House Finch, and the popular American Goldfinch (Iowa, New Jersey, and Washington). 🇺🇸

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅