Archives for August 2021

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons for the week ahead, including: New years, new terms, famous physicists, terrific teachers, splendid sluggers, Roman poets, heavenly streams, a toast to wild rivers, and more!

Thank you for taking a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with us over the past year! We conclude today with the Earth itself and the amazing Universe beyond. A new world tour for the 2021–2022 homeschool year begins next month!

Bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. Here’s how you and your young naturalists can get started with bird study in the new 2021–2022 homeschool year ahead.

Get your own full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites and follow along with us as we tour the world during the upcoming 2021–2022 River Houses homeschool year.

“Go, little book, and wish to all / Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, / A living river by the door, / A nightingale in the sycamore.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Louis Stevenson, for the end of the 2020–2021 River Houses year.)

Our August 2021 full-moon report on the real scientific and scholarly projects around the world that you and your students can join from the comfort of your little home academy. Pick one and get started today!

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons for the week ahead, including: Earth-shattering kabooms, naturalistic artists, famous musicians, student projects, tiny territories, the One World River, a toast to fair winds, and more!

Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week, as the 2020–2021 homeschool year approaches its end: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, the District of Columbia, and the oceans of the world.

Our explorations of stars and planets, comets and meteors, galaxies and more, are now complete for the 2020–2021 homeschool year. What astronomical apparitions will you and your students be examining in the new 2021–2022 homeschool year ahead?

It still feels like summer, but the first signs of fall are beginning to appear all around us. Can your homeschool naturalists see them?

“Poor, middle-agèd summer! Vain this show! / Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset / One meadow with a single violet.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Helen Hunt Jackson, for late summer.)

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons for the week ahead, including: Summer poems, telegraphic links, momentous amendments, sturdy ships, Mars landers, polar rivers, a toast to happy meetings, and more!

Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week, as the year approaches its end, we visit Hawaii and Antarctica.

Make one last homeschool friend for the summer: our blue-white neighbor-star Vega in the constellation Lyra the Lyre, one of the brightest stars in the northern hemisphere night sky.

Our 2020–2021 homeschool tour of all the birds of North America is now complete! Tune in next month for a new round of avian explorations for the upcoming 2021–2022 homeschool year.

“From following walls I never lift my eye, / Except at night to places in the sky / Where showers of charted meteors let fly.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Frost, for this month’s Perseid meteors.)

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons for the week ahead, including: Perseid meteors, magnificent museums, leaning towers, ancient calendars, quantum physicists, African rivers, a toast to truth and liberty, and more!

Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: Alaska, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Point your homeschool students to the constellation Perseus this week for the annual Perseid meteor shower, the lovely trail of debris left behind by Comet Swift–Tuttle.

Our homeschool review of the educational wonders that you and your students can watch for in the northern hemisphere night sky during the month of August 2021.

Come along on our homeschool tour of North American birds and pick up some great science and natural history teaching ideas along the way. This week we wrap up the year with a look at a number of accidental and extinct North American birds from your bird guide’s appendix.

Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for serious homeschool photography students to develop their talents and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Against the Light” and “Playgrounds.” Take a look!