The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

You are here: Home > 2021 > September > 29

Archives for 29 September 2021

🗓 HOMESCHOOL CALENDARS: “Thirty days hath September . . .”

by

. . . April, June, and November.

This is the last week of September, and the last week of September is an ideal time to make sure your young scholars know the famous verse that helps us remember how many days there are in each month.

I learned this version:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
(Except February which has twenty-eight.)

I was an imperfect student.

The complete text that I apparently never quite got down is very old, and if you teach it to your students this week you’ll be welcoming them into an ancient inheritance. Here’s a version that was copied down about the year 1555:

Thirty days hath September,
April, June, and November;
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

But even that isn’t the oldest English version. A manuscript dated to about the year 1425 contains this wording, which gives November rather than September pride of place in the first line:

Thirti dayes hath Novembir,
April, June, and Septembir;
Of xxviii is but oon,
And all the remenaunt xxx and i.

Or in modern orthography:

Thirty days hath November,
April, June, and September;
Of twenty-eight [there] is but one,
And all the rest, thirty and one.

Versions exist in many other languages as well. Wherever the ancient Roman calendar has gone, this ancient verse, in one form or another, has trailed along behind.

What grand old calendrical traditions you be marking in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional posts about Homeschool Terms & Calendars. Print your own set of River Houses Calendars to follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🌎 🇧🇧 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Historic Bridgetown in Barbados

by

(A new homeschool year has begun and so has a new tour of World Heritage Sites around the globe! Print your own River Houses World Heritage Calendar and follow along with us every Wednesday.)

Barbados in the West Indies is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Barbados’ World Heritage Sites: Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison.

The Parliament building and the Central Bank building in the center of Bridgetown, Barbados. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Historic Bridgetown, the capital of modern Barbados, has been one of the most important ports in the West Indies since the 17th century:

As one of the earliest established towns with a fortified port in the Caribbean network of military and maritime-mercantile outposts of the British Atlantic, Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison was the focus of trade-based English expansion in the Americas. By the 17th century, the fortified port town was able to establish its importance in the British Atlantic trade and became an entrepôt for goods, especially sugar, and enslaved persons destined for Barbados and the rest of the Americas.

Historic Bridgetown’s irregular settlement patterns and 17th-century street layout of an English medieval type, in particular the organic serpentine streets, supported the development and transformation of creolized forms of architecture, including Caribbean Georgian.

Historic Bridgetown’s fortified port spaces were linked along the Bay Street corridor from the historic town’s centre to St. Ann’s Garrison. The property’s natural harbour, Carlisle Bay, was the first port of call on the trans-Atlantic crossing and was perfectly positioned as the launching point for the projection of British imperial power, to defend and expand Britain’s trade interests in the region and the Atlantic World. Used as a base for amphibious command and control, the garrison housed the Eastern Caribbean headquarters of the British Army and Navy. Historic Bridgetown and its Garrison participated not only in the international trade of goods and enslaved persons but also in the transmission of ideas and cultures that characterized the developing colonial enterprise in the Atlantic World. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1376)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Historic Bridgetown 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 Cygnus 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. 🌎