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🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 16 January 2022

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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 Mississippi, and our COUNTRIES are India 🇮🇳, Indonesia 🇮🇩, Iran 🇮🇷, and Iraq 🇮🇶. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing — 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 331–346 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (16 January 2022) — Today is the 16th day of 2022; there are 349 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 On this day in the year 27 B.C., the Roman Senate conferred the title “Augustus” on the general and de facto dictator Octavian, the great-nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, and the last remnants of the old republic were swept away. 👑

Monday (17 January 2022) — Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday in the United States. Lift every voice and sing! 🇺🇸 Benjamin Franklin was born on this day in 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. 📰 One of the most important battles in the Southern Theater of the American Revolution, the Battle of Cowpens, took place on this day in 1781 near Cowpens, South Carolina. ⚔️ And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society. 🌕

Tuesday (18 January 2022) — On this day in 1788, the first convict ships from Britain, now known as the First Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay, Australia. 🇦🇺 And today is the birthday of the Polish-British mathematician and historian of science Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974), creator of the pioneering documentary series “The Ascent of Man.” 📺

Wednesday (19 January 2022) — Today is the birthday of the polemical American lawyer and freedom-philosopher Lysander Spooner (1808–1887). ⚖️ It’s also the birthday of the spooky American poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). 👻 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Golestan Palace in Iran. 🇮🇷

Thursday (20 January 2022) — One of the first two men to walk on the moon, American astronaut Buzz Aldrin, was born on this day in 1930. 👨‍🚀

Friday (21 January 2022) — Today is St. Agnes Day, named for Agnes of Rome, a teenage Christian martyr of the fourth century and a favorite subject of artists and writers for hundreds of years. On this day, saith tradition, young girls will have their future husbands revealed to them in their dreams: “Agnes sweet, and Agnes fair, / Hither, hither, now repair; / Bonny Agnes, let me see / The lad who is to marry me.” 💍 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the New World Vultures, Ospreys, Hawks, Kites, and Eagles. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (22 January 2022) — Today is the birthday of two great English poets: John Donne (1573–1631) and George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788–1824). 🖋 And speaking of poetry, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for last week of January is John Masefield’s “Sea Fever,” in memory of the Space Shuttle Challenger and its crew, who died 28 January 1986. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌊

Sunday (23 January 2022) — Today is the birthday of John Hancock (1737–1793), president of the Continental Congress and the most flamboyant signer of the Declaration of Independence. 🖋 And on this day in 1849, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell (1821–1910), graduated from the Geneva Medical College in New York. 👩‍⚕️

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old traditional offering: “May all our real wants be supplied, and all our virtuous wishes satisfied.”

❡ 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 anthology called The Royal Toast Master, Containing Many Thousands of the Best Toasts Old and New (London, 1793). What will you toast in your homeschool this week? 🥂

🌍 🇮🇷 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Iran in southwestern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Haraz River, which flows northward through northern Iran and into the Caspian Sea. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Haraz River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Haraz River in Iran’s Mazandaran Province. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ Children 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 693–695), 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. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Mississippi, India, Iraq, 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 (page 418 in your brand new 2022 almanac), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    Mississippi State Seal
    MISSISSIPPI (the 20th state, 10 December 1817) — The Magnolia State. Capital: Jackson. Mississippi can be found on page 575 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Probably Chippewa mici zibi, meaning ‘great river’ or ‘gathering-in of all the waters.’ Also Algonquin word messipi” (almanac page 419). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: www.ms.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week posts, 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:

  • 🇮🇳 INDIA in southern Asia. Population: 1,399,330,514. Capital: New Delhi. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website: www.india.gov.in (in English and Hindi).
  • 🇮🇩 INDONESIA in southeastern Asia. Population: 275,122,131. Capital: Jakarta. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.indonesia.go.id (in Indonesian and English).
  • 🇮🇷 IRAN in southwestern Asia. Population: 85,888,910. Capital: Tehran. Government: Theocratic republic. Website: www.president.ir (in Persian, English, and Arabic).
  • 🇮🇶 IRAQ in the Middle East. Population: 39,650,145. Capital: Baghdad. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website: gds.gov.iq (in Arabic 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 745–852; 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 Orion 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. 🇺🇸 🌎