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.
๐บ๐ธ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Illinois, and our COUNTRIES are Irelandย ๐ฎ๐ช, Israelย ๐ฎ๐ฑ, Italyย ๐ฎ๐น, and Jamaicaย ๐ฏ๐ฒ. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
๐ THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waningย โ aย 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 331โ346 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (23 January 2022) โ Today is the 23rd day of 2022; there are 342 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 347โ353 in your River Houses almanac.ย ๐ On this day in 1849, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell (1821โ1910), graduated from the Geneva Medical College in New York.ย ๐ฉโโ๏ธ
Monday (24 January 2022) โ On this day in 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, California, touching off the California Gold Rush.ย โ And on this day in 1984, Apple Computer introduced the Macintosh, and 1984 wasn’t like 1984. (Although maybe nowadays that prize-winning advertising slogan needs to be reevaluated!)ย ๐
Tuesday (25 January 2022) โ Today is the birthday of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759โ1796), aye.ย ๐น
Wednesday (26 January 2022) โ The world’s largest diamond, the Cullinan Diamond, was found on this day in 1905 in the Premier mine near Pretoria, South Africa.ย ๐ And on this day in 1915, Rocky Mountain National Park was established by an act of the U.S. Congress.ย ๐ Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Early Christian Monuments of Ravenna in Italy.ย ๐ฎ๐น
Thursday (27 January 2022) โ Today is the birthday of the great classical composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756โ1791).ย ๐ผ
Friday (28 January 2022) โ On this day in 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded just 73 seconds after launch, killing all seven members of the astronaut crew.ย โญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธโญ๏ธ Today is also the birthday of the great choral composer John Taverner (1944โ2013).ย ๐ผ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the wonderful Owls. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (29 January 2022) โ Today is the birthday of Revolutionary war general Moses Cleaveland (1754โ1806), the founder of Cleveland, Ohio.ย ๐ It’s also the birthday of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov (1860โ1904).ย ๐
Sunday (30 January 2022) โ Today is the birthday of U.S. president Franklin Roosevelt (1882โ1945).ย ๐บ๐ธ It’s also the birthday of pioneering computer scientist Douglas Engelbart (1925โ2013), inventor of the computer mouse and many other standard features of modern computers.ย ๐ฑ
๐ฅ โ OUR WEEKLY TOAST, in honor of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill this week in 1848, is aย traditional miners’ toast from Yorkshire: “May all your labours be in vein.”
โกโ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week โ 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 in your homeschool this week?ย ๐ฅ
๐ ๐ฎ๐น EVERYTHING FLOWS: Italy in southern Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Montone River, which flows through the Italian province of Ravenna. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Montone River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

โกโ 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 693โ695), 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. Aย whole world of geographical learning awaits you.ย ๐
What do you have planned for your homeschool this week?ย ๐
โกโ 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.ย ๐