Archives for February 2022

🎉 📖 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Dord Day!

28 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Happy Dord Day! On this day each year we celebrate dictionaries and the people who make them — and we remind ourselves that lexicographers are human, just like us. 😊

On the 28th of February in 1939, an editor working on the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary was examining the second edition (1934) to see what entries needed to be updated. He came across the word “dord,” a synonym (according to the dictionary) for the word “density” as used in physics and chemistry. The word had no associated etymology, so the editor decided to investigate.

The definition of the word ‘dord’ as it appeared in Webster’s New International Dictionary (1934).

Upon investigation, it turned out (amusingly and embarrassingly) that there is no such word as “dord,” even though it appeared in the big Webster’s New International Dictionary. A science specialist working on the previous edition had submitted a request to have the letters “D” and “d” added as abbreviations for “density,” but the request slip was written “D or d” — and through a series of minor editorial missteps this became “Dord” and it was added to the dictionary as a word meaning “density.”

In later editions, after it had been spotted, the error was removed, leaving the dictionary more accurate but less entertaining.

Today’s little lesson for your homeschool students: dictionaries are compiled by people just like you and me, and even though they try very hard to be accurate, sometimes they make mistakes just like we do.

What wonderful words — real or imaginary — have you discovered in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: The delightful Fun With Words website has the full story of “dord,” along with a host of other wild and woolly word-wonders to explore. 🔍

❡ Looking in the lexicon: Our recommended River Houses homeschool dictionary, the American Heritage Fifth, does not, alas, include the word “dord,” but you can send your students to search nevertheless. Where would it be if it were there? Right between Dorchester and Dordogne. 📖

❡ Stay up to date: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Language & Literature 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 27 February 2022

27 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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.

🗓 🦁 LEO TERM, our spring term in the River Houses, begins this Tuesday!

🐦 THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT last weekend (18–21 February) was a huge success! Nearly 300,000 reports were gathered from more than 200 countries around the world. Visit the GBBC website for ongoing commentary on the results.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Michigan, and our COUNTRIES are Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, and Madagascar 🇲🇬. (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 waning 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 331–346 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (27 February 2022) — Today is the 58th day of 2022; there are 307 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. 📚 Today is the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), one of the most popular American poets of the nineteenth century. 🖋

Monday (28 February 2022) — Happy Dord Day! 🎉

🗓 🦁 Leo Term 2021–2022 Begins 🦁 🗓

Tuesday (1 March 2022) — Today is the first day of Leo Term, our spring term in the River Houses, named for the Great Lion of the Heavens. 🦁 It’s also the birthday of the great Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). 🎹 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of March is a famously amusing collection of “photographs” from Wallace Stevens, for migrating Red-winged Blackbirds and the coming spring thaw. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 💧 And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Scientific 500s. 📚

Wednesday (2 March 2022) — Today is the birthday of Sam Houston (1793–1863), the first president of the Republic of Texas. 🌵 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Historic Center of Vilnius in Lithuania. 🇱🇹

Thursday (3 March 2022) — The Scottish-American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1847. 📞 And on this day in 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem. 🇺🇸

Friday (4 March 2022) — The first session of the First United States Congress opened on this day in Federal Hall in New York in 1789, putting the new U.S. Constitution into effect. 🇺🇸 And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Tyrant Flycatchers and Becards. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (5 March 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594). 🌐 On this day in 1770, British troops shot and killed five protestors on the streets of Boston in what quickly came to be known as the Boston Massacre. ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (6 March 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo (1475–1564). 🎨 It’s also the birthday of the great English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). 🖋 On this day in 1836 during the Texas Revolution, the Alamo fell. Remember! ⚔️ And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Florida 🇺🇸, Malawi 🇲🇼, Malaysia 🇲🇾, the Maldives 🇲🇻, and Mali 🇲🇱.

🥂 🗡 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for the close of Orion Term, is adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson and A.E. Housman: “To the hunter home from the hill.”

❡ 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 in your homeschool this week? 🥂

🌍 🇱🇺 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Luxembourg in central Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the little White Ernz, which flows through the communities of Larochette, Medernach, and Ermsdorf. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the White Ernz entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ 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: Michigan, Liechtenstein, Madagascar, and More

27 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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 418), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Michigan State Seal
MICHIGAN (the 26th state, 26 January 1837) — The Great Lakes State. Capital: Lansing. Michigan can be found on page 574 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “From Chippewa mici gama, meaning ‘great water,’ after lake of the same name” (almanac page 419). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: www.michigan.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:

🇱🇮 LIECHTENSTEIN in central Europe. Population: 39,425. Capital: Vaduz. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.liechtenstein.li (in German).
🇱🇹 LITHUANIA in eastern Europe. Population: 2,711,566. Capital: Vilnius. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: lrvk.lrv.lt (in Lithuanian).
🇱🇺 LUXEMBOURG in western Europe. Population: 639,589. Capital: Luxembourg. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: gouvernement.lu (in French, German, English, and Luxembourgish).
🇲🇬 MADAGASCAR in the Indian Ocean. Population: 27,534,354. Capital: Antananarivo. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: www.primature.gov.mg (in French).

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) did you make 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦜 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Parrots

25 February 2022 by Horace the Otter 🦦

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 Old World Parrots (pages 326–327) and the African and New World Parrots (pages 326–333).

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:

OLD WORLD PARROTS — Family Psittaculidae. A widespread Old World family. Three species established [in North America]. Species: 184 World, 3 N.A.

AFRICAN AND NEW WORLD PARROTS — Family Psittacidae. Two genera and 20 species found in Africa; rest in the New World. In U.S., mostly from CA, TX, and FL, where most are descendants of escaped cage birds. Species: 167 World, 17 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 African and New World Parrots, for example. How many species? (167 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (17 species in North America, but most of these are descendants of escaped cage birds or are found on the extreme southern U.S. border.) What are their distinctive features? (Generally green and red, heavy hooked bills, long tails, 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, for the African and New World Parrot family, why not investigate the Nanday Parakeet (page 328), and example of a South American species that has escaped from captivity in Florida and California and become locally naturalized.

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 Nanday Parakeet? (13¼ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Aratinga nenday.) 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. If you don’t happen to live in one of the local areas where this species has become naturalized, you’ll probably be out of luck.) 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.)

Parrots are found around the world but most species occur in the tropics and the southern hemisphere. There are today no native parrot species in the United States, with the possible exception of some (such as the Green Parakeet, page 330) that may occasionally stray a short distance north across the U.S. border with Mexico. The species shown in your bird guide are almost all exotic (non-native) species that have escaped from captivity and become naturalized in areas such as Miami and Los Angeles.

Sadly, there was once a beautiful native parrot in the United States, the Carolina Parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), but it became extinct in 1918. You can still find it in your bird guide, however, on page 557 in the special appendix on extinct and accidental species. The Carolina Parakeet was common across much of the southeast, and while it was hunted — both for its plumage and as a fruit-orchard pest — its rapid extinction is still something of a mystery.

Carolina Parakeets (*Conuropsis carolinensis*), by John James Audubon (1833). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick a species that is near you, or one that looks striking, or one that has a strange name, and explore. For a second species this week, why not take a look at the Monk Parakeet (page 328), a more cold-tolerant species that has been able to survive for a number of years as far north as the New York City region and may eventually increase and become naturalized.

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 did you make in your homeschool this Orion 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 using 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. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: 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: Ancient Cyrene in Libya

23 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Libya in northern Africa is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Libya’s World Heritage Sites: the Archaeological Site of Cyrene.

The ruins of ancient Cyrene in Libya. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Ancient Cyrene was one of the most important Greek cities on the Mediterranean coast of northern Africa:

Cyrene was an ancient Greek and later Roman city near present-day Shahhat, Libya. It was the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities, known as the pentapoleis, in the region. It gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica that it has retained to modern times. Located nearby is the ancient Necropolis of Cyrene. The traditional founder of the city was Battus the Lacedemonian, though the exact relationship between the fledgling city and other cities has led historians to question that narrative. Particularly, the idea that Thera was the sole “mother city” is disputed; and the relationship with other cities, such as Sparta and Samnium merchants, is unclear.

Cyrene lies in a lush valley in the Jebel Akhdar uplands. The city was named after a spring, Kyre, which the Greeks consecrated to Apollo. It became the seat of the Cyrenaics, a famous school of philosophy in the fourth century BC, founded by Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates.

The temple of Zeus at Cyrene. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Archaeological Site of Cyrene 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 have you been exploring in your homeschool this Orion 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. 🌍

📜 LIBRARY LESSONS: George Washington’s Battles

22 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Today (February 22nd) is George Washington’s real birthday — as opposed to the third-Monday-in-February holiday on which his birthday is observed — and if you’d like to mark this august occasion with a ready-made Washingtonian history lesson in your homeschool, the National Archives has you covered.

The DocsTeach program encourages educators (like you!) to use original documents from the National Archives in their teaching, and they have just posted a new lesson plan to help you teach about some of George Washington’s most important military engagements in the American Revolution:

➢ Ten Crucial Days: From Washington Crossing the Delaware to the Battles of Trenton and Princeton (docsteach.org)

Historical maps, sample questions, and other resources from the Archives make the lesson complete.

A little more than a year and a half after the “Shot Heard Round the World” at Lexington and Concord started the American Revolution, and less than six months after the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Army was in a perilous position in the winter of 1776. Victories for General Washington and the Continental Army were few and far between. In the words of Thomas Paine in his famous treatise The Crisis, these were “the times that try men’s souls.” With recruitment dwindling and enlistments set to expire at the end of the year, General Washington would have to execute a bold strategy to regain the momentum and turn the tide. (docsteach.org)

And so he did. Invite your students to discover that strategy this Washington’s Birthday week with a little help from the National Archives.

What educational discoveries have you made in your favorite library this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the American Revolution, turn to page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. It’s an ideal two-page refresher for teachers and a great introduction for students. 📖

❡ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 🏛

❡ Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website has links to several wonderful online library collections that we like to explore. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (rather than a phone) and give them a browse. 🖥

❡ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

✒️ 🔭 WONDERFUL WORDS: Watchers of the Skies

22 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Have you noticed that our regular homeschool astronomy posts are often headed “Watchers of the Skies”? If you didn’t know where that title came from, today you’ll find out. (Everything fits together here in the River Houses.) 🔭

The shortest month of the year is winding down. Why not send it off with a literary flourish by introducing your students to one of the most famous poems in the English language: “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” by John Keats (1795–1821). It’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February.

On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific — and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

The “Chapman” of the title is George Chapman (ca. 1599–1634), an Elizabethan writer and Classical scholar, and this poem is an account of Keats’ first reading of Chapman’s English translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The story — a wonderful one to share — is that Keats was introduced to Chapman’s translation by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke (1787–1877), and the two young men stayed up all evening reading it aloud to each other. The next morning, when Clarke came down to breakfast, he found this sonnet waiting for him on the breakfast table.

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a perfectly crafted example of a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines, thematically and structurally arranged into an initial group of eight (the octave) and a final group of six (the sestet). Encourage your students to map the rhyme scheme and see how tight it is: ABBA ABBA CD CD CD. The first eight lines tell of the writer’s prior experience in “realms of gold” — the imaginary (literary) landscape of ancient gods and kings and poets. He had been told that the greatest of the ancient poets was Homer, but it was not until he read Chapman’s translation — Keats could not read the original Greek — that he truly understood why this was so. And at that point the sonnet turns: reading Chapman was like discovering a new planet, or a new ocean he had never seen before.

There’s some wonderful vocabulary here for your students to work through in your family dictionary: realms, bards, fealty, demesne, ken, surmise. The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 and the minor planet Ceres was discovered in 1801, so the discovery of new planets was very much a matter of public interest in Keats’ day. Unfortunately, Keats’ historical geography was a bit off: the Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa (ca. 1475–1519) — not Hernán Cortés (1485–1547) — was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama (Darien) and see the Pacific Ocean. But that’s OK; it’s a poem, not a history text.

There are a great many recordings of this sonnet available online. Here’s a good one that will help your students get the pronunciation (and so the rhymes) correct:

“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” has been one of the most widely read, taught, and quoted sonnets in the English language for almost two hundred years. This week, invite your young scholars to enter into that inheritance and make Keats their friend for life.

❡ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies: 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. 🔭

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the Romantic Movement in art and literature, the movement with which Keats is commonly associated, turn to page 338 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 📚

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including John Keats) 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. 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, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 20 February 2022

20 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

🐦 THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT is underway right now (18–21 February) all across the country and around the world! It’s one of the best homeschool science activities all year. How many birds have you counted in your neighborhood?

🗓 🗡 This is the last full week of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses. Leo Term, our spring term, begins on Tuesday the first of March.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Arkansas, and our COUNTRIES are Lebanon 🇱🇧, Lesotho 🇱🇸, Liberia 🇱🇷, and Libya 🇱🇾. (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 waning — 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 homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (20 February 2022) — Today is the 51st day of 2022; there are 314 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. 📚 Today is the birthday of the great American photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984). 📷

Monday (21 February 2022) — Today is the third Monday in February, which makes it the Washington’s Birthday federal holiday in the United States (though it’s often just called “Presidents’ Day”). 🇺🇸 On this day in 1918, the last individual Carolina Parakeet, the only species of parrot native to the United States, died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. 🦜 😔

Tuesday (22 February 2022) — Today is the (actual) birthday of George Washington (1732–1799), the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And speaking of presidents, on this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first-ever radio address from the White House. 📻 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February is John Keats’ famous sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” for the anniversary of Keats’ death in 1821. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🔭

Wednesday (23 February 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great German-English composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). 🎺 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Archaeological Site of Cyrene in Libya. 🇱🇾

Thursday (24 February 2022) — On this day in 1803, the Supreme Court handed down a landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the principle of judicial review. ⚖️ And today is the birthday of the American painter and illustrator Winslow Homer (1836–1910). 🎨

Friday (25 February 2022) — The first African-American to serve in the U.S. Congress, Hiram Rhodes Revels, Republican of Mississippi, was sworn in on this day in 1870. 🇺🇸 And today is the birthday of the great French impressionist painter and sculptor Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). 🎨 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Parrots! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦜

Saturday (26 February 2022) — Today is the birthday of the German-American clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss (1829–1902). 👖 It’s also the birthday of the great American songwriter and rock-and-roll pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino (1928–2017). 🎹

Sunday (27 February 2022) — Today is the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), one of the most popular American poets of the nineteenth century. 🖋 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Michigan 🇺🇸, Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, and Madagascar 🇲🇬.

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST for this Washington’s Birthday week invites you to remember that in early America, no one was toasted more often than George Washington. This 1788 musical offering by Francis Hopkinson of Philadelphia was but one among thousands:

’Tis Washington’s health — fill a bumper all round,
For he is our glory and pride.
Our arms shall in battle with conquest be crown’d
Whilst virtue and he’s on our side.

🌍 🇱🇾 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Libya in northern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week. As a desert nation it has no permanent rivers, so we’re going to do something a bit different for our regular Weekly World River and feature Libya’s “Great Man-Made River.” This country-wide network of underground pipes taps into an enormous underground aquifer and supplies water to Libya’s major cities. You can read more about it in the Great Man-Made River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? 😊

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Arkansas, Lebanon, Libya, and More

20 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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.

🇺🇸
Arkansas State Seal
ARKANSAS (the 25th state, 15 June 1836) — The Razorback State. Capital: Little Rock. Arkansas can be found on page 564 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Algonquin name for Quapaw Indians, meaning ‘south wind’” (almanac page 419). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: www.arkansas.gov.

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇱🇧 LEBANON in the Middle East. Population: 5,261,372. Capital: Beirut. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: presidency.gov.lb (in Arabic and English).
🇱🇸 LESOTHO in southern Africa. Population: 2,177,740. Capital: Maseru. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gov.ls (in English).
🇱🇷 LIBERIA in southwestern Africa. Population: 5,214,030. Capital: Monrovia. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.emansion.gov.lr (in English).
🇱🇾 LIBYA in northern Africa. Population: 7,017,224. Capital: Tripoli. Government: “In transition” (almanac page 806). Website: pm.gov.ly (in Arabic and English; may be offline).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you made in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

☀️ 🌍 COPERNICUS and His Revolutions (on his birthday!)

19 February 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Today is the birthday of one of the most important figures in the history of science: the great Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). (“Oh, polymath is a beautiful word. Let’s look it up on our big dictionary.”) In Copernicus’ honor, why not take a few homeschool minutes today to introduce your students to his great work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium), first published in 1543.

[Copernicus' heliocentric system] — The heliocentric model of Copernicus, from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Note the sun (Sol) at the center, and the earth (Terra) in the third orbit, along with earth’s moon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Copernicus was an extraordinary scholar whose work extended far beyond the astronomical research for which he is best known. He spoke five languages, translated Greek poetry, studied medicine, mathematics, economic theory, and more. And he did this while serving for much of his adult life as a canon — a senior church administrative officer — in Poland’s Frombork Cathedral. (Frombork today is home to a Copernicus Museum and research center.)

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, or “De Rev” as history of science geeks call it, is one of the most important books ever published because it laid out a comprehensive sun-centered or heliocentric picture of the solar system, replacing the earlier earth-centered or geocentric picture.

Fewer than 300 copies of the original 1543 edition of De Revolutionibus survive today. But we live in a truly fortunate age, when a young student can sit at home and examine up close some of the rarest and most important books in history — books that just a few years ago would have been accessible only to professional scholars in the world’s largest libraries.

Here is a copy of the “De Rev” that has been scanned and made available by RareBookRoom.org, a wonderful site that provides online access to some of the most important books ever written. The scans are very high resolution so all the pages can be examined one by one in great detail, right down to the handwritten notes in the margins and to the texture of the paper as it was impressed by the metal type. Spend a few homeschool minutes today with your students (at a large screen rather than a phone) exploring this bibliographic treasure:

➢ De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543) (rarebookroom.org)

The text is in Latin — the language of nearly all scientific books at that time — and the printing is exceptionally fine. Zoom in on a few pages using the −/+ scale at the top of the page to get a full appreciation for this great specimen, not only of science, but of the printer’s art as well.

If you have curious science students in your homeschool, be sure they know the name of Nicolaus Copernicus and how he changed our understanding of the world.

What historico-scientific anniversaries have you been marking in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick review of the Renaissance, the historical period in which Copernicus lived, turn to pages 250–253 in your River Houses history encyclopedia, and for an overview of the Scientific Revolution that he helped to spark see pages 266–267. It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history lesson. 📚

❡ Stay in the loop: 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. 🗞

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