Archives for March 2022

🌏 🇲🇳 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Petroglyphs of Mongolia

30 March 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Mongolia in central Asia is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Mongolia’s World Heritage Sites: the Petroglyphic Complexes of the Mongolian Altai.

The ancient petroglyphs of the mountainous Altai region of Mongolia are important prehistoric relics of the early cultures of central Asia:

The Petroglyphic Complexes of the Mongolian Altai include three rock art sites in Bayan-Ulgii aimag [province]: Tsagaan Salaa–Baga Oigor of Ulaankhus soum [district], and Upper Tsagaan Gol (Shiveet Khairkhan) and Aral Tolgoi, both of Tsengel soum. All three are located in high mountain valleys carved out by Pleistocene glaciers. These three property components include large concentrations of petroglyphs and funerary and ritual monuments reflecting the development of human culture over a period of 12,000 years. The persistent relationships between rock art, surface monuments and the larger physical context of rivers, ridges and cardinal directions create a vivid sense of the integration of human communities with the land they inhabited.

The earliest images reflect a period beginning in the Late Pleistocene and lasting through the Early Holocene (ca. 11,000–6,000 years BP), when the paleoenvironment shifted from dry to forested steppe and the valleys provided an ideal habitat for hunters of large wild game. Later images from the middle Holocene (ca. 6,000–4,000 years BP) reflect the gradual reassertion of steppe vegetation in this part of the the Altai and the early emergence of herding as the economic basis of communities. Imagery from the succeeding, Late Holocene Period, reflects the transition to horse-dependent nomadism during the Early Nomadic and Scythian periods (1st millennium BCE) and the subsequent spread of steppe empires in the later Turkic Period (7th–9th c. CE).

The Petroglyphic Complexes of the Mongolian Altai represent the most complete and best preserved visual record of human prehistory and early history of a region at the intersection of Central and North Asia. (World Heritage Centre #1382)

The petroglyph sites today are included within Mongolia’s vast Altai Tavan Bogd National Park.

Altai Tavan Bogd National Park in Mongolia, site of the ancient Altai petroglyphs. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Petroglyphic Complexes of the Mongolian Altai 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 are you exploring in your homeschool this Leo 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. 🌎🌍🌏

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 27 March 2022

27 March 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.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Wisconsin, and our COUNTRIES are Mongolia 🇲🇳, Montenegro 🇲🇪, Morocco 🇲🇦, and Mozambique 🇲🇿. (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 March 2022) — Today is the 86th day of 2022; there are 279 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 1912, the Japanese government presented a gift of 3000 cherry trees to the United States to line the banks of the Potomac River and other sites in Washington, D.C., where they and their successors may still be seen today. You can follow their flowering at cherryblossomwatch.com. 🌸

Monday (28 March 2022) — The great Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born on this day in 1483. 🎨

Tuesday (29 March 2022) — Today is the birthday of two unrelated Waltons: the English composer William Walton (1902–1983) 🎵 and the American businessman Sam Walton (1918–1992), the founder of Walmart. 🛒

Wednesday (30 March 2022) — On this day in 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire for about two cents an acre. 🏔 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Petroglyphic Complexes of the Altai Mountains of Mongolia. 🇲🇳

Thursday (31 March 2022) — The great French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was born on this day in 1596. 📈 And on this day in 1774, Great Britain ordered the closure of the major trading port of Boston, escalating the tensions that would eventually lead to the American Revolution. 🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸

Friday (1 April 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great seventeenth century physician William Harvey (1578–1657), who first described the circulation of the blood in the human body. ❤️ It’s also the traditional date of the annual spaghetti harvest in Ticino, Switzerland. 🍝 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Larks and Swallows. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of April is the Prologue to Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which opens with April showers. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. ☔️

Saturday (2 April 2022) — The United States Mint was established on this day in 1792. 💰 Today is also the birthday of the Danish novelist and children’s author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), which means that it’s International Children’s Book Day too! 📚 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 (3 April 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet George Herbert (1593–1633). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the American naturalist and author John Burroughs (1837–1921). 🏞 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be California 🇺🇸, Myanmar (Burma) 🇲🇲, Namibia 🇳🇦, Nauru 🇳🇷, and Nepal 🇳🇵.

🥂 🍝 OUR WEEKLY TOAST for the beginning of April is the traditional toast offered each year at the Spaghetti Harvest Festival in Ticino, Switzerland (where they speak Italian): “Buon appetito!”

❡ 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: Mongolia in central Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the beautiful Tuul River, one of the longest rivers in Mongolia. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Tuul 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: Wisconsin, Mongolia, Mozambique, and More

27 March 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:

🇺🇸
Wisconsin State Seal
WISCONSIN (the 30th state, 29 May 1848) — The Badger State. Capital: Madison. Wisconsin can be found on page 589 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Indian name, spelled Ouisconsin or Mesconsing by early chroniclers, believed to mean ‘grassy place’ in Chippewa. Congress made it Wisconsin” (almanac page 419). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website: wisconsin.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:

🇲🇳 MONGOLIA in central Asia. Population: 3,198,913. Capital: Ulaanbaatar. Government: Semi-presidential republic. Website: president.mn (in Mongolian and English).
🇲🇪 MONTENEGRO in southeastern Europe. Population: 607,414. Capital: Podgorica. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.me (in Bosnian, Serbian, and English).
🇲🇦 MOROCCO in northwestern Africa. Population: 35,892,951. Capital: Rabat. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website: www.maroc.ma (in Arabic, English, and several other languages).
🇲🇿 MOZAMBIQUE in southeastern Africa. Population: 30,888,034. Capital: Maputo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.portaldogoverno.gov.mz (in Portuguese).

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 Leo 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: Crows and Jays (Part II)

25 March 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 are (once again) the Crows and Jays (pages 364–373). Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’ve spread the Crows and Jays out over two weeks: last week we looked at the Crows, and this week the Jays.

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 again is how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

CROWS · JAYS — Family Corvidae. Harsh voice and aggressive manner draw attention to these large, often gregarious birds. Powerful, all-purpose bill efficiently handles a varied diet. Species: 126 World, 21 N.A. [North America]

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. How many species? (126 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (21 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Loud, gregarious, varied diet, 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, why not investigate a common bird of the Rocky Mountains and the West: the Steller’s Jay (page 366).

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 Steller’s Jay? (11½ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Cyanocitta stelleri.) 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.) 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.)

The two most common jays in the United States are the Steller’s Jay of the West and the Blue Jay of the East. In fact, these two species sometimes hybridize (cross-breed) in the eastern Rockies where their ranges overlap. As a good comparative exercise, invite your students to look also at the Blue Jay and see how these two species differ.

The Steller’s Jay is obviously darker, but note that both species are almost exactly the same size and shape, with similar behavior, matching crests, and even similar black and blue barring on the wings. They are what biologists call “sister species” — one another’s closest evolutionary relatives.

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 an additional species this week, why not take a look at the Black-billed Magpie (page 370), a large and long-tailed jay-like bird that’s found throughout much of the West. (Our Black-billed Magpie is very similar to the Eurasian Magpie of the eastern hemisphere, a bird well known in folklore and literature.)

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 have you been making in your homeschool this Leo 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: The Nan Madol Site in Micronesia

23 March 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Micronesia in the western Pacific Ocean is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Micronesia’s World Heritage Sites: the Nan Madol Ceremonial Center.

Nan Madol, “the Venice of the Pacific,” is one of the most remarkable archeological sites in Oceania:

The megalithic basalt stone structures of the more than 100 islets that form Nan Madol off the shore of Pohnpei Island comprise the remains of stone palaces, temples, mortuaries and residential domains. They represent the ceremonial centre of the Saudeleur dynasty, an era of vibrant Pacific island culture which underwent dramatic changes of settlement and social organisation 1200–1500 CE. Through its archaeological remains, Nan Madol is tangibly associated with Pohnpei’s continuing social and ceremonial traditions and the authority of the Nahnmwarki.

The outstanding monumental megalithic architecture of Nan Madol is demonstrated by the wall construction using massive columnar basalt stones, transported from quarries elsewhere on the island, and laid using a distinctive “header-stretcher technique.”

Nan Madol bears exceptional testimony to the development of chiefly societies in the Pacific Islands. The huge scale, technical sophistication and concentration of elaborate megalithic structures of Nan Madol bear testimony to complex social and religious practices of the island societies. (World Heritage Centre #1503)

The construction of the first artificial islets at the site is thought to have begun as early as the 700s.

Map of the Nan Madol lagoon and its artificial islands. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Nan Madol Ceremonial Center on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

What world treasures are you exploring in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

🖋 🌱 WONDERFUL WORDS: Nothing Gold Can Stay

22 March 2022 by Bob O'Hara

This coming Saturday (the 26th) is the birthday of Robert Frost (1874–1963), one of the most important American poets of the twentieth century. In his honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this last week of March is Frost’s little early-spring masterpiece “Nothing Gold Can Stay”:

Nothing Gold Can Stay

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

This is a perfect poem for memorization. Why not memorize it yourself along with your students this week and so give them a new friend for life. (You can take turns, alternating lines, until you have it all down.)

Like many of Frost’s poems, “Nothing Gold Can Stay” has a simple structure and a deep meaning. Invite your students to investigate the structure first. What is the rhyme scheme? We have gold–hold, flower–hour, leaf–grief, and day–stay, so I make it out as AABBCCDD — a set of four couplets. The rhythm (meter) is mostly iambic trimeter, a very compact form, with six syllables in each line (all except the last). The poem’s “end-stopped” character is also prominent: every line is either a full sentence or a full clause, making a pause in reading at the end of each line feel natural. (In more complex poems, the sentences and other grammatical units often run over the ends of the lines; such poems are said to be enjambed rather than end-stopped.)

The poem’s subject is early spring and the opening of the very first buds and flowers, which is why we chose it as this week’s poem. In temperate climes, little golden buds and tiny yellow flowers often appear on many trees before the leaves come out, but they only last for a short time until the canopy of green foliage unrolls and expands. Frost takes this simple observation and extends it to everything in the world. All the golden buds, all the early flowers — whatever they may be — give way with time. A Christian philosopher might read that as a sign of our fallen world (“So Eden sank to grief”), while a naturalist might see it as reflection of the ordinary cycles of nature all around us (“So dawn goes down to day”). Both are perfectly acceptable literary interpretations. (If you want a glorious vocabulary word for the week, send your students to your family dictionary to look up ephemerality.)

“Nature’s first green is gold.” (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

As you explore your homeschool neighborhood this early spring, take special note of the earliest buds and flowers that are just beginning to open. And as you do, practice a line or two with your students: “Nature’s first green is gold.” “Her hardest hue to hold.”

What wonderful words and poetical productions are you studying in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ So dawn goes down to day: 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 and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 🌱

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Robert Frost) 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. 🗞

🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Happy Birthday Bach!

21 March 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Take a moment today to introduce your homeschool students to a four-minute musical masterpiece, the Little Fugue, written by one of the world’s greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, who was born on this day in 1685.

Here’s a beautiful version of the Little Fugue played by Stephen Malinowski and presented in what I think is a really captivating manner for kids: a graphical animation of the notes with their pitches and durations:

And here’s another version of the Little Fugue performed by Jonathan Scott in what might be called its natural habitat: the organ loft of a church. (Much of Bach’s music was church music written for the pipe organ, “the king of instruments.”) The video does a good job of showing the complex operation of the organ, which requires the performer to exercise not only both hands, but both feet as well:

And here’s the Little Fugue again, but arranged this time in a very different way for a saxophone quartet by Staff Sergeant David Parks of the United States Army Field Band:

If any of those performances catch your students’ attention, there’s a whole universe of Bach available online — more than enough to convert today’s little homeschool lesson into a week-long music festival of your own devising.

As one next step, you could watch this wonderful educational performance of a Bach concerto by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, complete with a detailed introduction from a young Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990), and with a very young Glenn Gould (1932–1982) — one of Bach’s greatest twentieth-century interpreters — at the piano:

And here’s a remarkable thing for your students to observe: Gould plays the entire piece with no sheet music. He kept every note, every inflection, all in his head.

What musical discoveries have you made and what artistic anniversaries have you marked in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: You can find several lists of noted musical composers and performers starting on page 210 in your recommended homeschool almanac. Why not use those lists and make up an impromptu homeschool research project: have your students copy out the names of composers from different centuries, or from different countries, and find examples of their music online. Can your students get a sense for how musical styles changed from century to century? Are there distinct national styles that they can recognize? Do they have a preference for one style or time period over another? 🎵

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Arts & Music. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🗓 🌷 SPRING IS HERE! (Astronomically Speaking)

20 March 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Today is the March equinox — we call it the vernal or spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the autumnal or fall equinox. The vernal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of spring, just as the autumnal equinox is (in astronomical terms) the first day of fall.

❡ Little lessons: “‘Vernal’ and ‘autumnal’ are beautiful words. Let’s look them both up in our big dictionary.”

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

➢ The March Equinox: Equal Day and Night, Nearly (timeanddate.com)

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23º). The two solstices occur at the points in the orbit when the north pole of the axis of rotation is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter) and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur when the earth’s axis of rotation is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or nearly so).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary — solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website.

What calendrical events and astronomical alignments will you be marking in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students about the seasons and the stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended River Houses astronomy guide has descriptions and maps of all the constellations that point out the seasonal highlights, and the astronomical section of your recommended world atlas has beautiful large charts of both celestial hemispheres. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 🔭 🌞

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our regular posts on Homeschool Astronomy and on Homeschool Terms & Calendars. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the homeschool year. 🍂 ⛄️ 🌷 ⛱

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

20 March 2022 by Bob O'Hara

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Iowa, and our COUNTRIES are Mexico 🇲🇽, Micronesia 🇫🇲, Moldova 🇲🇩, and Monaco 🇲🇨. (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 March 2022) — Today is the 79th day of 2022; there are 286 days remaining in this common year. 🗓 Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Spring! Today is the March Equinox, known as the vernal or spring equinox in the northern hemisphere and the autumnal or fall equinox in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of fall). 🌸 Today is also the birthday of “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America,” the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672). 🖋 And it’s also the birthday of Mister Fred Rogers (1928–2003), everyone’s favorite neighbor. 🏡

Monday (21 March 2022) — Today is (according to the old Julian Calendar still in effect at the time) the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), one of the greatest musical composers in history. 🎼

Tuesday (22 March 2022) — Today is the birthday of the English artist Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), for whom the famous Caldecott awards for illustrated children’s books are named. 🎨 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of March is Robert Frost’s lyrical meditation “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” a great memorization poem for early spring. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌱

Wednesday (23 March 2022) — On this day in 1775 at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech “Give me liberty, or give me death!” 🇺🇸 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Nan Madol archeological site in Micronesia. 🇫🇲

Thursday (24 March 2022) — Today is the birthday of the great Victorian artist and designer William Morris (1834–1896). 🖌 It’s also the birthday of the Hungarian-American magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926). Shazam! 🎩 🐇

Friday (25 March 2022) — Today is the birthday of the American agronomist and Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug (1914–2009), who may have saved more lives than any human being in history. For some notes on his importance, see pages 464–465 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🌽 🌾 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will continue to look at the familiar and garrulous Crows and Jays. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (26 March 2022) — On this day in 1812, the Gerrymander was born! 🗳 And on this day in 1830, The Book of Mormon was first published in Palmyra, New York. 📖 Three great writers were also born on this day: A.E. Housman (1859–1936), Robert Frost (1874–1963), and Tennessee Williams (1911–1983). 🖋

Sunday (27 March 2022) — On this day in 1912, the Japanese government presented a gift of 3000 cherry trees to the United States to line the banks of the Potomac River and other sites in Washington, D.C., where they and their successors may still be seen today. 🌸 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Wisconsin 🇺🇸, Mongolia 🇲🇳, Montenegro 🇲🇪, Morocco 🇲🇦, and Mozambique 🇲🇿.

🥂 🌷 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is a Shakespearean adaptation for the beginning of astronomical spring. The host says: “To all days of glory, joy, and happiness.” And the guest reply: “May we preserve them.”

🌎 🇲🇽 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Mexico in southern North America is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Coatzacoalcos River in the Mexican state of Veracruz. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Coatzacoalcos 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: Iowa, Mexico, Monaco, and More

20 March 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.

🇺🇸
Iowa State Seal
IOWA (the 29th state, 28 December 1846) — The Hawkeye State. Capital: Des Moines. Iowa can be found on page 571 in your almanac and on plates 39 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Indian word variously translated ‘here I rest’ or ‘beautiful land.’ Named for the Iowa River, which was named for the Iowa Indians” (almanac page 419). State bird: American Goldfinch (bird guide page 442). State motto: “Our liberties we prize, and our rights we will maintain.” Website: www.iowa.gov.

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

🇲🇽 MEXICO in southern North America. Population: 130,207,371. Capital: Mexico City. Government: Federal presidential republic. Website: www.gob.mx (in Spanish).
🇫🇲 MICRONESIA in the western Pacific Ocean. Population: 101,675. Capital: Palikir. Government: “Federal republic in free association with U.S.” (almanac page 812). Website: www.fsmgov.org (in English).
🇲🇩 MOLDOVA in eastern Europe. Population: 3,323,875. Capital: Chișinău. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: moldova.md (in Moldovan, Romanian, English, and Russian).
🇲🇨 MONACO on the Mediterranean coast of France. Population: 31,223. Capital: Monaco. Government: Constitutional monarchy. Website: www.gouv.mc (in French and English).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) will you be making in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

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