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 Washington, and our COUNTRIES are Sri Lankaย ๐ฑ๐ฐ, Sudanย ๐ธ๐ฉ, Surinameย ๐ธ๐ท, and Swedenย ๐ธ๐ช. (Our separate Sunday Statesย & 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 homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (19 June 2022) โ HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads everywhere! ๐ฐ Today is the 170th day of 2022; there are 195 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347โ353 in your River Houses almanac.ย ๐ On this day in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Union troops announced to slaves still living in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. The date was long celebrated in Texas as Juneteenth Emancipation Day and it is now aย federal holiday.ย ๐
Monday (20 June 2022) โ The University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, received its royal charter on this day in the year 1248.ย ๐ And the United States Congress approved the design of the Great Seal of the United States on this day in 1782. (Take a look and see if you have a copy of it in your pocket right now.)ย ๐ต
Tuesday (21 June 2022) โ Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Summer!ย โฑ Today is the June Solstice, known as the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of astronomical winter).ย ๐ Today is also the birthday of American painter and illustrator Rockwell Kent (1882โ1971).ย ๐จ
Wednesday (22 June 2022) โ On this day in 1633, the Catholic Church forced Italian scientist Galileo Galilei to “abjure, curse, and detest” the view he formerly supported, namely that the earth revolved around the sun and was not fixed at the center of the universe.ย ๐ญ Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Rangiri Dambulla Cave Temple in Sri Lanka.ย ๐ฑ๐ฐ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this summer solstice week is (naturally enough) Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Summer Sun.” Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year.ย ๐
Thursday (23 June 2022) โ The great English mathematician Alan Turing was born on this day in 1912. His pioneering work in computer science and cryptanalysis was instrumental in the breaking of German codes during World War II.ย ๐ฅ
Friday (24 June 2022) โ On this day in the year 1497, the Italian-English explorer John Cabot (ca. 1450โ1500) landed in Newfoundland and became the first European since the Vikings, centuries before, to set foot in North America.ย โ๏ธ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will (re)introduce you to the delightful Wood-Warblers (Part II). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (25 June 2022) โ On this day in 1876, the combined forces of several Plains Indian tribes under the command of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated a U.S. Army regiment under the command of George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known ever since as “Custer’s Last Stand.”ย โ๏ธ And today is the birthday of American children’s book illustrator Eric Carle (1929โ2021), author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and founder of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.ย ๐
Sunday (26 June 2022) โ Today is the birthday of the great French astronomer Charles Messier (1730โ1817), who accidentally documented and numbered many of the most beautiful objects in the universe.ย ๐ญ And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be Idahoย ๐บ๐ธ, Switzerlandย ๐จ๐ญ, Syriaย ๐ธ๐พ, Taiwanย ๐น๐ผ, and Tajikistanย ๐น๐ฏ.
๐ฅ โฑ OUR WEEKLY TOAST is a happy traditional offering, for the arrival of summer: “To full stomachs and merry hearts.”
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 ๐ธ๐ฉ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Sudan in eastern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the White Nile, one of the world’s great rivers, which joins the Blue Nile in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum to form the Nile proper. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the White Nile 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 ๐โ๐โ๐
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