Quick Freshes is our regular Sunday almanac for 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.
๐ฆ ๐ฆ ๐ฆ THE UPCOMING MONTH OF MAY is our special Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and all through May we’ll be sharing an assortment of extra homeschool notes on one of the world’s most wonderful natural phenomena.
๐บ๐ธ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Kansas, and our COUNTRIES are Pakistanย ๐ต๐ฐ, Palauย ๐ต๐ผ, Panamaย ๐ต๐ฆ, and Papua New Guineaย ๐ต๐ฌ. (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 a waxing crescentย โ aย 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 341โ356 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (23 April 2023) โ Today is the 113th day of 2023; there are 252 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357โ363 in your River Houses almanac.ย ๐ The great poet and playwright William Shakespeare was (probably) born on this day in 1564. Happy birthday, Will!ย ๐ญ And today is also the birthday of the great German physicist and Nobel laureate Max Planck (1858โ1947).ย โ๏ธ
Monday (24 April 2023) โ Tradition says that the city of Troy fell on this day in the year 1184 B.C. (although that tradition may not be correct).ย ๐ด And today is the birthday of the Library of Congress! On this day in 1800, President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 for “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.”ย ๐
Tuesday (25 April 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the English poet and novelist Walter de la Mare (1873โ1956).ย ๐ The World Warย I Battle of Gallipoli began on this day in 1915. The date is commemorated as Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand.ย ๐ฆ๐บโ๐ณ๐ฟ And on this day in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published “Aย Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” outlining for the first time the double-helical architecture of DNA, the molecule of heredity.ย ๐งฌ
Wednesday (26 April 2023) โ On this day in 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell from the skies over L’Aigle, France, demonstrating conclusively that “shooting stars” were in fact rocks falling from the sky.ย ๐ Today is the birthday of the famous French-American naturalist and artist John James Audubon (1785โ1851).ย ๐จ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Buddhist Ruins of Takht-i-Bahi and Sahr-i-Bahlol in Pakistan.ย ๐ต๐ฐ
Thursday (27 April 2023) โ On this day in 1667, John Milton, blind and impoverished, sold the publishing rights to his masterpiece Paradise Lost for ยฃ5.ย ๐ And today is the birthday of the American artist and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse (1791โ1872), the creator of Morse Code.ย ๐จ
Friday (28 April 2023) โ Happy National Arbor Day!ย ๐ณ Today is the birthday of the American novelist Harper Lee (1926โ2016), author of the school-standard story To Kill a Mockingbird.ย ๐ And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Sylviid Warblers, Leaf Warblers, Grasshopper-Warblers, and Old World Flycatchers and Chats. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (29 April 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the great American jazz musician and composer Duke Ellington (1899โ1974).ย ๐น
Sunday (30 April 2023) โ On this day in 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, George Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States.ย ๐บ๐ธ And on this day in 1897, British physicist J. J.ย Thompson announced the discovery of the electron.ย โ๏ธ Today is also the birthday of the great American choral conductor Robert Shaw (1916โ1999).ย ๐ถ And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be West Virginiaย ๐บ๐ธ, Paraguayย ๐ต๐พ, Peruย ๐ต๐ช, the Philippinesย ๐ต๐ญ, and Polandย ๐ต๐ฑ.
๐ฅ ๐ญ OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for Shakespeare’s birthday and the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise (1987โ2023), is from Julius Caesar:
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
On such a full sea are we now afloat;
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
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 ๐ต๐ฐ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Pakistan in southern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the one of the great rivers of human history, the ancient Indus. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Indus 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 695โ697), 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
โกโ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today!ย ๐
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โกโ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groupsย โ local chapters that we call โHouses.โ Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page.ย ๐ก