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 MAY is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month 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 West Virginia, and our COUNTRIES are Paraguayย ๐ต๐พ, Peruย ๐ต๐ช, the Philippinesย ๐ต๐ญ, and Polandย ๐ต๐ฑ. (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 waxingย 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 341โ356 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (30 April 2023) โ Today is the 120th day of 2023; there are 245 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357โ363 in your River Houses almanac.ย ๐ 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
Monday (1 May 2023) โ Happy May!ย ๐ผ May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses. Keep an eye on the season’s progress with the BirdCast website.ย ๐ฆย ๐ฆย ๐ฆ The world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued on this day in 1840 in the United Kingdom.ย ๐ฌ And on this day in 1931, the Empire State Building was dedicated in New York City as (at the time) the tallest building in the world.ย ๐ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of May is, naturally enough, “May and the Poets” by Leigh Hunt (1784โ1859). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year.ย ๐ผ
Tuesday (2 May 2023) โ Peter and the Wolf, the much-loved orchestral work for children by Sergei Prokofiev (1891โ1953), debuted in Moscow on this day in 1936.ย ๐บ 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 Artistic 700s.ย ๐
Wednesday (3 May 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the famous Italian Renaissance historian and political philosopher Niccolรฒ Machiavelli (1469โ1527).ย ๐ On this day in 1715, astronomer Edmund Halley (of comet fame) successfully predicted, to within four minutes’ accuracy, aย total solar eclipse that was visible across much of Europe.ย ๐โ๐โ๐ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Sacred City of Caral-Supe in Peru.ย ๐ต๐ช
Thursday (4 May 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the great American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826โ1900).ย ๐จ Today is also International Firefighters Day!ย ๐
Friday (5 May 2023) โ The famous performance venue known today as Carnegie Hall opened in New York City on this day in 1891, with the great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840โ1893) as guest conductor. (Tourist in New York: “How do Iย get to Carnegie Hall?” New Yorker: “Practice, young man! Practice!”)ย ๐ต Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the melodious Thrushes. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year.ย ๐ฆ And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means weโll have a report from the River Houses Lunar Society on the many independent “citizen science” projects that are available to homeschool students.ย ๐
Saturday (6 May 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the American admiral and polar explorer Robert Peary (1856โ1920).ย ๐ฟ On this day in 1954, British athlete Roger Bannister (1929โ2018) ran history’s first four-minute mile.ย ๐ 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.ย ๐ญ
Sunday (7 May 2023) โ Two great “B’s” were born on this day: the English poet Robert Browning (1812โ1889) and the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833โ1897).ย ๐ย ๐ผ And on this day in 1915, a German U-boat sank the passenger liner R.M.S. Lusitania, killing nearly 1200 civilians. It was one of the principal events that drew the United States into World Warย I.ย ๐ข And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be Nevadaย ๐บ๐ธ, Portugalย ๐ต๐น, Qatarย ๐ถ๐ฆ, Romaniaย ๐ท๐ด, and Russiaย ๐ท๐บ.
๐ฅโ๐โ๐พ THIS WEEK’S TOAST, for all the farmers of the world, is an old traditional for the beginning of the growing season:
Good luck to the hoof and the horn;
Good luck to the flock and the fleece;
Good luck to the growers of corn;
May they ever have plenty and peace!
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 ๐ต๐ช EVERYTHING FLOWS: Peru in western South America is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the scenic Jequetepeque River of northern Peru. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Jequetepeque 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