Offer a homeschool toast to “The Fighting Quaker,” General Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island, George Washington’s right-hand man and one of the great military strategists of the American Revolution. He was born on this day in 1742.
🗓 Homeschool Holidays & History: Little Lessons for the Whole Year
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons on history, holidays, anniversaries, and notable events from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Use these regular posts to enrich your homeschool history curriculum all through the year. Print your own homeschool calendars and planners on our main River Houses calendar page, and add your name to our free homeschool mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫
💰 HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO THE LINCOLN CENT, “Born” This Day in 1909
The familiar Lincoln penny — you may have one in your pocket right now — first went into circulation on this day in 1909. It was struck to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.
🖋 🍻 WONDERFUL WORDS: To the Meteor Rolling Home
“Of thee we think, in a ring we link; / To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink, / And the Meteor rolling home.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Herman Melville, for his birthday and for this month’s Perseid meteor shower.)
🖋 🔔 WONDERFUL WORDS: As Kingfishers Catch Fire
“Like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s / Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Gerard Manley Hopkins, for his birthday and for the halcyon days of summer.)
🚀 🌕 HOMESCHOOL SCIENCE: Apollo 11 Moon Landing Resources
Share some great educational resources with your homeschool students this month for the July 20th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
📖 🖋 THOREAU’S BIRTHDAY and Homeschool Journaling
“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” (Happy birthday to the great American writer Henry David Thoreau, born on this day in 1817. Check him out at your local library this week.)
📜 🇺🇸 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Independence Day and the Declaration
Be sure to add a visit to the National Archives and the Declaration of Independence itself (in person or online) to your homeschool Fourth of July calendar!
🇺🇸 🥂 HOMESCHOOL TOASTING TRADITIONS the Whole Year Round
Why not begin the delightful tradition of offering a toast around your family table each week. This classic Independence Day toast is a perfect way to get started.
🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS: William Emerson on “A Nation’s Strength”
“Not gold but only men can make / A people great and strong.” (Our patriotic homeschool poem-of-the-week, from William Ralph Emerson, for Independence Day.)
🌠 JOIN A HOMESCHOOL SCIENCE PROJECT for International Asteroid Day!
You and your students can help astronomers study the shapes and orbits of real asteroids in space, right from the comfort of your little home academy. How cool is that?
🔭 ☄️ HOMESCHOOL ASTRONOMY: The Most Beautiful Objects in the Universe
Happy birthday to the great French astronomer Charles Messier (1730–1817), who cataloged some of the most beautiful nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies in the universe — so he could ignore them.
🖋 🏰 HAPPY FATHER’S DAY WEEK from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“A whisper, and then a silence: / Yet I know by their merry eyes / They are plotting and planning together / To take me by surprise.” (Our paternal homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for Father’s Day, the third Sunday in June.)
🇺🇸 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: Happy Flag Day!
Flag Day (June 14th every year) celebrates the date in 1777 when Congress established the Stars & Stripes as the national flag of the new United States.
📺 HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARIES for Your Homeschool Summer
Ten multi-part masterpieces of the documentarian’s art that you and your homeschool students can watch together and discuss over the summer. (Or at any other time of year!)
🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “O! say can you see?”
“Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, / In full glory reflected now shines on the stream — / ‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave / O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” (Our American homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Francis Scott Key, for Flag Day, the 14th of June.)
🇫🇷 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Learning About D-Day 1944
Learn about the World War II Allied invasion of Normandy, France, on 6 June 1944, using live news broadcasts from that day.
🖋 🎂 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Birthday to Walt Whitman
“Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, / Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, / A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, / Chair’d in the adamant of Time.” (Happy birthday to the great American poet Walt Whitman, born on this day in 1819.)
🇺🇸 🖋 “AFTER A HUNDRED YEARS / Nobody knows the Place”
“Weeds triumphant ranged / Strangers strolled and spelled / At the lone Orthography / Of the Elder Dead.” (An extra homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for Memorial Day.)
🇺🇸 🕊 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Memorial Day
“Rest, comrades, rest and sleep! / The thoughts of men shall be / As sentinels to keep / Your rest from danger free.” (Little homeschool lessons in literature, history, geography, and music, for the Memorial Day weekend.)
🎓 🎉 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Let Us Rejoice!
Invite your homeschoolers to learn a few lines this week from the most famous of all medieval student songs – it’s an inheritance they can carry with them around the world.
🎂 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: Happy Birthday, Ralph! (Emerson, that is)
Invite your homeschool students to discover the work of the great American essayist, poet, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, born this day in 1803.
🖋 🎓 GRADUATION SEASON: “Set me free to find my calling”
“Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow, / Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Marta Keen, for graduation season and the coming summer.)
📏 ⏱ 🌡 HAPPY WORLD METROLOGY DAY!
On this day in 1875, the meter was adopted as an international standard of measurement. That makes today World Metrology Day! Why not invite your students to take a few scientific measurements this week in your homeschool.
🇨🇦 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC & HISTORY: “To find the hand of Franklin”
To understand a complex and beautiful piece of art or music, your students must first learn a great deal about the world — names, places, people, and events that may seem at first to be unrelated.
🇬🇷 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: The Antikythera Mechanism
Spend a few homeschool history minutes this week learning about one of the most amazing objects the ancient world ever produced: an astronomical computer called the Antikythera mechanism.
🚀 HOMESCHOOL ASTRONOMY: Skylab’s 50th Anniversary
Do you have a future astronaut in your homeschool? Then why not take a few minutes this week to learn about Skylab, America’s first space station, launched on this day in 1973.
🚂 AMERICAN ICON: The Golden Spike of 1869
Teach a little homeschool history lesson today on the anniversary of the completion of the North American transcontinental railroad in 1869.
