🗓 💕 💐 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL FEBRUARY from the River Houses!

Happy February to all our homeschool readers and friends! Here are some wonderful educational opportunities and teaching traditions that you and your students can watch for in the homeschool month ahead. 🔍

February with 29 days in each Leap Year (and 28 days in each Common Year) is the third month of Orion Term, our winter term in the River Houses. Orion Term runs from December through February. Visit our homeschool calendar page and print out some of our simple educational calendars and planners — they’ll help you create a light structure for your homeschool year. 🗓

The month of February (Latin mensis Februarius) was the last month of the year in the earliest Roman calendars, which treated the beginning of spring in March as the beginning of the new year. The month’s name is related to the verb februo, to cleanse or purify (especially in a religious sense). Just as we talk about “spring cleaning,” the early Romans regarded February as the month when people ritually cleaned out the old year to prepare for the new. You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 349–355 in your River Houses almanac. 📚

A February photograph:

White as an Indian Pipe
Red as a Cardinal Flower
Fabulous as a Moon at Noon
February Hour —

If you want to brighten this dark winter month, Color Our Collections Week is just the thing for you! 🖍

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for February will be Maine, Missouri, Arkansas, and Michigan, and our countries will run from Kiribati to Madagascar. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and tour the United States and the whole world with us from Delaware to Hawaii and Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. 🇺🇸 🌎

We’ll be visiting World Heritage Sites in Kiribati, Laos, Lesotho, and Luxembourg this month — our River Houses World Heritage Calendar will point the way. 🗺

We’ll have homeschool poems this month from Robert Frost (for deep winter), Emily Dickinson (for Valentine’s Day), Stephen Spender (for famous birthdays), and John Keats (for all watchers of the skies). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and join us as we visit with fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. ✒️

Our Friday Bird Families posts this month will feature the Trogons and Kingfishers; the Woodpeckers; the Caracaras and Falcons; and the Parrots. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds, get out your copy of our recommended homeschool bird guide, and follow the flyways with us. 🦅

And speaking of birds, the Great Backyard Bird Count will take place this month from the 16th through the 19th (Friday through Monday) all around the world. It’s a great homeschool activity for the whole family and your participation will make a genuine contribution to science — don’t miss it! 🦉

Our monthly Great Star for February is Betelgeuse (alpha Orionis), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and join us as we visit twelve high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky and make them friends for life. 🌟

Our Dewey Decimal class for February is the Linguistic 400s — follow along with us (on the first Tuesday of each month) and help your students learn the whole library over the course of the year! 📚

And watch for our monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge post, coming up in the next few days — it’s a great opportunity for homeschool photographers. 📸

Also coming up this month:

 ⬩ 5–9 February (M–F): Color Our Collections Week 🖍
 ⬩ 8 February (Th): Dmitri Mendeleev’s Birthday, 1834 ⚗️
 ⬩ 12 February (M): Lincoln’s Birthday, 1809 🇺🇸 · Darwin’s Birthday, 1809 🦋
 ⬩ 14 February (W): Valentine’s Day 💕
 ⬩ 16–19 February (F–M): Great Backyard Bird Count 🐦
 ⬩ 19 February (M): George Washington’s Birthday (observed), 1732 🇺🇸
 ⬩ 24 February (Sa): Lunar Society Report 🌕
 ⬩ 29 February (Th): Leap Day! 🗓

And don’t forget:

Surely as cometh the Winter, I know
There are Spring violets under the snow.

What calendrical events and annual apparitions will you and your students be marking in your homeschool this February? 😊

❡ Thirty days hath September: This is one of our regular posts about the seasons, months, and terms that make up the River Houses Homeschool Year. Add your name to our free mailing list to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫

❡ 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! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” 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. 🏡