🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Hawaii and Antarctica

Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.

Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and our recommended homeschool reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 420), so this week’s state is — the last one!

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  HAWAII (the 50th state, 21 August 1959) — The Aloha State. Capital: Honolulu. Hawaii can be found on page 570 in your almanac and on plates 46 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Possibly derived from Hawaiki or Owhyhee, Polynesian word for ‘homeland’” (almanac page 421). State bird: Hawaiian Goose (Nene). Website: hawaii.gov.

❡ State symbols: Hawaii’s handsome state bird, the Hawaiian Goose or Nene (Branta sandvicensis), is one you won’t find in your North American bird guide, because Hawaii, while part of the United States, is not part of North America! But don’t despair: the Hawaiian Goose profile on the eBird website will help you learn all about it. 🇺🇸

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week posts, using your reference library as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for just a few minutes each week and your little lesson is done. By the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a wealth of new geographical and historical information, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 🔎

❡ Maps to color: National Geographic has a large blank United States map and a blank world map, complete with flags, printable in sections and ready to receive the colored pencils of your students. Why not give them a try this week. 🖍

We finished our tour of the nations of the world last week with Zimbabwe, so this week, to keep tropical Hawaii company, we’ll visit polar Antarctica, the only non-national continent in the world:

• 🇦🇶 ANTARCTICA, surrounding the South Pole and surrounded by the Southern Ocean. Population: Antarctica is the only continent that has never had a native human population. It is occupied today by about a thousand scientists scattered at various research stations across the continent (this number is lower in the winter and higher in the summer). The United States research programs in Antarctica (www.usap.gov) are administered by the National Science Foundation, and their website is full of additional information and even provides some live webcams of Antarctic scenery. Capital: Antarctica isn’t a nation-state, so it has no capital. The main research stations are located on the Antarctic Peninsula, at McMurdo Sound, and at the South Pole. Government: Antarctica is governed by an international treaty that went into force in 1961. You can read more about it on the comprehensive Antarctic Treaty System page in Wikipedia. Website: Secretariat of the Antarctic Treaty (www.ats.aq). ❄️

Even though Antarctica has no native human population, it has had a rich history since the nineteenth century when its outlines were first descried. The “heroic age of Antarctic exploration” is a wonderful subject of study for any adventurous homeschooler. Your River Houses atlas also has a great map of the Antarctic continent (plate 113) with extensive notes and annotations — it’s quite worthy of exploration itself! Even your River Houses history encyclopedia has a brief outline of Antarctic history as the very last item in its collection of national history profiles (page 599).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you and your students made in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Read and think critically: The external country links we provide each week typically go to official government websites, which are not always in English and which may well be propagandistic in one way or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to exercise their critical reading and thinking skills. 🔎

❡ Come, here's the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — is one of the best educational gifts you can give them. Why not look up any one of our selected states or countries each week in your recommended homeschool atlas and show your students how to locate rivers, lakes, marshes, water depths, mountains and their elevations, highway numbers, airports, oil fields, railroads, ruins, battle sites, small towns, big cities, regional capitals, national capitals, parks, deserts, glaciers, borders, grid references, lines of longitude and latitude, and much more. (Yes, you can find all those things on the large maps in your atlas.) There is so much information packed into high-quality maps that a magnifying glass is always helpful, even for young folks with good eyesight. The endpapers of the atlas and the map-reading information on Plate 2 (10th and 11th eds.) will guide you in your voyages of discovery. 🗺

❡ Plan an imaginary vacation: Here's a fun exercise for your students: take one of the countries that we list each week and write out a family travel plan. How would you get there? How much will it cost? Will you need a passport? Where will you stay? Will you have to exchange your currency? How do you say hello the local language? What cities and attractions and landmarks will you visit? What foods will you eat? How will you get around (car, train, boat, mule)? Make a simple worksheet with blank spaces for the answers, have your students do the research, and start planning your world tour. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ Print this little lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you'll find a special "Print" button that will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you edit and delete sections you don't want or need (such as individual images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and follow along with us as we take an educational tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the homeschool year. And don't forget to 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! 🗓

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❡ 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. 🏡