🗓 🎉 ❄️ HAPPY HOMESCHOOL JANUARY from the River Houses!

Happy January and Happy New Year 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. 🔍

January with 31 days is the middle 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 and easy structure for your homeschool year. 🗓

The month of January (Latin mensis Ianuarius), the “doorway month,” is named for Janus, the two-faced Roman god of doorways, passages, exits and entrances, endings and beginnings. Although January has long been taken as the beginning of the year, in the earliest history of the Roman calendar the months were counted beginning with March (the month of the spring equinox) rather than with January. You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your (brand new 2025!) River Houses almanac. 📚

January advice:

He that would live another year
Must eate a hen in Januvere.

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for January will be Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, and Alabama, and our countries will run from Haiti to Kenya. 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

And our weekly tour of American Heritage Sites this month will also visit the states of Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, and Alabama — follow along with us as we tour the country in preparation for the 250th anniversary of American Independence! 🇺🇸

We’ll have homeschool poems this month from Philip Larkin (for new births), Gail Mazur (for homeschool dads), James Weldon Johnson (for Martin Luther King Day), and John Masefield (for the Challenger Seven). 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 lessons this month will feature the Shearwaters, Petrels, and Storm-Petrels; the Storks, Frigatebirds, Boobies, Gannets, Cormorants, Darters, and Pelicans; the Herons, Bitterns, Ibises, and Spoonbills; the New World Vultures, Ospreys, Hawks, Kites, and Eagles; and the Owls. (So many wonderful names, yes?) 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. 🦅

Our monthly Great Star for January is Capella (alpha Aurigae), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Stars & Constellations 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 January is the Social 300s — 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:

 ⬩ 1 January (W): New Year’s Day 🎉
 ⬩ 4 January (Sa): Perihelion 2025 ☀️ 🌎
 ⬩ 5 January (Su): Twelfth Night 🍐🌳 🎭
 ⬩ 13 January (M): Lunar Society Report 🌕
 ⬩ 20 January (M): Martin Luther King Jr. Day 🇺🇸
 ⬩ 27 January (M): Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Birthday, 1756 🎼

Finally, we’ll let Thomas Hood (1799–1845) toast us out of 2024 and into 2025:

And ye, who have met with Adversity’s blast,
 And been bow’d to the earth by its fury;
To whom the Twelve Months, that have recently passed,
 Were as harsh as a prejudiced jury —
Still, fill to the future! and join in our chime,
 The regrets of remembrance to cozen,
And having obtained a New Trial of Time,
 Shout in hopes of a kindlier dozen! — Hurrah!

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

❡ 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. 🏡