🗓 🌱 🐰 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL MARCH from the River Houses!

Happy March 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. 🔍

March with 31 days is the first month of Leo Term, our spring term in the River Houses. Leo Term runs from March through May. 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 March (Latin mensis Martius) is named for the Roman god Mars, father of Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. (All Romans were thus imagined to be the descendants of Mars.) In the earliest Roman calendars, March was treated as the first month of the year — naturally enough, since it marks the beginning of spring. This practice continued in many Western countries well into the modern period, and Great Britain and her American colonies formally reckoned March 25th as the beginning of the year until 1752. (Genealogists are familiar with the puzzle of “double dating”: old records that bear dates like “February 23rd, 1731/32.” A date of that kind means February 23rd, 1732, by modern reckoning, which is equivalent to February 23rd at the end of the year 1731 when years are counted from March 25th.) You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your River Houses almanac. 📚

A natural law:

March winds and April showers
Bring forth May flowers.

March is the month of the vernal (spring) equinox in the northern hemisphere — the astronomical beginning of spring — which falls this year on Thursday the 20th. (In the southern hemisphere the 20th will be the autumnal equinox — the astronomical beginning of autumn.) The vernal and autumnal equinoxes each year are the days of “equal night and light,” when the period of darkness and the period of daylight are very nearly the same. 🌚 🌞 🌷

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for March will be Florida, Texas, Iowa, Wisconsin, and California, and our countries will run from Malawi to Nepal. 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 Florida, Texas, Iowa, and Wisconsin — 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 Wallace Stevens (for early birds), Walt Whitman (for scientific birthdays), Constantine Cavafy (for the Ides of March), and Robert Frost (for ephemeral apparitions). 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 this month will include the Tyrant Flycatchers and Becards; the Shrikes and Vireos; and the Crows and Jays (twice over). 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 March is Sirius (alpha Canis Majoris), 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 March is the Scientific 500s — 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:

 ⬩ 13–14 March (Th–F): Total Lunar Eclipse 🌕
 ⬩ 14 March (F): Lunar Society Report 🌕
 ⬩ 14 March (F): Albert Einstein’s Birthday, 1879 ⚛️
 ⬩ 15 March (Sa): The Ides of March, 44 B.C. 🗡
 ⬩ 20 March (Th): March (Vernal) Equinox 🌚 🌞 🌷
 ⬩ 21 March (F): Johann Sebastian Bach’s Birthday, 1685 🎵
 ⬩ 26 March (W): A.E. Housman’s Birthday, 1859 · Robert Frost’s Birthday, 1874 🖋

And remember:

Eat leeks in March and garlic in May,
And all the year after physicians may play.

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

❡ 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. 🏡