Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Tents” and “Seven Prismatic Colors.” Take a look!
🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 4 June 2023
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons for the week ahead, including: New terms, Revolutionary resolutions, decisive days, patriotic poems, great stars, Slovakian rivers, a toast to liberty, and more!
🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: South Dakota, Singapore, Solomon Islands, and More
Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: South Dakota, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Solomon Islands.
🌕 HOMESCHOOL “CITIZEN SCIENCE” PROJECTS for June
Our June full-moon report on the real “citizen science” projects around the world that you and your students can participate in from the comfort of your little home academy. Pick one and get started today!
🔭 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES: Homeschool Astronomy for June
Our homeschool review of the educational wonders that you and your students can watch for in the northern hemisphere night sky during the month of June.
🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Wagtails and Pipits
Come along on our homeschool tour of North American birds and pick up some great science and natural history lessons along the way. This week: the ground-loving Wagtails and Pipits.
🖋 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “Sumer is i-cumin in”
“Loudly sing, cuckoo!” (Our ancient homeschool poem-of-the-week, anonymously, for the beginning of our summer term.)
🗓 🍃 🏸 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL JUNE from the River Houses!
Happy homeschool June! Here are some little lessons, teaching traditions, and wonderful educational opportunities you and your students can watch for this month.
🗓 💪 HERCULES TERM and the River Houses Homeschool Year
We divide the homeschool year into four three-month terms in the River Houses. Today is the first day of Hercules Term, our summer term, named for the Great Hero of the Heavens. Hercules Term runs from June through August.
🖋 🎂 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.)
🌍 🇷🇸 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Studenica Monastery in Serbia
Pay a homeschool visit to a World Heritage Site from one of our countries-of-the-week and learn some great history and geography along the way. This week: the medieval Studenica Monastery in Serbia.
🗓 NEW CALENDARS & PLANNERS for the 2023–2024 Homeschool Year
Print your own set of free homeschool planners and educational calendars for the new homeschool year that begins in September.
🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 28 May 2023
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons for the week ahead, including: Memorial Days, new terms, relativistic predictions, vocal virtuosos, amazing ascents, Sierra Leonean rivers, a toast to heroes, and more!
🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: North Dakota, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and More
Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: North Dakota, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, and Sierra Leone.
🇺🇸 🖋 “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.)
🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Indigobirds, Old World Sparrows, and Allies
Come along on our homeschool tour of North American bird families and pick up some great science and natural history teaching tips along the way. This week: the Indigobirds and Whydahs, the Weavers, the Estrildid Finches, and the Old World Sparrows.
🎓 🎉 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.
🌍 🇸🇦 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Historic Jeddah in Saudi Arabia
Pay a homeschool visit to a World Heritage Site from one of our countries-of-the-week and learn some great history and geography along the way. This week: Historic Jeddah, the Gate to Mecca in Saudi Arabia.
🖋 🎓 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.)
🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 21 May 2023
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons for the week ahead, including: American philosophers, graduation poems, marvelous messages, inimitable investigators, ancient eclipses, Swedish naturalists, Samoan waterfalls, a toast to blissful days, and more!
🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Colorado, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, and More
Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: Colorado, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé & Príncipe, and Saudi Arabia.
📏 ⏱ 🌡 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.
🖋 🌟 WONDERFUL WORDS: Hymn to the North Star
“A beauteous type of that unchanging good, / That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray / The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.” (An extra astronomical homeschool poem-of-the-week, from William Cullen Bryant, for Polaris, our Great Star for the month of May.)
🇨🇦 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.
🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Bulbuls, Starlings, Waxwings, and Allies
Come along on our homeschool tour of North American bird families and pick up some great science and natural history teaching ideas along the way. This week: the Bulbuls, Starlings, Waxwings, Silky-Flycatchers, Olive Warblers, and Accentors.