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 418), so this week’s state is:
๐บ๐ธ Washington State SealWASHINGTON (the 42nd state, 11 November 1889)ย โ The Evergreen State. Capital: Olympia. Washington can be found on page 588 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Named after George Washington. When the bill creating the Territory of Columbia was introduced in the 32nd Congress, its name was changed to Washington because of the existence of the District of Columbia” (almanac page 419). State bird: American Goldfinch (bird guide page 442). Website:access.wa.gov.
โกโ 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.ย ๐
โกโ 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.ย ๐
We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
๐ฑ๐ฐโ SRI LANKA in the Indian Ocean. Population: 23,044,123. Capital: Colombo. Government: Presidential republic. Website:www.gov.lk (in English, Tamil, and Sinhala).
๐ธ๐ฉโ SUDAN in eastern Africa. Population: 46,751,152. Capital: Khartoum. Government: Presidential republic. Website:www.presidency.gov.sd (in Arabic, French, and English).
๐ธ๐ทโ SURINAME in northern South America. Population: 614,749. Capital: Paramaribo. Government: Presidential republic. Website:www.dna.sr (in Dutch).
๐ธ๐ชโ SWEDEN in northern Europe. Population: 10,261,767. Capital: Stockholm. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website:sweden.se (in Swedish, English, and several other languages).
These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 745โ852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489โ599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.
What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term?ย ๐
โกโ Read and think critically: The country links above go to official 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.ย ๐
โกโ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps โ not just basically competent, but fluent โ 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. There is so much information packed into professional maps of this kind that a magnifying glass is always helpful, even for young folks with good eyesight. The endpapers of the atlas and the technical map-reading information on Plate 2 (10th and 11th eds.) will guide you in your voyages of discovery.ย ๐บ
โกโ 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.ย โ๏ธย ๐ย ๐ย ๐ณย ๐ย ๐
โกโ 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.ย ๐บ๐ธย ๐
Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.
This week’s birds are the Wood-Warblers (pages 452โ485), the little jewels of the American forests. Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’re spreading the Wood-Warblers out over two weeks because there are so many of them: about 109 in the western hemisphere (the only place they occur) and 57 in North America.
If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as aย picture book and spend aย few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.
If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with aย technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here’s how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:
WOOD-WARBLERS โ Family Parulidae. About half of the many species in this colorful New World family occur in N.A. [North America] Most are highly migratory; aย few reach central S.A. [South America] Species: 109ย World, 57ย N.A.
When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about aย new group. How many species? (109 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (57 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Colorful, highly migratory, and so on.)
Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, why not investigate the Yellow Warbler (page 468), one of the commonest and most widespread warbler species in the United States.
All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guideย โ can your students tease it out? How big is the Yellow Warbler? (5ย inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Setophaga petechia.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)
Yellow Warblers breed across almost all of the United States and Canada except for the deep south, a region they only pass through on migration. They generally prefer damp areas around the edges of ponds, lakes, and rivers, and their variable songย โ remarkably loud for such a small birdย โ is regularly heard in spring and summer across the landscape.
For a second species in the Wood-Warbler family this week, take a look at the American Redstart (page 466), aย flashy little black and orange bird that also occurs widely across North America, except for the far west.
You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore. If yellow, black, and orange aren’t to your taste, for example, how about blue? (There’s a warbler of almost every color!) Take a look next at the lovely Cerulean Warbler (page 466), and learn a wonderful new vocabulary word in the process: cerulean. And so on, through as many species as you wish.
In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present aย specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.
What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term? ๐
โกโ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations using the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season.ย ๐ฆ
โกโ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (pages 6โ13) explains a littleย bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book โ why not have your students study it asย a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts ofย a bird (pages 10โ11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores.ย ๐ฆ
โกโ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary asย a nature reference, but aย comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning.ย ๐
โกโ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things.ย ๐
โกโ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year.ย ๐ฆย ๐ฆ ๐ฆย ๐ฆย ๐ฆ
This coming Sunday (the third Sunday in June) is Father’s Day! Happy Father’s Day to all homeschool dads everywhere!
Edith, Alice, and Allegra Longfellow, by Thomas Read. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.) In honor of this happy holiday, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of June is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour” (1863), which stars Henry’s three daughters: Alice Mary, Anne Allegra, and Edith. Longfellow was the most popular poet of nineteenth-century America, and one of the most popular around the world, and “The Children’s Hour,” which was once widely taught in American schools, is a good illustration of why that was so.
The scene of the poem is the study in Longfellow’s house in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which is nowย a National Historic Site that you and your students can visit someday on your homeschool travels around the United States. It is evening, and Papa Longfellow has been working at his desk.
The Children’s Hour
Between the dark and the daylight,
โWhen the night is beginning to lower,
Comes a pause in the day’s occupations,
โThat is known as the Children’s Hour.
I hear in the chamber above me
โThe patter of little feet,
The sound of a door that is opened,
โAnd voices soft and sweet.
From my study I see in the lamplight,
โDescending the broad hall stair,
Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,
โAnd Edith with golden hair.
A whisper, and then a silence:
โYet I know by their merry eyes
They are plotting and planning together
โTo take me by surprise.
A sudden rush from the stairway,
โA sudden raid from the hall!
By three doors left unguarded
โThey enter my castle wall!
They climb up into my turret
โO’er the arms and back of my chair;
If I try to escape, they surround me;
โThey seem to be everywhere.
They almost devour me with kisses,
โTheir arms about me entwine,
Till I think of the Bishop of Bingen
โIn his Mouse-Tower on the Rhine!
Do you think, O blue-eyed banditti,
โBecause you have scaled the wall,
Such an old mustache as I am
โIs not a match for you all!
I have you fast in my fortress,
โAnd will not let you depart,
But put you down into the dungeon
โIn the round-tower of my heart.
And there will I keep you forever,
โYes, forever and a day,
Till the walls shall crumble to ruin,
โAnd moulder in dust away!
What other wonderful words and poetical productions will you be studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? ๐
โกโ In the round-tower of my heart: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloudย โ that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life.ย ๐ฐ
โกโ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.ย โ๏ธ
โกโ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week.ย ๐
The confluence of the Limpopo and Shashe Rivers on the border between South Africa and Zimbabwe.
The historic Mapungubwe landscape was the site of the ancient African Kingdom of Mapungubwe:
The Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape demonstrates the rise and fall of the first indigenous kingdom in Southern Africa between 900 and 1,300 AD. The core area covers nearly 30,000 ha and is supported by a suggested buffer zone of around 100,000 ha. Within the collectively known Zhizo sites are the remains of three capitalsย โ Schroda; Leopardโs Kopje; and the final one located around Mapungubwe Hillย โ and their satellite settlements and lands around the confluence of the Limpopo and the Shashe rivers whose fertility supported a large population within the kingdom.
Mapungubwe’s position at the crossing of the north/south and east/west routes in southern Africa also enabled it to control trade, through the East African ports to India and China, and throughout southern Africa. From its hinterland it harvested gold and ivory โ commodities in scarce supply elsewhere โ and this brought it great wealth as displayed through imports such as Chinese porcelain and Persian glass beads.
This international trade also created a society that was closely linked to ideological adjustments, and changes in architecture and settlement planning. Until its demise at the end of the 13th century AD, Mapungubwe was the most important inland settlement in the African subcontinent and the cultural landscape contains a wealth of information in archaeological sites that record its development. The evidence reveals how trade increased and developed in a pattern influenced by an elite class with a sacred leadership where the king was secluded from the commoners located in the surrounding settlements.
Mapungubwe’s demise was brought about by climatic change. During its final two millennia, periods of warmer and wetter conditions suitable for agriculture in the Limpopo/Shashe valley were interspersed with cooler and drier pulses. When rainfall decreased after 1300 AD, the land could no longer sustain a high population using traditional farming methods, and the inhabitants were obliged to disperse. Mapungubwe’s position as a power base shifted north to Great Zimbabwe and, later, Khami.
The remains of this famous kingdom, when viewed against the present day fauna and flora, and the geo-morphological formations of the Limpopo/Shashe confluence, create an impressive cultural landscape of universal significance. (World Heritage Centre #1099)
World Heritage Sites are cultural or natural landmarks of international significance, selected for recognition by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. More than 1000 such sites have been recognized in over 160 countries, and we feature one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list of World Heritage Sites online at the World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.
What world treasures will you be exploring in your homeschool this Hercules Term?ย ๐
โกโ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 752โ859; the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found; the history encyclopedia includes national histories on pages 489โ599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read the WHC’s brief description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical, geographical, and cultural information.ย ๐ฟ๐ฆ
(If you have homeschool teens who want to develop independent research skills for college or career, take a look at the many online projects we recommend. Some can be done indoors and some outdoors; some are scientific and some are historical; all of them are real projects that contribute to the growth of knowledge. The post below is my monthly report on the ones Iย myself participate in. Take a look at the whole list and find one or two that appeal to you and your students and get started today!)
The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and to share their results with other homeschool families.
Here’s our list of just some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents!) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:
Browse through that project list and find one or two that would be a good fit for your family and a good match for your interests. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be well on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse.ย ๐ฌ ๐ญ ๐ฅ ๐ฆ ๐ โ๏ธ โ ๐ ๐ฒ ๐
Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their accomplishments.
As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past lunar month on the two types of projects I participate in: eBird monitoring of bird populations, and distributed computing research using the Berkeley open infrastructure application. You and your students can participate right now in these projects, and in many others too.
On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I have been documenting the birds of a local college campus that I frequently visit. So far I’ve contributed a total of 552 checklists (observation reports) for this localityย โ it’s a site that has never been documented before. As more checklists are added, and as eBird combines them and charts them automatically, you can get a real sense of seasonal distribution and migration patterns at this location:
And here’s a recent sample checklist so you can see what they look like:
You can start keeping a similar eBird list for a location near you โ your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more useful results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website and start exploring.
Distributed computing projects use idle time on your computer to perform scientific calculations on various kinds of complex data. The most popular distributed computing projects run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform (BOINC), and I contribute computer time (whenever my laptop is plugged in) to three of these: (1)ย the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; (2)ย the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy; and (3)ย the Asteroids@Home project, which calculates the shapes and orbits of poorly-known asteroids. (Yes, those are projects you and your students can really contribute to.)
โกโ Note: Asteroids@Home is unfortunately down at present because of hardware problems. That’s a real-world lesson for students too: in actual scientific research, equipment sometimes breaks down.
I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, Asteroids@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and you can also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually processed and how much your team has processedย โ they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. (And while it’s running, Einstein@Home has a cool screensaver that shows you in real time what your computer is analyzing.)ย ๐ก
And here’s another level of skill development for your high school (or even advanced middle school) students: once you’ve processed a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results using an online spreadsheet, and this is what it looks likeย โ if you join one of these projects, your numbers will be included in these totals:
That’s just a simple graphing exerciseย โ nothing particularly profound. It’s something that can be refined, developed, and expanded in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)
The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in many different scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The specific examples above are just a few that happen to interest meย โ pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects in a great variety of areas that you and your family can join.
What scholarly and scientific explorations will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term?ย ๐
โกโ The friends who made the future: You can learn more about the original Lunar Society of Birmingham in “The Lunar Men,” a fine short video from History West Midlands.ย ๐
โกโ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners.ย ๐ธ
โกโ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended backyard night-sky guide and world atlas (which has an astronomical section) will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above.ย ๐ฆย ๐
โกโ Whether they work together or apart: This is one of our regular Lunar Society Bulletins about the many cooperative research projects that we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year.ย ๐
Tuesday of this week (June 14th) is Flag Day! Flag Day commemorates the date in 1777 when Congress established the Stars & Stripes as the national flag of the new United States:
Resolved, That the flag of the thirteen United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white: that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation. (Journals of the Continental Congress)
Flag Day was first recognized nationally by President Woodrow Wilson in 1916 through a presidential proclamation, and Wilson’s proclamation was later extended by legislation that was signed by President Harry Truman in 1949.
The Library of Congress has a complete rundown on the history of Flag Day and aย wide range of educational resources that you and your students can explore this week:
What other holidays and historical anniversaries will you be marking in your homeschool this Hercules Term? ๐
โกโ The emblem of the land I love: Flags are wonderful subjects for students to investigate, and your recommended homeschool almanac and world atlas both have many pages of flag illustrations. Why not open them up today and explore! ๐ฆ๐ซ ๐ฆ๐ฑ ๐ฉ๐ฟ ๐ฆ๐ธ ๐ฆ๐ฉ ๐ฆ๐ด ๐ฆ๐ฎ ๐ฆ๐ฌ ๐ฆ๐ท ๐ฆ๐ฒ ๐ฆ๐ผ ๐ฆ๐บ ๐ฆ๐น ๐ฆ๐ฟ ๐บ๐ธ
โกโ Hoist and fly, oh my: Do your students know the basic parts of aย flag? The hoist is the edge that is next to the flagpole, and the fly is the opposite edge that blows free. The field is the overall background (red and white stripes in the case of the U.S. flag) and the canton or union is the rectangle in the upper left that displays a special design (white stars on a blue field for the U.S. flag). Not all flags feature a canton, but many do; look through your atlas or almanac to find some more examples. ๐ฌ๐ท ๐ณ๐ฟ ๐ผ๐ธ ๐น๐ฌ ๐น๐ผ ๐ฒ๐พ
Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more!) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.
๐บ๐ธ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Montana, and our COUNTRIES are Somaliaย ๐ธ๐ด, South Africaย ๐ฟ๐ฆ, South Sudanย ๐ธ๐ธ, and Spainย ๐ช๐ธ. (Our separate Sunday Statesย & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
๐ TODAY, Sunday (12 June 2022) โ Today is the 163rd day of 2022; there are 202 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347โ353 in your River Houses almanac.ย ๐ The Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated on this day in 1939 in Cooperstown, New York.ย โพ๏ธ
Tuesday (14 June 2022) โ Today is Flag Day! ๐บ๐ธ On this day in 1775, the Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Army.ย โ๏ธ And on this day in 1777, the United States Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the United States national flag.ย ๐บ๐ธ And, thereโs a full moon tonight, so that means weโll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society.ย ๐
Wednesday (15 June 2022) โ Assyrian scribes recorded the occurrence of a total solar eclipse on this day in the year 763ย B.C. The date of that eclipse serves a fixed reference point for much of ancient Mesopotamian chronology.ย ๐โ๐โ๐ On this day in 1215, King John of England set his seal to Magna Carta, the Great Charter that is the historical foundation of English (and so American) law.ย โ๏ธ Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Mapungubwe Cultural Landscape in South Africa.ย ๐ฟ๐ฆ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of June is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour,” for Father’s Day, observed each year on the third Sunday in June. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year.ย ๐จโ๐งโ๐ฆ
Thursday (16 June 2022) โ Today is the birthday of the American geneticist and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock (1902โ1992).ย ๐ฝ And on this day in 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (b.ย 1937) became the first woman in space.ย ๐ฉโ๐
Friday (17 June 2022) โ The Battle of Bunker Hill, the first coordinated encounter between opposing armies during the American Revolution, took place on this day in 1775 across the river from Boston. (See page 298 in your River Houses history encyclopedia for a Revolutionary review.)ย โ๏ธ And today is the birthday of one of the giants of American, nay, of world history, to wit, Ruth Graves Wakefield (1903โ1977), the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie!ย ๐ช Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Wood Warblers, the jewels of the North American forests. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (18 June 2022) โ On this day in 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain.ย โ๏ธ And on this day in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote in the presidential election of 1872.ย ๐ณ
Sunday (19 June 2022) โ HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads everywhere! ๐จโ๐งโ๐ฆ On this day in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Union troops announced to slaves still living in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. The date was long celebrated in Texas as Juneteenth Emancipation Day and it is now aย federal holiday.ย ๐ And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be Washingtonย ๐บ๐ธ, Sri Lankaย ๐ฑ๐ฐ, Sudanย ๐ธ๐ฉ, Surinameย ๐ธ๐ท, and Swedenย ๐ธ๐ช.
๐ฅ ๐บ๐ธ THIS WEEK’S TOAST is our traditional offering for Flag Day: “To the Star-spangled Banner: long may it wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
โกโ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week โ you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast in your homeschool this week?ย ๐ฅ
๐ ๐ฟ๐ฆ EVERYTHING FLOWS: South Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Caledon River, one of South Africa’s major rivers. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Caledon entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
The Caledon River in central South Africa. (Image:ย Wikimediaย Commons.)
โกโ Children of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 693โ695), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. Aย whole world of geographical learning awaits you.ย ๐โ๐โ๐
๐ AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Monday this month!
What do you have planned for your homeschool this week?ย ๐
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 418), so this week’s state is:
๐บ๐ธ Montana State SealMONTANA (the 41st state, 8 November 1889)ย โ The Treasure State. Capital: Helena. Montana can be found on page 577 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Latin or Spanish for โmountainousโ” (almanac page 419). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website:mt.gov.
โกโ 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.ย ๐
โกโ 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.ย ๐
We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
๐ธ๐ดโ SOMALIA in eastern Africa. Population: 12,094,640. Capital: Mogadishu. Government: Federal parliamentary republic. Website:villasomalia.gov.so (in English and Somali).
๐ฟ๐ฆโ SOUTH AFRICA in southern Africa. Population: 56,978,635. Capital: Pretoria/Cape Town. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website:www.gov.za (in English).
๐ธ๐ธโ SOUTH SUDAN in east-central Africa. Population: 10,984,074. Capital: Juba. Government: Presidential republic. Website:CIA World Factbook entry (in English).
๐ช๐ธโ SPAIN in southwestern Europe. Population: 47,260,584. Capital: Madrid. Government: Parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Website:www.lamoncloa.gob.es (in Spanish).
These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 745โ852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489โ599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.
What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term?ย ๐
โกโ Read and think critically: The country links above go to official 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.ย ๐
โกโ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps โ not just basically competent, but fluent โ 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. There is so much information packed into professional maps of this kind that a magnifying glass is always helpful, even for young folks with good eyesight. The endpapers of the atlas and the technical map-reading information on Plate 2 (10th and 11th eds.) will guide you in your voyages of discovery.ย ๐บ
โกโ 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.ย โ๏ธย ๐ย ๐ย ๐ณย ๐ย ๐
โกโ 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.ย ๐บ๐ธย ๐
June is the first month of Hercules Term in the River Houses, and as our monthly star calendar will tell you, June’s Great Star is Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo the Virgin. Its formal designation is ฮฑย Virginisย โ “alpha of Virgo.” Spica (in Latin) is the ear of grainย โ the spikeย โ in the hand of the harvest maiden Proserpine (Persephone in Greek).
The constellation Virgo, showing the location of its alpha star, Spica, representing the ear of grain in the harvest maiden’s hand. The blue line is the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets follow across the sky. Arcturus, our July star, appears in the upper left. (Image:ย Wikimediaย Commons.)
If you want to introduce your students to Spica and Virgo you can start with some basic astronomy and astronomical mythology from your backyard star guide:
Virgo is another of the zodiacal constellations that straddles the ecliptic band and the only one representing a woman. It was first cataloged by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy in the second century. The magnitude-1 star Spica can be located by star hopping. From the end of the handle of the Big Dipper, move south in the “arc to Arcturus” [our July star] in the constellation Boรถtes, then “speed on to Spica” directly beneath it.
Located some 263 light-years from Earth, brilliant blue-white Spica is the fifth brightest star in the entire heavens, a blue giant about 14 times the mass of our own sun and 2,000 times more luminous. While it may look like a single star, it is in fact a double. Both are hot blue giants that orbit each other only 11 million miles (18 million km) apart. (Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, page 202)
That’s plenty for beginning studentsย โ your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Spica is packed with additional information on everything from astrometry to cultural history.
Conjunction of Spica and Venus on 21 November 2018. (Image:ย Marion Haligowski via Skyย & Telescope.)
Blue-white Spica and its companion star are so close to each other โ closer than the sun and Mercury โ that they are deformed by gravity and are more egg-shaped than spherical. The primary star is about seven times the diameter of the sun; the companion is about four times the diameter of the sun. Spectroscopic analysis shows that they orbit each other with a period of about four days. The Spica system is also quite young: about 12.5 million years old.
As noted above, Spica is very close to the ecliptic, the path followed by the moon, sun, and planets as they cross the earth’s sky, and so on rare occasions it is briefly covered by them โ an event called an occultation. The last occultation of Spica by Venus occurred in the year 1783, and the next will occur in 2197.
The constellation Virgo, in an imaginative illustration from Urania’s Mirror (1824), showing its alpha star Spica, also known by its Arabic name Azamech or Azimech, marking the spikes of grain in the harvest maiden’s left hand. (Image:ย Wikimediaย Commons.)
Careful measurements of Spicaโs position are believed to have led the ancient astronomer Hipparchus to discover the precession of the equinoxes.
Sometime this month, take your homeschool students out at dusk and introduce them to this brilliant young star, and teach them its name, and so give them a new friend for life.
What astronomical observations and stellar sightings will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term?ย ๐
โกโ Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular namesย โ Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so onย โ as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572โ1625) devised the formal system of star designations that is still in common use today. In Bayer’s system, the stars in each constellation, from brightest to dimmest, are assigned a lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet: ฮฑโ (alpha, brightest), ฮฒโ (beta, second brightest), ฮณโ (gamma, third brightest), ฮดโ (delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the name of the constellation in its Latin possessive (genitive) form: Lyra becomes Lyrae (“of Lyra”), Canis Major becomes Canis Majoris (“of Canis Major”), and so on. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the star Vega) thus becomes ฮฑโ Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes ฮฑโ Canis Majoris (“alpha of Canis Major”), and so on, through all 24 Greek letters and all 88 constellations. How bright would you expect, say, the ฯโ (sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright โ it’s far down the alphabet โ but ฯโ Orionis happens to mark the top of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still notable and easy to locate on a dark night.ย โจ
โกโ Star bright: The brightness of aย star as we see it in our night sky is its magnitudeย โ or more properly, its apparent magnitude. The scale of star magnitudes was developed long before modern measuring instruments were invented, so it can be aย little bit confusing for beginners. Originally, the brightest stars in the sky were called “first magnitude” and the less-bright stars “second magnitude,” “third magnitude,” and so on, down to the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye, which were called “sixth magnitude.” In the nineteenth century the star Vega (our August star) was chosen as the standard brightness reference and its value on the magnitude scale was defined to be zero (0.0). Five steps in magnitude (from 0.0 to 5.0 or from 1.0 to 6.0) was defined to be a change in brightness of 100 times: aย star 100 times dimmer than Vega (0.0) was defined to be a magnitude 5.0 star. Vega is not quite the brightest star is the sky, however, so the scale also had to be extended into negative numbers: Sirius (our March star), for example, is magnitude โ1.5, about three times brighter than Vega (at 0.0). The planet Venus at its brightest is about magnitude โ4.2; the full moon is about magnitude โ12.9; the sun is magnitude โ26.7. By contrast, the dimmest stars visible to the naked eye in aย populated, light-polluted area are about magnitude 3.0; the dimmest stars visible under very dark conditions are about magnitude 6.5. The Hubble Space Telescope in orbit around the earth has photographed distant stars and galaxies below magnitude 30, the dimmest celestial objects humans have seen so far.ย ๐
โกโ And all dishevelled wandering stars: How far away are the stars? Do they all occupy a single celestial “dome” that rotates through the heavens (as some ancient and medieval astronomers believed), or are they scattered through space at different individual distances? Astronomers had long suspected that the “fixed” stars existed at different distances from us, but early attempts to measure those distances failed. It was not until the early 1800s that instruments and measuring techniques became precise enough to allow the first stellar distances to be calculated using the technique of parallax. Parallax is the displacement in the apparent position of an object with respect to the background when an observer moves from side to side. It’s an ordinary phenomenon you experience every dayย โ it’s how we judge distances as we move through the landscape. Stellar parallaxes are extremely smallย โ fractions of an arc-second (one 3600th of a degree)ย โ and they are calculated by measuring a star’s position against the background at opposite sides of the earth’s orbit, six months apart. (That’s the astronomical equivalent of taking one step to the side.) Vega, our August star, was one of the first stars to have its parallax measured; modern estimates put it at about 0.13 arc-seconds. Apply some trigonometry, and that yields a distance of about 25 light-years.ย ๐ญ
โกโ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. We recommend the handy Backyard Guide to the Night Sky as a general family referenceย โ it will help you identify all the northern hemisphere constellations and will point out many highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Your recommended world atlas also has beautiful maps of the whole northern and southern hemisphere night skies on plates 121โ122 (10th and 11th eds.). Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault.ย ๐
โกโ First star I see tonight: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts featuring twelve of the most notable stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. Download and print your own copy of our River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us as we visit a different Great Star each monthย โ and make each one of them a homeschool friend for life.ย ๐
Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.
This week’s birds (two different families) are the Fringillid Finches (pages 434โ445) and the Longspurs and Snow Buntings (pages 446โ451).
If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as aย picture book and spend aย few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.
If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with aย technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here’s how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:
FRINGILLINE AND CARDUELINE FINCHES โ Family Fringillidae. Seed-eating birds with undulating flight. Many nest in the North; in fall, flocks of “winter finches” may roam south. Species: 231ย World, 25ย N.A. [North America]
LONGSPURSย ยท SNOW BUNTINGS โ Family Calcariidae. Recent molecular work using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA has shown that longspurs and snow buntings are well differentiated at the molecular level from Emberizidae (mostly our sparrows) and belong in their own family. They are gregarious in the non-breeding season and prefer open country. Some are secretive; others less so. They often flush in groups to avoid predators. Species: 6ย World, 6ย N.A.
When you’re training your young naturalists, teach them to ask and answer from their bird guide some of the first questions any naturalist would ask about aย new groupย โ about the Fringillid Finch family, for example. How many species? (231 worldwide, aย big group!) Are there any near us? (25 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Seed eaters, undulating flight, many nest in northern forests, and so on.) (And “undulating” is certainly aย wonderful wordย โ be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look that one up!)ย ๐
Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, for the Finch family, why not investigate the House Finch (page 438), one of the most widespread members of this group in North America.
All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guideย โ can your students tease it out? How big is the House Finch? (6ย inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Haemorhous mexicanus.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for aย map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)
House Finches are familiar birds of cities, suburbs, and farmlands across much of North America. Their song is a long and somewhat squeaky warble, and they readily nest in and around buildings and human habitations.
For a second species in the Finch family, take a look at the American Goldfinch (page 442), aย tiny bird that makes up for its small size with an extra dose of bright color.
In the Longspur and Snow Bunting family this week, why not look at the Snow Bunting itself (page 450), aย northern bird of open country that most people living in the lower 48 states will only see in its brown and white winter plumageย โ to see the black and white breeding males you’ll have to go to Alaska or northern Canada.
You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that is near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.
In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present aย specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.
What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term? ๐
โกโ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations using the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season.ย ๐ฆ
โกโ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (pages 6โ13) explains a littleย bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book โ why not have your students study it asย a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts ofย a bird (pages 10โ11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores.ย ๐ฆ
โกโ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary asย a nature reference, but aย comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning.ย ๐
โกโ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things.ย ๐
โกโ State birds: Two species in this week’s families are United States state birds: the Purple Finch (New Hampshire), aย somewhat larger and rosier relative of the House Finch, and the popular American Goldfinch (Iowa, New Jersey, and Washington).ย ๐บ๐ธ
โกโ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year.ย ๐ฆย ๐ฆ ๐ฆย ๐ฆย ๐ฆ
There’s a full moon tonight, so that means it’s time for a report from the 
