For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-texas π
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 your recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 429), so this week’s state is:
πΊπΈ Texas State QuarterTEXAS (the 28th state, 29 December 1845) β The Lone Star State. Capital: Austin. Texas can be found on page 586 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Variant of word used by Caddo and other Indians meaning βfriendsβ or βalliesβ and applied to them by the Spanish in eastern Texas. Also written Texias, Tejas, Teysas” (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website:texas.gov.
β‘β Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) 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 world of new geographical and historical information. π
π²π·β MAURITANIA in northwestern Africa. Population: 3,840,429. Capital: Nouakchott. Website:primature.gov.mr (in Arabic and French).
π²πΊβ MAURITIUS in the Indian Ocean. Population: 1,364,283. Capital: Port Louis. Website:www.govmu.org (in English and French).
These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745β852; 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 489β599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.
What grand geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? π
β‘β 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 practice their critical reading and thinking skills.
β‘β 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. βοΈ π π π³ π π
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-sirius π
We’re going to start a new thing today: a monthly great star. March is the perfect month to begin this new tradition, because just as it’s getting dark each evening at this time of year the brightest star in earth’s night sky, Sirius, appears high in the south. Brilliant white Sirius will be our star for the month.
Sirius is the brightest star β the “alpha” star β in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog that trails behind Orion the Hunter as he crosses the winter and early spring sky to the west. Sirius is commonly called “the Dog Star,” marking as it does the Big Dog’s head. Its formal designation is Ξ± Canis Majoris β “alpha of Canis Major.”
“Sirius, the brightest star in the sky (magnitude β1.44) is the most conspicuous star in this constellation [Canis Major, the Big Dog]. It is easily located by following downward the line connecting the three stars in the Belt of Orion. Sirius is the nearest star to the sun visible to the naked eye in the northern latitudes, being but 9Β light years distant. It has a white dwarf companion, a star so dense that one cubic inch weighs a ton.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 18)
The planisphere on the front of your star atlas will help you locate Sirius, and that’s plenty for beginning students β your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Sirius is packed with additional information on everything from astrometrics to cultural history.
Sirius is indeed a double star system, but the smaller star of the pair is only visible in the largest telescopes. The name Sirius means burning, shining, or scorching in Greek (ΟΡίΟΞΉΞΏΟ), either from its brightness or from the timing of its dawn rising along with the sun in mid-summer. (Today, we tend to make seasonal associations with the stars and constellations according to their evening visibility, but in ancient times, it was the dates on which particular stars rose just ahead of the sun at dawn that was commonly used for calendrical purposes.)
Sirius is roughly twice the diameter of our sun, and it is much younger β less than 250 million years old, in contrast to the sun’s 4.6 billion year age. Sirius was one of the first stars whose “proper motion” against the distant background was confirmed. The astronomer Edmond Halley (1656β1742), by comparing contemporary measurements of the position of Sirius with those of the ancient astronomer Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 100β170), determined that Sirius had moved about 30 arc minutes across the sky since Ptolemy’s day β a positional change in 1500 years equivalent to the diameter of the moon. The “fixed stars” were not so fixed after all.
Just yesterday, as I was walking back from the grocery store around sunset, I turned to the south and there was Sirius emerging in the twilight, the first star of the evening. This month, take your homeschool students out at dusk and introduce them to this great nearby sun and teach them its name, and so give them a new friend for life.
What stellar observations have you made in your homeschool lately? π
β‘β Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular names β Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so on β as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572β1625) 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: Ξ± (alpha, brightest), Ξ² (beta, second brightest), Ξ³ (gamma, third brightest), Ξ΄ (delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the Latin name of the constellation in its 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 Ξ± Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes Ξ± 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 Ο (sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright β it’s far down the alphabet β but Ο Orionis happens to be the top star of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still easy to locate on a dark night.
β‘β Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. π π π π
A thin crescent of a moon followed the sun over the western horizon this evening. Did you and your students see it?
Although “official” (astronomical) spring won’t begin for another couple of weeks, there are already signs of spring all around us, even here in the frozen north where we still have a couple of inches of snow on the ground.
Down by my local river the Mourning Doves have reappeared, calling and associating in pairs. There were a few in the general area over the winter β you could sometimes spot them at dusk going to roost β but there were none by the river in the daytime, and now there are.
The local Mockingbird has returned and is standing guard over his big berry-hoard each day. And most notably, the Turkey Vultures are back, passing over to the north singly and in small groups β perhaps the most dramatic sign of spring so far.
A springtime Turkey Vulture returning to the Nashua Valley. (Image: RJO.)
What signs of spring are you seeing in your homeschool? π
β‘β 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, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations on the free eBird website (ebird.org) 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. π¦
β‘β Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available β find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. π¦
β‘β Rivers in the sky: What birds are migrating this week? You can find out from the BirdCast website (birdcast.info), which offers daily bird migration forecasts in the spring and fall for the entire United States. π¦
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-whitman-astronomer π
Two great scientists who studied the stars were born this month: William Herschel (1738β1822) and Albert Einstein (1879β1955). In their honor, in a contrariwise manner, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of March is the science-skeptical “When I Heard the Learnβd Astronomer” by the great American poet Walt Whitman (1819β1892):
When I Heard the Learnβd Astronomer
When I heard the learn’d astronomer,
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,
When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,
When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause
Β Β Β Β Β in the lecture-room,
How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,
Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
Artists and scientists have not always gotten along through history β and what a wonderful subject that is for open-ended discussion between you and your homeschool students. To be frankly critical, I think artists have failed to appreciate scientists more often than the reverse. (For a second poetical example, see Edgar Allan Poe’s sonnet “To Science.”) Do you have an art-loving student with no interest in science? Or a science-loving student with no interest in art? Or one of each? And which are you? And why might that be?
Putting on our artist-hats for a moment and turning to the details of the poem itself, we’ll see that it has very little metrical structure. Whitman’s preferred style was “free verse,” and counting lines and syllables in his poems doesn’t usually reveal much. But Whitman’s free verse does regularly employ specific artful literary techniques that your students can learn to recognize.
One of Whitman’s favorite devices is anaphora β the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses (and a great college-level vocabulary word): When I heard … When the proofs … When I was shown … When I sitting. (See the first section of Whitman’s masterpiece “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” for many more beautiful examples of anaphora.)
Anaphora produces a weighty and majestic feel in poetry and prose. It’s a common literary device in the Bible, and Whitman’s poetic cadences owe much to the many anaphoric passages that occur all through the King James Version: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels … And though I have the gift of prophecy … and though I have all faith … And though I bestow all my goods … and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing. (1Β Corinthians 13:1β3)
Contra Whitman, I think science and art both profiteth much, and I hope you agree. Why not spend a few homeschool minutes this week remembering those who, however independently, have advanced both fields of endeavor.
What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? π
β‘β Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars: 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 aloud β that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. π
β‘β Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Walt Whitman) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.
β‘β Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-states-calendar/ π
Every Sunday we put up our weekly States & Countries posts that invite you and your students to tour the U.S. states and the countries of the world with us. Just spend a few minutes each week finding the countries and states with your atlas and almanac and reading a fact or two about them, and over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of cultural and geographical information.
In case you’d like to plan ahead, we just put together a simple one-page printable schedule that shows when each state and each country will be coming up on the annual calendar. It’s available now on our main homeschool calendars page β download it and post it on your homeschool bulletin board today:
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-dewey-500 π
Tuesday is our Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your homescholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can βadoptβ one major class each month and cover the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.
The class for March is the 500s, which covers Science. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 500s” means the numbers running from 500 to 599.)
Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the 500s:
Each of these divisions is subdivided further of course: in the 510s (Mathematics), for example, you’ll find works on Algebra (512), Arithmetic (513), Topology (514), Geometry (516), and so on.
When youβre learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if youβre interested in, say, astronomy, youβll find it in the 520s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. If you have an opportunity to make field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year youβll be able to demonstrate that in practice and get your students accustomed to orienting themselves by reading the numbers aloud as you walk together down the ranges: “505 … 510 … 515 … here it is, 520.”
Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.
(And next month: The Technological 600s.)
What delightful decimals have you discovered in your library lately? π
β‘β Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 500s, one in the 510s, one in the 520s, one in the 530s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 500) and the very last book in the class (the highest 599). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your five favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb without even realizing it. π
β‘β Explore more: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the libraries near you β public and private, large and small β and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. π
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-aurora-leigh π
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on the 6th of March in 1806, and in honor of her birthday, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the beginning of March is an excerpt from the her long verse-novel Aurora Leigh (1856), an immensely popular work of the Victorian Era, especially among young women:
βββββββBooks, books, books!
I had found the secret of a garret-room
Piled high with cases in my fatherβs name;
Piled high, packed large, β where, creeping in and out
Among the giant fossils of my past,
Like some small nimble mouse between the ribs
Of a mastodon, I nibbled here and there
At this or that box, pulling through the gap,
In heats of terror, haste, victorious joy,
The first book first. And how I felt it beat
Under my pillow, in the morningβs dark,
An hour before the sun would let me read!
My books!
ββββAt last, because the time was ripe,
I chanced upon the poets.
ββββββββββAs the earth
Plunges in fury, when the internal fires
Have reached and pricked her heart, and, throwing flat
The marts and temples, the triumphal gates
And towers of observation, clears herself
To elemental freedom β thus, my soul,
At poetryβs divine first finger touch,
Let go conventions and sprang up surprised,
Convicted of the great eternities
Before two worlds.
Browning and her poet-husband Robert Browning (1812β1889) were both widely acclaimed in their day and continue to be widely read. Young Elizabeth was a remarkable prodigy β “gifted,” we would say today:
“Before Barrett was ten years old, she had read the histories of England, Greece, and Rome; several of Shakespeare’s plays, including Othello and The Tempest; portions of Pope’s Homeric translations; and passages from Paradise Lost. At eleven, she says in an autobiographical sketch written when she was fourteen, she “felt the most ardent desire to understand the learned languages.” …. Within the next few years she went through the works of the principal Greek and Latin authors, the Greek Christian fathers, several plays by Racine and MoliΓ¨re, and a portion of Dante’s Inferno β all in the original languages. Also around this time she learned enough Hebrew to read the Old Testament from beginning to end. Her enthusiasm for the works of Tom Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Mary Wollstonecraft presaged the concern for human rights that she was later to express in her poems and letters.“ (poetryfoundation.org)
Here’s a fine BBC Radio panel discussion (suitable for high-school level English students) that reviews Browning and Aurora Leigh in detail, including some of its adult themes, which are mild perhaps by today’s standards, but which were somewhat scandalous when the work was published in the nineteenth century. (One character is forced to work in a brothel where she becomes pregnant.) Browning herself joked that mothers all forbid their daughters to read her work, and the daughters all read it anyway:
The comprehensive Elizabeth Barrett Browning Archive is also an excellent place to explore, and it includes annotated teaching texts of many of Browning’s poems:
If you have a homeschool student with a strong interest in books and literature, introduce her to “Mrs. Browning” (as the Victorians always called her), and she’ll have a friend for life.
What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? π
β‘β Books, books, books! 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 aloud β that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. π
β‘β Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Elizabeth Barrett Browning) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.
β‘β Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-03-03 π
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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.
β¦β This is the first full week of LEO TERM, our Spring Term in the River Houses (riverhouses.org/blog/2019-leo-term).
πΊπΈβ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Florida, and our COUNTRIES are Malawi π²πΌ, Malaysia π²πΎ, the Maldives π²π», and Mali π²π±. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
MONDAY (4 March) β The first session of the First United States Congress opened on this day in Federal Hall in New York in 1789, putting the Constitution into effect.
TUESDAY (5 March) β Today is the birthday of the great Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512β1594). πΊ On this day in 1770, British troops shot and killed five protestors on the streets of Boston in what quickly came to be known as the Boston Massacre. β°οΈ And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Scientific 500s.
THURSDAY (7 March) β Today is the birthday of the British astronomer and polymath John Herschel (1792β1871), one of the great scientists of the nineteenth century. π
FRIDAY (8 March) β Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for second week of March is Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” contrariwise for John Herschel (whose birthday was yesterday) and Albert Einstein (whose birthday is next Thursday). Print your own River Houses poetry calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.
SATURDAY (9 March) β Today is the birthday of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (1454β1512), the father of “America.” π It’s also the birthday of the great American composer and pianist Samuel Barber (1910β1981). π΅
SUNDAY (10 March) β Today is Harriet Tubman Day β a great day to celebrate freedom! π
π₯β YOUR WEEKLY TOAST, for Harriet Tubman: “To life, love, and liberty.”
β‘β Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week β 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?
πβ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Mali in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Bafing River, which forms part of the border between Mali and Guinea to the southwest. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Bafing River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
β‘β Let the river run: 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 691β693), 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. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you!
What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? π
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-florida π
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 your recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 429), so this week’s state is:
πΊπΈ Florida State QuarterFLORIDA (the 27th state, 3 March 1845) β The Sunshine State. Capital: Tallahassee. Florida can be found on page 567 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Named by Juan Ponce de LeΓ³n Pascua Florida, ‘Flowery Easter,’ on Easter Sunday, 1513″ (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website:www.myflorida.com.
β‘β Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) 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 world of new geographical and historical information. π
This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
π²πΌβ MALAWI in southeastern Africa. Population: 19,842,560. Capital: Lilongue. Website:www.malawi.gov.mw (in English).
π²πΎβ MALAYSIA in southeastern Asia. Population: 31,809,660. Capital: Kuala Lumpur. Website:www.malaysia.gov.my (in English and Bahasa Malaysia).
π²π»β MALDIVES in the Indian Ocean. Population: 392,473. Capital: Male. Website:presidency.gov.mv (in English).
π²π±β MALI in western Africa. Population: 18,429,893. Capital: Bamako. Website:primature.gov.ml (in French).
These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745β852; 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 489β599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.
What grand geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? π
β‘β 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 practice their critical reading and thinking skills.
β‘β 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. βοΈ π π π³ π π
(For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-march-sky ) π
On the first Friday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. Here’s the monthly northern hemisphere review for March 2019, courtesy of the Hubble Space Telescope’s website:
The best stargazing nights in March will be toward the beginning of the month β the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on Wednesday the 6th. As always, you can track the moon’s phases at the excellent timeanddate.com website.
March is the first month of Leo Term in the River Houses, the third of the four terms that make up our homeschool year. Although Orion still dominates the early evening sky, Leo is now rising in the east later in the evening and over the next three months he will be chasing Orion over the horizon to the west.
March is also the month of the spring (vernal) equinox in the northern hemisphere β the astronomical beginning of spring β which falls this year on Wednesday the 20th. (In the southern hemisphere the 20th will be the autumnal equinox β the astronomical beginning of fall.) On the day of the equinox we experience almost exactly twelve hours of light and twelve hours of darkness.
What celestial observations have you made in your homeschool lately? π
β‘β Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. π π π
For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-leo-term π
Today marks the beginning of our Spring Term β Leo Term β here in the River Houses. Leo Term runs from March through May.
We put great stock in the educational value of the calendar in the River Houses. The calendar is the framework on which we human beings hang a great many of the facts we know about the world: historical events, natural phenomena, personal reminiscences, the seasons, the sun and moon, the planets, the stars. A key part of every student’s intellectual development is the development of “calendar sense” β a sense of time and history.
Our annual River Houses calendar divides the homeschool year into four three-month terms (quarters) that roughly correspond to the seasons, and these terms are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:
This calendrical division is a new and open-ended idea that we think has a great deal of educational potential. We’re looking forward to its development and elaboration as time goes on.
As you think about your own homeschool year, think about how different parts of it β curricular, co-curricular, social, or recreational β might be informally arranged into these four three-month terms. You could have a different decorating theme in your classroom each term, for example, or you could schedule a regular trip to a special place at the beginning of each term to see how the seasons change. You could group your curricular work by term, or set goals at the beginning of each term that you want your students to meet. At the end of each term your students could assemble a quarterly portfolio of their accomplishments. With a little imagination you will be able to come up with a clever and comfortable arrangement and a new way to think about the structure of your educational year.
Today is the first day of Leo Term, named for the Great Lion of the Heavens who is rising in the east in the evening now and who will be passing overhead throughout the spring.
If you want to make a special astronomical study this term, your River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a handy set of sky maps and a planisphere that will show you the location of Leo and its most prominent stars:
“Leo is a zodiacal constellation lying south of Ursa Major. It is one of the most beautiful of the constellations and is easily recognized; the stars forming the head of the lion are arranged in the shape of a sickle, or reversed ‘?.’ Regulus, its brightest star, has a magnitude of 1.3 and is 19th among the 20 brightest stars in the sky. It lies almost exactly in the plane of the ecliptic and is therefore eclipsed by the sun once a year (on about August 23). Ο [tau] Leonis, a double star, can be separated with binoculars. A meteor shower, the Leonids, radiates from the head of the lion every year about the 14th or 15th of November.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 6)
Why not spend a little time out after dark with your students over the next three months and locate the Great Lion as he makes his nightly passage to the west. Once you learn to spot him, youβll have a friend for life.
What educational adventures do you have planned for this Leo Term? π
β‘β Quarter days and cross-quarter days: Dividing the year into quarters is an ancient and natural practice: the annual movement of the sun across the sky automatically gives us two equinoxes, two solstices, and four seasons. Our four terms are just a simple modification of that natural system so that our River Houses calendar will align more conveniently with the ordinary months and with the more-or-less customary American school year. In many traditional calendrical systems, going back into the Middle Ages, the first day of each quarter is called a quarter day and the midpoint of each quarter is called a cross-quarter day. That means the quarter days of the River Houses year are 1 September, 1 December, 1 March, and 1 June, and the cross-quarter days are 15 October, 15 January, 15 April, and 15 July. (Fun fact: a vestige of the old system of quarter and cross-quarter days is Groundhog Day, also known as Candlemas on the Christian calendar: it’s the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.) Quarter days have for centuries been the traditional days on which school terms began, so homeschoolers who follow our River Houses calendar are participating in a very ancient tradition. π
β‘β Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. π
Happy Dord Day! On this day each year we celebrate dictionaries and the people who make them β and we remind ourselves that lexicographers are human, just like us. π
On the 28th of February in 1939, an editor working on the third edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary was examining the second edition (1934) to see what entries should be updated. He came across the word “dord,” a synonym (according to the dictionary) for the word “density” as used in physics and chemistry. The word had no associated etymology, so the editor decided to investigate.
The definition of the word ‘dord’ as it appeared in Webster’s New International Dictionary (1934).
Upon investigation, it turned out (amusingly and embarrassingly) that there is no such word as “dord,” even though it appeared in the big Webster’s New International Dictionary. AΒ science specialist working on the previous edition had submitted a request to have the letters “D” and “d” added as abbreviations for “density,” but the request slip was written “D or d” β and through a series of minor editorial missteps, this became “Dord” and it was added the dictionary as a word meaning “density.”
In later editions, after it had been spotted, the error was removed, leaving the dictionary more accurate, but less entertaining.
Today’s little lesson for your homeschool students: dictionaries are compiled by people just like you and me, and even though they try very hard to be accurate, sometimes they make mistakes just like we do.
What wonderful words β real or imaginary β have you discovered in your homeschool this week? π
β‘ Explore more: The delightful Fun With Words website has the full story of “dord,” along with a host of other wild and woolly word-wonders to explore.
β‘ Looking in the lexicon: Our recommended River Houses homeschool dictionary (riverhouses.org/books), the American Heritage Fifth, does not, alas, include the word “dord,” but you can send your students to search nevertheless. Where would it be if it were there? Right between Dorchester and Dordogne.
Share a modern masterpiece with your students this evening β “Sure On This Shining Night” by American choral composer Morton Lauridsen, born on this day in 1943:
There is a lot of ephemeral art and music in the world, but there are also contemporary works that will still be performed and loved centuries from now. This is one of them. The text is from the American poet James Agee (1909β1955):
Sure on this shining night
Of star-made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night
I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone
Of shadows on the stars.
What marvelous musical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? π
(For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-black-history ) π
Tuesday is Books & Libraries day in the River Houses, and February is Black History Month, so there’s no better time to browse and bookmark the wonderful African American history resources available at both the Library of Congress and the National Archives. There’s a wealth of top-quality educational materials available, not just for this month, but for the entire year.
Here’s a big collection of social media links and pages from the Library of Congress on everything from the Civil Rights Movement, to the history of jazz, to black veterans of the U.S. military, to African American poets and writers, to Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, and more:
The Library of Congress also publishes a number of great blogs on a variety of subjects. Although there isn’t a specific blog devoted to African American history, many of the posts this month in several different LC blogs have focused on black history themes.
The National Archives β just a few blocks from the Library of Congress in Washington β also has a wide range of African American history materials available online, from documents and records, to photographs, essays, and links to other governmental agencies and departments:
Our national libraries are great resources for Black History Month, and for every month, for every homeschool family. Bookmark them and visit them regularly.
What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? π
β‘β Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you β public and private, large and small β and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. π
β‘β Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website (riverhouses.org) has links to several important online library collections that we like to explore. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (not a phone), and give them a browse. π
(For richer access, just click on our attached blog post β it’s full of lovely links that don’t carry over to Facebook. You’ll like it!) π
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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.
πΊπΈβ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Michigan, and our COUNTRIES are Lithuania π±πΉ, Luxembourg π±πΊ, Macedonia π²π°, and Madagascar π²π¬. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
MONDAY (25 February) β The first African American to serve in the U.S. Congress, Hiram Rhodes Revels of Mississippi, was sworn in on this day in 1870. πΊπΈ And today is the birthday of the great French impressionist painter and sculptor Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841β1919). π¨
TUESDAY (26 February) β Today is the birthday of the German-American clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss (1829β1902). π It’s also the birthday of the great American songwriter and rock-and-roll pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino (1928β2017). πΉ
SATURDAY (2 March) β Today is the birthday of Sam Houston (1793β1863), the first President of the Republic of Texas. β
SUNDAY (3 March) β The Scottish-American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1847. π And on this day in 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem. πΊπΈ
π₯β YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May the friends of our youth be the companions of our age.”
β‘β Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week β 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?
πβ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Madagascar is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Namorona River, flowing from the central Madagascan highlands east into the Indian Ocean. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Namorona River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
The Namorona River in eastern Madagascar. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
β‘β Let the river run: 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 691β693), 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. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you!
What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? π
Putting on our artist-hats for a moment and turning to the details of the poem itself, we’ll see that it has very little metrical structure. Whitman’s preferred style was “free verse,” and counting lines and syllables in his poems doesn’t usually reveal much. But Whitman’s free verse does regularly employ specific artful literary techniques that your students can learn to recognize.
![[The constellation Leo]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/term-leo.jpg)
![[Chart of the constellation Leo]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/term-leo-svg.png)
