The River Houses Homeschool Network

🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Holiday Channel from WQXR

2 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

December is Homeschool Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites in a great variety of styles and genres, along with a collection of easy educational notes that will let you teach little musical lessons all along the way.

If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds during the holidays, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music radio station in New York City. WQXR’s Holiday Channel broadcasts seasonal favorites in the classical style: orchestral music, choirs, brass ensembles, traditional carols, and more.

➢ WQXR Holiday Channel (wqxr.org) (click the Listen Live button)

If you hear something you particularly like, or if you want to encourage your students to learn more about titles, composers, and performers, click the “Playlist” tab on that page to see all the details of what’s playing at any given time.

In the old days of radio there used to be quite a few classical music stations around the country. WQXR is now one of a small number of major stations that remain, but through the happy medium of the Internet, you and I and anyone around the world can enjoy their broadcasts wherever we have an online connection. I have the Holiday Channel on as background music almost every day at this time of year. Won’t you join me?

What marvelous musical discoveries will you be making in your homeschool during this delightful Holiday Music Month? 🎄 🎵

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Arts & Music. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

❡ Become a Friend! If you enjoy the educational materials we distribute each week, please support our work and the noble cause of homeschooling by becoming a Friend of the River Houses! Your support keeps us going and growing! 😊

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Skuas, Jaegers, Auks, Murres, and Puffins

2 December 2022 by Horace the Otter 🦦

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 Skuas and Jaegers (pages 162–167), and the Auks, Murres, and Puffins (pages 166–179).

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a 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 a 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:

SKUAS · JAEGERS — Family Stercorariidae. Formerly placed with the Gulls, Terns, and Skimmers, molecular evidence indicates that they are more closely related to the Alcidae and belong in their own family. Predatory and piratic seabirds, skuas are broader winged than jaegers. Largely silent at sea. Species: 7 World, 5 N.A. [North America]

AUKS · MURRES · PUFFINS — Family Alcidae. These black-and-white “penguins of the north” have set-back legs that give them an upright stance on land. In flight, wingbeats are rapid and shallow. Collectively known as “alcids.” Most species are silent at sea, when well away from breeding grounds. Species: 25 World, 23 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 a new group — about the “alcids,” for example. How many species? (25 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (23 species in North America, but all are oceanic, as the maps will show you, so folks in Kansas will be out of luck.) What are their distinctive features? (Seabirds with plump bodies, short set-back legs, upright stance, rapid wingbeats, and so on.)

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail with your students each week and read the entry aloud, or have them study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, from the Auk, Murre, and Puffin family, why not investigate a spectacular bird of the upper Pacific coast: the Tufted Puffin (page 178).

All sorts of biological information is packed into the brief species descriptions in your bird guide — can your students tease it out? How big is the Tufted Puffin? (15¾ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Fratercula cirrhata.) 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 tell it apart from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

There are three species of puffins in the world, two in the north Pacific and one in the north Atlantic, and all three are illustrated in your bird guide. The Tufted Puffin is the most dramatic, with its white face, orange-red feet and bill, and slicked-back golden crests. Like other alcids, it spends most of its time at sea and only comes to land to breed, usually on remote offshore islands.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick a species that is near you, or one that looks striking, or one that has a strange name, and explore. For example, in this week’s other family, the Skuas and Jaegers, take a look at the elegant Long-tailed Jaeger (page 166), an agile aerial pirate that often steals food from other birds in flight.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a 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 Orion Term? 😊

❡ 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 solitary or social, it can be 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 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. 🐦

❡ Enchiridion: The front matter in your bird guide (pages 6–13) explains a little bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book — why not have your students study it as a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts of a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. 🦉

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary as a nature reference, but a 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. 📖

❡ 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. 🌎

❡ 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH 2022 is Here! Good Morrow, Masters All!

1 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

It’s just past three o’clock, and it’s cold and frosty this morning in the Nashua River valley. Good morrow, school masters and mistresses all! (That’s a fine line of dactylic tetrameter if I do say so myself.) 😊

December is Homeschool Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing a wide assortment of seasonal favorites in a great variety of styles and genres — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes that will let you teach little homeschool lessons all along the way.

Our sprightly inaugural carol for the month, like many traditional pieces of Christmas music, has quite a few different roots. Both the tune and the non-holiday refrain — Past three o’clock … Good morrow, masters all! — have been traced to at least the 1600s, while the specific Christmas verses that tell the Nativity story were composed in the early twentieth century by George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848–1934). (Homeschool lesson: although some pieces of music, like some works of literature, are the product of a single author writing at a single time, others are composite works that have grown and changed in different ways over many generations, as we see with true folk songs, ancient epics, and many traditional Christmas carols. In particular, words and music that we think of as going together today may well have been written by different people at different times — even centuries apart.)

The Lincoln (U.K.) Waits today. (Image: townwaits.org.uk.)

The refrain of “Past Three O’Clock” is based on the night-time call of the waits — the traditional night watchmen and town musicians that existed in many English towns as far back as the Middle Ages. The waits would walk the town at night calling out or piping out the hour, and their role grew to include minstrelsy and performances at local musical events. The International Guild of Town Pipers keeps alive the tradition of the waits today.

Past Three O’Clock

Past three o’clock,
And a cold frosty morning;
Past three o’clock,
Good morrow, masters all!

Born is a baby,
Gentle as may be,
Son of the eternal
Father supernal. (Refrain.)

Seraph quire singeth,
Angel bell ringeth;
Hark how they rime it,
Time it and chime it. (Refrain.)

Mid-earth rejoices
Hearing such voices
Ne’ertofore so well
Carolling “Nowell!” (Refrain.)

Hinds o’er the pearly
Dewy lawn early
Seek the high stranger
Laid in the manger. (Refrain.)

Cheese from the dairy
Bring they for Mary,
And, not for money,
Butter and honey. (Refrain.)

Light out of star-land
Leadeth from far land
Princes, to meet him,
Worship and greet him. (Refrain.)

Myrrh from full coffer,
Incense they offer;
Nor is the golden
Nugget withholden. (Refrain.)

Thus they: I pray you,
Up, sirs, nor stay you
Till ye confess him
Likewise and bless him. (Refrain.)

If you have a musical household, why not download the sheet music for “Past Three O’Clock” and put together your own homeschool performance. With practice and luck, you might sound as good as the talented Girl Choir of South Florida in this performance from 2011.

What marvelous musical discoveries will you be making in your homeschool during this magnificent Holiday Music Month? 🎄 🎵

❡ Mid-earth rejoices: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of this month’s musical selections, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it (or sing it) aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 😊

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds during the holidays, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music radio station in New York City. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on as background music almost all day at this time of year. Won’t you join me? 📻

🖋 🗡 WONDERFUL WORDS: The Hunter Home From the Hill

1 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Today is the first day of Orion Term, out winter term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens who is rising now each evening in the east and who will be overhead throughout the northern hemisphere winter. In honor of Orion’s annual appearance, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of December is an intricately crafted lyric by A.E. Housman (1859–1936) called “R.L.S.”

The title “R.L.S.” refers to Housman’s fellow writer and older contemporary Robert Louis Stevenson, who died in 1894. Stevenson himself wrote an eight-line poem called “Requiem” that was later inscribed on his tomb in Samoa in the southwest Pacific, and it concludes: “This be the verse you grave for me: / Here he lies where he longed to be; / Home is the sailor, home from sea, / And the hunter home from the hill.” To commemorate Stevenson, Housman took the last two lines of “Requiem” and expanded them into a new and separate poem that imaginatively enlarges our picture of the sailor and the hunter who have at last made their way home.

R.L.S.

Home is the sailor, home from sea:
Her far-borne canvas furled
The ship pours shining on the quay
The plunder of the world.

Home is the hunter from the hill:
Fast in the boundless snare
All flesh lies taken at his will
And every fowl of air.

’Tis evening on the moorland free,
The starlit wave is still:
Home is the sailor from the sea,
The hunter from the hill.

When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one in a traditional form, take your time, and don’t worry about “getting” everything right away. A good poem is a friend for life, and as with any friend, it takes several meetings to get acquainted. Before you even start to think about meaning, take a look at the poem’s structure. How many lines does it have? Are the lines grouped into stanzas? How many lines in each stanza? How many syllables in each line? Many traditional poems are highly structured and fit together in an almost mathematical way.

Housman was a master craftsman in the traditional style, and you can see his skill at work in this poem’s interlocking rhyme scheme. The first stanza is about the sailor, the second stanza is about the hunter, and the third stanza combines the two, and that’s exactly reflected in the rhyming pattern, which you can easily work out with your students. The sailor stanza ends with sea–furled–quay–world, which we’ll call ABAB. (Send your students to your homeschool dictionary for the meaning and pronunciation of quay.) The hunter stanza ends with hill–snare–will–air, which we’ll call CDCD. Now look at what Housman has done with the final combined stanza. It ends with free–still–sea–hill, picking up the A-sound from the first line of the sailor stanza and the C-sound from the first line of the hunter stanza. This gives us ACAC, which perfectly ties the first two stanzas together and brings both the sailor and the hunter home.

Robert Louis Stevenson’s tomb on Upolu, Samoa. “This be the verse you grave for me: / Here he lies where he longed to be; / Home is the sailor, home from sea, / And the hunter home from the hill.” (Image: mardecortesbaja.com.)

Invite your students to keep Housman and Stevenson in mind as we pass through Orion Term and the Great Hunter makes his way up overhead and, like Stevenson, heads home beyond the western horizon.

What wonderful words will you find and what literary discoveries will you make in your homeschool this Orion Term? 😊

❡ The starlit wave is still: 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 — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 🌌

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including A.E. Housman and Robert Louis Stevenson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers. ✒️

❡ This is a printable lesson: Down at the bottom of this post you’ll find a custom “Print” button and icon, along with several social-media share buttons. The Print button will let you create a neat and easy-to-read copy of this little lesson, and it will even let you resize or delete elements that you may not want or need (such as images or footnotes). Give it a try today! 🖨

❡ 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. 🗞

🗓 🎄 🎅 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL DECEMBER from the River Houses!

1 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Happy December to all our homeschool readers and friends! Here are some educational ideas, events, and activities to look for in the homeschool month ahead. 🔍

Third-century Roman calendar mosaic from Tunisia. (Image: Ad Meskens/Wikimedia Commons.)

December with 31 days is the first month of Orion Term, our winter term in the River Houses. Orion Term runs from December through February. Visit our homeschool calendar page and print out some of our simple educational calendars and planners — they’ll help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. 🗓

December is Holiday Music Month in the River Houses! Watch for a rich assortment of seasonal sounds (and little educational lessons) to delight both young and old all through the month. 🎵

The month of December is so named because it was the tenth month (Latin decem, “ten”) of the ancient Roman calendar, which considered the spring equinox in March to be the beginning of the year. (That’s why the previous months were September, “Seventh,” October, “Eighth,” and November, “Ninth.”) You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚

December predictions (from 1661):

Strange stuffs will be well sold,
Strange tales well told,
Strange sights much sought,
Strange things much bought.

December is the month of the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere — the astronomical beginning of winter — which falls this year on Wednesday the 21st. (In the southern hemisphere the 21st will be the summer solstice — the astronomical beginning of summer.) The winter solstice is the “shortest day” of the year: the day with the shortest period of daylight and the longest period of darkness. ⛄️

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for December will be Vermont, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, and our countries will run from El Salvador to Grenada. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and tour the United States and the whole world with us from Delaware to Hawaii and Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. 🇺🇸 🌎

We’ll be visiting World Heritage Sites in El Salvador, Ethiopia, Georgia, and Germany this month — our River Houses World Heritage Calendar will point the way. 🗺

We’ll have homeschool poems this month from A.E. Housman (for Orion Term), Emily Dickinson (for her birthday), Robert Frost (for the end of fall), Clement Clarke Moore (for Saint Nick), and Robert Burns (for auld lang syne). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and join us as we visit with fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. ✒️

Our Friday Bird Families posts this month will feature the Skuas, Jaegers, Auks, Murres, and Puffins; the Gulls, Terns, and Skimmers (twice over); the Tropicbirds, Loons, and Albatrosses; and the Shearwaters, Petrels, and Storm-Petrels. (So many wonderful names, yes?) Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds, get out your copy of our recommended homeschool bird guide, and follow the flyways with us. 🦅

Our monthly Great Star for December is Aldebaran (alpha Tauri), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and join us as we visit twelve high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky and make them friends for life. 🌟

Our Dewey Decimal class for December is the Religious 200s — follow along with us (on the first Tuesday of each month) and help your students learn the whole library over the course of the year! 📚

And watch for our monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge post, coming up in the next few days — it’s a great opportunity for homeschool photographers. 📸

Also coming up this month:

⬩ 7 December (W): Lunar Society Report 🌕
⬩ 10 December (Sa): Emily Dickinson’s Birthday, 1830 🖋
⬩ 21 December (W): December Solstice – First Day of (Astronomical) Winter ⛄️
⬩ 24 December (Sa): Festival of Carols at King’s College, Cambridge 🎵
⬩ 25 December (Su): Christmas Day 🎄 · Isaac Newton’s Birthday, 1642 🍎
⬩ 31 December (Sa): New Year’s Eve 🔔

And finally, health tips for December, courtesy of Richard Saunders’ Apollo Anglicanus almanac (1665):

In December Melancholy and Phlegm much increase, which are heavy, dull, and cold, and therefore it behoves all that will consider their healths to keep their heads and bodies very well from cold, and to eat such things as be of a hot quality…. Drink often Wine this month; and Honey, Cinnamon, Mace, Nutmegs, Ginger, Grains, Cloves, Galingale or such, often drunk or eaten this month, do cherish the blood, the heart, and all the body. 🍷

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

❡ Thirty days hath September: This is one of our regular Homeschool Terms & Calendars posts. Print your own set of River Houses Calendars to follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🗓 🗡 ORION TERM 2022–2023 and the Homeschool Year

1 December 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Today is the first day of Orion Term, our winter term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. Orion Term runs from December through February.

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 most of the facts we know about the world: historical events, natural phenomena, personal reminiscences, the seasons, blooming flowers, migrating birds, the sun and moon, the planets, the stars. A key part of every student’s intellectual development is the development of “calendar sense” — a sense of time and history.

The three stars of Orion’s belt, Alnitak, Alnilam, and Mintaka, prominent in the northern hemisphere night sky all through the winter. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Our annual River Houses calendar divides the homeschool year into four three-month terms (quarters) that correspond to the “meteorological seasons,” and these terms are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:

🗓 🦢 Fall or Cygnus Term (September–November)
🗓 🗡 Winter or Orion Term (December–February)
🗓 🦁 Spring or Leo Term (March–May)
🗓 💪 Summer or Hercules Term (June–August)

This calendrical division is an open-ended idea that we’ve developed for the River Houses, and we think has a great deal of educational potential.

Orion Term 2022–2023 as it appears in our annual River Houses homeschool calendar.

As you think about your own homeschool year, think about how different parts of it — curricular, co-curricular, social, or recreational — might be informally arranged into these four 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 where you take a photo at the beginning of each term to track how the seasons change. You could group your curricular work by term, or bake a quarterly cake, or set goals at the beginning of each term that you want your students to have met by the end. You could have your students measure their height at the beginning of each term, or take their penny-jar to the bank for a quarterly deposit. At the end of each term you could assemble a portfolio of student 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. (And you can use our simple planners to track your progress.)

Star chart of the constellation Orion the Hunter, with his trusty dog Canis Major in the lower left and Taurus the Bull in the upper right. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Orion Term is named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens who is rising in the east every evening now and who will be passing overhead throughout the winter. Orion Term is home to our special Holiday Music Month (the month of December); to the Winter Solstice (21 December), Christmas (25 December), and New Year’s Day (1 January); to Twelfth Night (5 January), Martin Luther King Day (16 January), and Mozart’s Birthday (27 January); to Color Our Collections Week (6–10 February); to Lincoln’s and Darwin’s Birthday (12 February), Valentine’s Day (14 February), the Great Backyard Bird Count (17–20 February), and Washington’s Birthday (20 February) — not to mention countless other holidays, anniversaries, and events, local and global, public and private, that you may wish to mark on your own homeschool calendar.

If you want to make a special astronomical study this Orion Term, your River Houses reference library includes an excellent backyard guide to the night sky that will introduce you to Orion and its most prominent stars:

[Orion] may be the most recognizable constellation in the sky, visible worldwide from its position straddling the celestial equator and identified by different cultures across thousands of years. Its prominence earned it three references in the Bible as well as mentions in The Iliad, The Odyssey, and other literary classics. To modern sky-watchers, the hunter’s position is ideal for use as a reference point: three of the sky’s 25 brightest stars are found in this group, and their brightness makes the structure of a man quite easy to see. The hunter’s bright belt is made of three stars, all around magnitude 2. His upraised, club-wielding arm sweeps into the Milky Way, while his other hand holds a shape interpreted as either a shield or a lion’s pelt.

Orion’s main stars provide a way to orient yourself even amid the glare of city lights. Betelgeuse, the constellation’s alpha star [and our February star-of-the-month], represents one shoulder. This huge variable star pulsates to a diameter between 300 and 400 times the size of our sun. Blue-white Rigel, the hunter’s foot, is a supergiant, 57,000 times as bright as the sun. (National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, pages 264–265)

Why not spend a little time out after dark with your students over the next three months and watch the Great Hunter as he makes his nightly passage to the west. Once you learn to spot him, you’ll have a friend for life.

What educational adventures do you and your homescholars have planned for this Orion Term? 😊

❡ 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 arrangement so that our River Houses calendar will align more conveniently with the ordinary months — with the “meteorological seasons” rather than the astronomical seasons — and with the customary American school year. In many traditional calendrical systems, going back into the Middle Ages, the first day of each quarter is called the quarter day and the midpoint of each quarter is called the 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 16 October, 14 January (15 January in Leap Years), 15 April, and 16 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 four-term River Houses calendar are participating in a very ancient tradition indeed. 🗓

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Your recommended River Houses night-sky guide has descriptions and maps of each constellation that point out the highlights, and the astronomical section of your recommended world atlas has beautiful large charts of both celestial hemispheres. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this term and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🔭

❡ Choose something like a star: If you’d like some more light and easy homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our annual River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us month by month as we make twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional posts about our Homeschool Terms & Calendars. Print your own set of River Houses Calendars to follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🌍 🇪🇬 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Wadi al-Hitan (Whale Valley) in Egypt

30 November 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Egypt in northeastern Africa is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Egypt’s World Heritage Sites: Wadi al-Hitan (Whale Valley).

People usually think of archeological monuments when they think of Egypt, but the Egyptian deserts include paleontological sites of world importance as well:

Wadi Al-Hitan, Whale Valley, in the Western Desert of Egypt, contains invaluable fossil remains of the earliest, and now extinct, suborder of whales, Archaeoceti. These fossils represent one of the major stories of evolution: the emergence of the whale as an ocean-going mammal from a previous life as a land-based animal. This is the most important site in the world for the demonstration of this stage of evolution. It portrays vividly the form and life of these whales during their transition. The number, concentration, and quality of such fossils here is unique, as is their accessibility and setting in an attractive and protected landscape. The fossils of Al-Hitan show the youngest archaeocetes, in the last stages of losing their hind limbs. Other fossil material in the site makes it possible to reconstruct the surrounding environmental and ecological conditions of the time. (World Heritage Centre #1186)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Wadi al-Hitan on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

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.

The World Heritage Centre also has a free and comprehensive World Heritage education kit for teachers, as well as a wonderful full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites, available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures have you explored in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring cultural and natural sites of international importance. Download a copy of our River Houses World Heritage Calendar and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌎 🌍 🌏

❡ 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 752–859; 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 489–599; 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. 🇪🇬

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 27 November 2022

27 November 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Quick Freshes is our regular Sunday almanac for 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.

🗓 🗡 ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses, begins this Thursday, December 1st! (And that means this is going to be a busy posting week!)

🎵 🎄 🎅 DECEMBER is also our regular Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes that will help you teach little musical lessons all along the way. Watch for them starting just Past Three O’Clock on Thursday morning!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Rhode Island, and our COUNTRIES are Dominica 🇩🇲, the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴, Ecuador 🇪🇨, and Egypt 🇪🇬. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌒 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waxing crescent — a good time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 331–346 in your almanac. Browse through our many homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (27 November 2022) — Today is the 331st day of 2022; there are 34 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of the Swedish astronomer and physicist Anders Celsius (1701–1744), a man of degrees. 🌡 The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in New York City on this day in 1924. 🏬

Monday (28 November 2022) — Today is (probably) the birthday of the Puritan preacher and sometime prisoner John Bunyan (1628–1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the second most widely printed book in history (after the Bible). 🚶 Today is also the birthday of the great English mystical poet William Blake (1757–1827). 🐯 And on this day in 1972, the first successful arcade video game, Pong, was released. (Does anyone remember arcade games?) 🏓

Tuesday (29 November 2022) — Today is the birthday of the American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), author of Little Women and Little Men. 👧 👦

Wednesday (30 November 2022) — Today is the birthday of another American novelist, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835–1910). 🐸 It’s also the birthday of British statesman and Nobel laureate Winston Churchill (1874–1965). 🇬🇧 And on this day in 1954, a meteorite smashed through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama, and struck a woman named Ann Hodges, who was taking a nap. The Sylacauga meteorite, as it is now called, is the only known meteorite in the Western Hemisphere ever to have struck a person. (Hodges was bruised, but sustained no permanent injuries.) 🌠 🤕 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Wadi al-Hitan (Whale Valley) in Egypt. 🇪🇬

🗓 🗡 Orion Term 2022–2023 Begins

Thursday (1 December 2022) — Today is the first day of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. 🗡 And December in the River Houses is Holiday Music Month! Keep your eyes and ears open for many musical delights throughout the month. 🎵 🎄 🎅 On this day in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights activist Rosa Parks (1913–2005) was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, an event that led to the Montgomery bus boycott and the growth of the American civil rights movement. 🚌 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of December is “R.L.S.,” a gem-like homage to Robert Louis Stevenson written by A.E. Housman (1859–1936), for all homeschool hunters, literary and celestial. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🗡

Friday (2 December 2022) — The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest Jewish synagogue building in the United States, was dedicated on this day in 1763. 🕍 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Skuas, Jaegers, Auks, Murres, and Puffins! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (3 December 2022) — Today is the birthday of Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), the famous portrait-painter of early America. 🎨 It’s also the birthday of Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), author of The Heart of Darkness and other staples of English literature courses worldwide. 🖋 And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (4 December 2022) — Today is the birthday of Scottish historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), one of the most prominent writers of the Victorian era. 🖋 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Vermont 🇺🇸, El Salvador 🇸🇻, Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, Eritrea 🇪🇷, and Estonia 🇪🇪.

🥂 🗡 OUR TOAST THIS WEEK is our traditional offering for the beginning of Orion Term and for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. The host says: “Not the laurel, but the race.” And the guests respond: “Not the quarry, but the chase.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — 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? 🥂

🌍 🇪🇬 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Egypt at the northeastern corner of Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the great Nile, the only permanent river in this desert nation. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Nile River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ 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 693–695), 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? 😊

❡ Lively springs: This is one of our regular “Quick Freshes” posts looking at the homeschool week ahead. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events and follow along with us. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Rhode Island, Dominica, Egypt, and More

27 November 2022 by Bob O'Hara

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:

🇺🇸
Rhode Island State Quarter (2001)
RHODE ISLAND (the 13th state, 29 May 1790) — The Ocean State. Capital: Providence. Rhode Island can be found on page 584 in your almanac and on plates 44 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Origin unknown. One theory notes that Giovanni de Verrazano recorded observing an island about the size of the Greek island of Rhodes in 1524. Another theory is that Dutch explorer Adriaen Block named the state Roode Eylandt for its red clay” (almanac page 419). State bird: Rhode Island Red Hen. Website: www.ri.gov.

Rhode Island’s state bird is one of the few you won’t find in your bird guide because it’s a domestic variety, not a wild species. All the varieties of domestic chickens are descendants of the Red Junglefowl of southern Asia, a member of the Phasianidae, which also includes the pheasants and turkeys (bird guide page 58). 🐔

❡ 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. 🔎

❡ 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. 🖍

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇩🇲 DOMINICA in the West Indies. Population: 74,584. Capital: Roseau. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: dominica.gov.dm (in English).
🇩🇴 THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC in the West Indies. Population: 10,597,348. Capital: Santo Domingo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: presidencia.gob.do (in Spanish).
🇪🇨 ECUADOR in northwestern South America. Population: 17,093,159. Capital: Quito. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.presidencia.gob.ec (in Spanish).
🇪🇬 EGYPT in northeastern Africa. Population: 106,437,241. Capital: Cairo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: egypt.gov.eg (in Arabic and English).

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 745–852; 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 489–599; 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) have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ 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. 🔎

❡ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — 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. 🗺

❡ 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Sandpipers (Part II)

25 November 2022 by Horace the Otter 🦦

This week’s birds are (once again) the Sandpipers (pages 124–161). Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’re spreading the Sandpipers out over two weeks because there are so many of them: about 94 species around the world and 66 in North America.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here again is how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

SANDPIPERS — Family Scolopacidae. The majority of these shorebirds have three distinct plumages. Most begin molting to winter plumage as they near or reach their winter grounds. Species: 94 World, 66 N.A. [North America]

Although some members of the Sandpiper family are large or strikingly patterned, like the Curlews and Turnstones we looked at last week, many more are small, inconspicuous, and difficult to distinguish from one another. (Difficult for us, that is. The birds themselves have no trouble telling each other apart.)

The small species that are collectively known as “Peeps” (page 134) are not much more than six inches long, and it takes a fair bit of experience to identify them, especially in the fall when their plumage is more dull-colored. As examples this week, why not compare the Least Sandpiper and the Semipalmated Sandpiper, both common across much of North America, but notoriously difficult to identify.

Biologists call species like these “sibling species.” The birds themselves likely use calls, or behavior, or habitat preference to identify their conspecifics — or in the case of these two species, a small detail like the color of the legs. (Did you notice?)

While many of the smaller members of the Sandpiper family are difficult to identify, there are a few that are unmistakable, such as the breeding-plumage Spotted Sandpiper (page 148), a small freshwater bird that lives along streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds all across the continent — and almost certainly somewhere near you.

Even after their breeding-plumage spots disappear in the late summer, Spotted Sandpipers are still easy to identify by their distinctive behavior: they bob their tails up and down almost constantly as they walk.

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 lives near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

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