The River Houses Homeschool Network

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Literary 800s

1 June 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Tuesday is our usual Homeschool Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your young scholars 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 adopt one major class each month and survey the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for June is the 800s, which covers Literature. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 800s” means the numbers running from 800 to 899.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the Literary 800s:

CLASS 800 – LITERATURE
- 800 – Literature, Rhetoric, & Criticism (General)
- 810 – American Literature in English
- 820 – English & Old English Literatures
- 830 – German & Related Literatures
- 840 – French & Related Literatures
- 850 – Italian, Romanian, & Related Literatures
- 860 – Spanish, Portuguese, & Galician Literatures
- 870 – Latin & Italic Literatures
- 880 – Classical & Modern Greek Literatures
- 890 – Other Literatures

Each of these “tens” divisions is subdivided further of course. For example, in the 860s (Spanish Literature) you’ll find works on Spanish Drama (862), Spanish Essays (864), Spanish Speeches (865), Spanish Humor & Satire (867), and so on.

So this month if you’ve got a homeschool student in love with the monsters and heroes of Beowulf, the place to go is 829 (Anglo-Saxon Literature). A future Classical scholar? Head for 881 (Classical Greek Poetry). A future student of American Indian history? Try 897 (Literatures of North American Native Languages).

When you’re 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 you’re interested in, say, Latin Literature, you’ll find it in the 870s 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 you’ll 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: “820 … 840 … 860 … here it is, 870.”

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.

What delightful decimals and textual treasures will you be searching for in your library this Hercules Term? 📚

❡ 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 800s, one in the 810s, one in the 820s, one in the 830s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 800) and the very last book in the class (the highest 899). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your three favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this month-by-month over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb and how many skills they will develop without even realizing it. 📚

❡ Looking in the lexicon: The Dewey system attempts to encompass the whole of knowledge, so there’s a good chance it will introduce your students to subjects and terminology they haven’t encountered before. In the Literary 800s, for example, they may come across familiar language terms like “French” and “Spanish,” but what about “Anglo-Saxon,” “Occitan,” “Catalan,” “Corsican,” “Semitic,” and “Dravidian”? During or after your library visit, then, why not send your students to your family dictionary or to any dictionary sitting open in the library reference room and invite them to investigate some distinguished Dewey-inspired literary vocabulary. 📖

❡ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❡ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📚

🗓 🍃 🏸 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL JUNE from the River Houses!

1 June 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Happy June 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.)

June with 30 days is the first month of Hercules Term, our summer term in the River Houses. Hercules Term runs from June through August. Visit our homeschool calendar page and print out some copies of our simple educational calendars and planners — they’ll help you create a light and easy structure for your whole homeschool year. 🗓

The month of June (Latin mensis Iunius) was the fourth month of the year in the earliest Roman calendars, which treated the beginning of spring in March as the beginning of the new year. The month’s name is usually said to be derived from Juno, queen of the gods and wife of Jupiter (although the Romans themselves were not always sure where their own month names came from, so ancient were they). You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚

It is and they do:

It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes
And pleasant scents the noses.

June is the month of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere — the astronomical beginning of summer — which falls this year on Sunday the 20th. (In the southern hemisphere the 20th will be the winter solstice — the astronomical beginning of winter.) The summer solstice is the “longest day” of the year: the day with the longest period of daylight and the shortest period of darkness. ⛱

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for June will be South Dakota, Montana, Washington, and Idaho, and our countries will run from Singapore to Tajikistan. 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 Senegal, Slovenia, Spain, Suriname, and Syria this month — our River Houses World Heritage Calendar will point the way. 🗺

We’ll have homeschool poems this month from an anonymous medieval poet (for summer), Francis Scott Key (for Flag Day), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (for Father’s Day), and Robert Louis Stevenson (for summertime play). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and join us as we visit with fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. ✒️

Our Friday Bird Families this month will include the Wagtails and Pipits; the Fringilline Finches, Cardueline Finches, Longspurs, and Snow Buntings; and the Wood-Warblers (twice over). Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds, get out your copy of our recommended homeschool bird guide, and follow the flyways with us. 🦅

Our monthly Great Star for June is Spica (alpha Virginis), 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 June is the Literary 800s — 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 all homeschool photographers. 📸

Also coming up this month:

⬩ 10 June (Th): Partial Solar Eclipse (North America) 🌏 🌑 🌞
⬩ 14 June (M): Flag Day 🇺🇸
⬩ 20 June (Su): June (Summer) Solstice – First Day of Summer ⛱
⬩ 20 June (Su): Father’s Day 👨‍👧‍👦
⬩ 24 June (Th): Lunar Society Report 🌕

Finally, what indeed:

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten.

What calendrical events will you be marking in your homeschool this June? 😊

❡ 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. 🗞

🗓 💪 HERCULES TERM 2021 and the Homeschool Year

1 June 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Today is the beginning our summer term in the River Houses: Hercules Term, named for the Great Hero of the Heavens. Hercules Term runs from June through August.

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 constellation Hercules, quite upside down, from *A Celestial Atlas Comprising a Systematic Display of the Heavens in a Series of Thirty Maps* by Alexander Jamieson (1822). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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:

🗓 🦢 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. We’re looking forward to expanding upon it as time goes on.

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.

Hercules Term is named for the Great Hero of the Heavens, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, who is up in the southeast each evening now at sunset and will be passing high overhead throughout the summer. Hercules Term is home to Flag Day (14 June), Father’s Day (20 June), and Independence Day (4 July); to the anniversary of the first moon landing (20 July, which is also Gregor Mendel’s Birthday); and to the annual Perseid Meteor Shower (11–13 August) — 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. (This year we’re also expecting partial solar eclipse across a portion of the United States on June 10th.)

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

As one of the more prominent heroes of Greek mythology, Hercules has earned a central place in the sky — at least for those in the Northern Hemisphere — appearing almost directly overhead during the summer months. From mid-northern latitudes the warrior can be seen running east toward the Milky Way. Four stars in an approximate square make up the asterism known as the Keystone, similar in shape to the central stone in archways. Right next to bright Vega [our August star], Hercules is easy to locate, especially during the summer weeks when the constellation is at its highest. Though prominently positioned in the night sky, Hercules is a dim constellation that does not benefit from any notably bright stars and was once named “the Phantom.” Only three are brighter than magnitude 3. Rasalgethi, the alpha star, is a red supergiant that is visible to the naked eye.

In Greco-Roman lore, Hercules was a half-mortal son of Zeus, famous for his amazing strength. He was driven mad by Hera, queen of the gods and Zeus’s wife, who was angered by her husband’s unfaithfulness. While cursed with insanity, Hercules took his family’s life. When the tragic spell lifted, Hercules was so overcome with grief that he undertook 12 labors to repent for his actions. Each challenge seemed impossible, but through strength and ingenuity Hercules overcame each one and was granted celestial immortality. Many of the creatures Hercules battles are the other constellations in the sky including Leo the lion, Cancer the crab, and Hydra the serpent. (National Geographic Backyard Guide to the Night Sky, pages 222–223)

Why not spend a little time out after dark with your students over the next three months and watch the Great Hero 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 Hercules 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. 🗞

🏡 WELCOME! (Pinned Post)

1 June 2021 by Bob O'Hara

First time visitor? We post a wide range of easy-to-use educational ideas and “little lessons” that will enrich your homeschooling schedule all through the year. Please add your name to our free mailing list! (Just one message a week and no spam.) 😊

There’s a wealth of wonderful material here on our website — everything from homeschool astronomy to books and libraries to language and literature to geography, natural history, homeschool calendars, and more. The materials we’re developing are going to become the foundation for a new type of homeschool network made up of friendly local groups called “houses” (just like in Harry Potter). Make yourself at home! 😊

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 30 May 2021

30 May 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more!) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is North Dakota, and our COUNTRIES are Senegal 🇸🇳, Serbia 🇷🇸, the Seychelles 🇸🇨, and Sierra Leone 🇸🇱. (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 gibbous and waning — a good time for moon watching! 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 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (30 May 2021) — Today is the 150th day of 2021; there are 215 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on this day in the year 1922. 🏛 Today is also the birthday of the great voice actor Mel Blanc (1908–1989), “the man of a thousand voices,” who gave us Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, and even the Tasmanian Devil. 🐰

Monday (31 May 2021) — Today is Memorial Day in the United States, the day we remember the nation’s war dead. 🇺🇸 Today is also the last day of Leo Term and the last day of the River Houses academic year. Hercules Term, our summer term, begins tomorrow. 🗓 It’s also the birthday of the great American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who contained multitudes. 🖋

🗓 💪 Hercules Term 2020–2021 Begins

Tuesday (1 June 2021) — Today is the first day of HERCULES TERM, our summer term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hero of the Heavens. 💪 Today is also the birthday of the great English poet of the sea John Masefield (1878–1967), author of the finest thing Herman Melville never said. ⚓️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of June is the anonymous medieval song “Sumer is i-cumin in,” for the beginning of Hercules Term. ⛱ 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 Literary 800s. 📚

Wednesday (2 June 2021) — Today is the birthday of poet and novelist Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), whose works have been loved and loathed by high school English students for generations. 📚 Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II was crowned on this day in 1953, making her now the longest-reigning monarch in British history and the longest-serving female head of state in world history. 👑 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Island of Gorée in Senegal. 🇸🇳

Thursday (3 June 2021) — Today is the birthday of Scottish physician and scientist James Hutton (1726–1797), one of the pioneers of modern geology. ⛏

Friday (4 June 2021) — On this day in 1783, the brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier made the first public demonstration of their hot air balloon at Annonay in the south of France, and the age of flight began. 🎈 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the terrestrial Wagtails and Pipits. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (5 June 2021) — The first installment of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published on this day in 1851 in the National Era newspaper. 📰 And on this day in 1989, as a popular uprising against the Chinese communist government was being brutally suppressed in Beijing, a lone man near Tiananmen Square ran out into the street and for a few minutes stopped an entire column of tanks from advancing. Photographs of “the Tank Man” have since become emblems of freedom worldwide — except in China, where they are censored. For a brief history of communism in China, see page 424 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🇨🇳 🗽 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 (6 June 2021) — The invasion of Normandy on the coast of France, code-named Operation Overlord, began on this day, D-Day, in 1944. It was the largest amphibious military operation in history and it began the liberation of western Europe from Nazi occupation. For a brief review, see page 398 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. 🇫🇷

🥂 🕊 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old traditional, offered for Memorial Day: “May the miseries of war never more have existence in the world.”

❡ 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 this week? 🥂

🌍 🇸🇱 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Sierra Leone in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Jong River, peaceful in the dry season, riotous in the rainy season. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the (very minimal) Jong River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Jong River in the rainy season. (Image: YouTube.)

❡ Daughters 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 699–701), 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: North Dakota, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and More

30 May 2021 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 458), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
North Dakota State Flag
NORTH DAKOTA (the 39th state, 2 November 1889) — The Peace Garden State. Capital: Bismarck. North Dakota can be found on page 588 in your almanac and on plates 39 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Sioux word ‘Dakota’, meaning ‘friend’ or ‘ally’” (almanac page 459). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website: www.nd.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week, 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:

🇸🇳 SENEGAL in western Africa. Population: 15,736,368. Capital: Dakar. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.sec.gouv.sn (in French).
🇷🇸 SERBIA in southeastern Europe. Population: 7,012,165. Capital: Belgrade. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.srbija.gov.rs (in Serbian and English).
🇸🇨 SEYCHELLES in the Indian Ocean. Population: 95,981. Capital: Victoria. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.egov.sc (in English).
🇸🇱 SIERRA LEONE on the west coast of Africa. Population: 6,624,933. Capital: Freetown. Government: Presidential republic. Website: statehouse.gov.sl (in 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 752–859; 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) did you make in your homeschool this Leo 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🇺🇸 MEMORIAL DAY 2021

28 May 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Monday is Memorial Day in the United States, the day we remember the nation’s war dead. Why not let some undergraduates from one of the most selective colleges in the country — the United States Military Academy at West Point — assist you and your students in your remembrance this weekend (with words and music from Randall Wallace and Nick Glennie-Smith):

For homeschoolers, everything is an opportunity for learning: holidays, history, songs, singers, and place names. Can your students find West Point, New York, on a map and explain its significance?

Although “West Point” is now shorthand for our national military academy, the name West Point in its original sense refers to the high point of land that projects into the Hudson River just a few miles north (upstream) from New York City. The point forces the Hudson to make a sharp bend, and artillery placed there can easily control all traffic on the river. West Point was first fortified during the American Revolution and it has been occupied by the United States Army ever since. The Hudson River–Lake Champlain–Richelieu River corridor between New York City and Montreal (on the St. Lawrence River) was one of the most contested military and commercial transportation routes on the North American continent for almost 200 years. Plate 44 in your River Houses atlas will show you the location of West Point and let your students get a sense of its geographical importance.

You can also remind your students this weekend that what we now call Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day after the custom of decorating the graves of soldiers who had fought in the Civil War. The name has changed, but the honorable custom continues, as you’ll see if you visit almost any cemetery across the country in the next few days.

[Decoration Day at Arlington National Cemetery] — Grave of General Frank. M. Andrews (1884–1943), United States Army Air Corps, Arlington National Cemetery. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1882 poem “Decoration Day” shows us why Longfellow was the most popular poet of nineteenth-century America. Why not share it with your homeschool students also on this Decoration Day weekend.

Decoration Day

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest
On this field of the Grounded Arms,
Where foes no more molest,
Nor sentry’s shot alarms!

Ye have slept on the ground before,
And started to your feet
At the cannon’s sudden roar,
Or the drum’s redoubling beat.

But in this camp of Death
No sound your slumber breaks;
Here is no fevered breath,
No wound that bleeds and aches.

All is repose and peace,
Untrampled lies the sod;
The shouts of battle cease,
It is the Truce of God!

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!
The thoughts of men shall be
As sentinels to keep
Your rest from danger free.

Your silent tents of green
We deck with fragrant flowers
Yours has the suffering been,
The memory shall be ours.

Longfellow’s “Decoration Day” is a fine example that you can use to teach about extended metaphors in literature. The poem draws an imaginative comparison between soldiers sleeping on their battlefield campgrounds at night, and the rows of graves in the burial ground covered by “tents” of green grass. See how many specific contrasts and comparisons your students can identify (the contrast between the trampled ground of the battlefield and the untrampled ground of the burying field; the comparison between the sentinel guards on the battlefield and all of us as guardians of memory on the burying field; and so on).

What other educational and historical anniversaries did you study in your homeschool this Leo Term?

❡ Stay up to date: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Indigobirds, Old World Sparrows, and Allies

28 May 2021 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 (four different families) are the Indigobirds and Whydahs (pages 426–427), the Weavers (pages 426–427), the Estrildid Finches (pages 428–429), and the Old World Sparrows (pages 428–429). That may sound like a lot, but in fact none of these families are native to North America: all are represented here by introduced and escaped species only, and only one species from these four groups has spread widely and become naturalized across the continent.

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:

INDIGOBIRDS · WHYDAHS — Family Viduidae. Native to Africa, these species (two genera) are all obligate brood parasites. Pin-tailed Whydah not accepted by ABA. [That is, the American Birding Association doesn’t consider this species sufficiently established to “count” as a North American bird.] Species: 20 World, 1 N.A.

WEAVERS — Family Ploceidae. Large, primarily African family. Breeding males are often highly colored. Build elaborate woven nests. Northern Red Bishop not accepted by ABA. Species: 108 World, 1 N.A.

ESTRILDID FINCHES — Family Estrildidae. Large Old World family found from Africa to Australia and South Pacific Islands. Most are small with pointed tails. Related to weavers. Species: 140 World, 1 N.A.

OLD WORLD SPARROWS — Family Passeridae. Old World family. Gregarious; two species have become established in N.A. Species: 39 World, 2 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 Old World Sparrows, for example. How many species? (39 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (Only two species in North America, both of them introduced from Europe; the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Old World group [i.e., native to Europe, Africa, and Asia, not North or South America], gregarious, and so on.) (And “gregarious” is certainly a wonderful word, isn’t it — be sure to send someone to your homeschool dictionary to look that one up.) 🔎

Pick a representative species or two to look at in detail each week and read the entry aloud, or have your students study it and then narrate it back to you, explaining all the information it contains. This week, for the Old World Sparrow family, why not investigate the familiar House Sparrow (page 428), one of the most common birds in North America and a species every homeschool naturalist should know. (I can hear half a dozen chattering outside my window as I’m typing this.)

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 House Sparrow? (6¼ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Passer domesticus.) Will you be able to find this species where you live? At what times of year and in what habitat? (Study the range map and range description carefully to answer those questions, and see the book’s back flap for a map key.) Do the males and females look alike? The adults and juveniles? What song or call does this species make? How can you distinguish it from similar species? (The text and illustrations should answer all these questions.)

House Sparrows are common across North America, mainly in habitats that humans also frequent. (About the only place you never find them is in forests.) They will just as happily nest in the eaves of an urban apartment building as in a rural horse barn. If you had explored the United States at the time of the Civil War or earlier, however, you wouldn’t have found a single one: they were introduced in the late 1800s from Europe and by the mid twentieth century they had spread from coast to coast.

House Sparrows exhibit clear sexual dimorphism: in the breeding season the males sport a black throat and breast, gray cap, and chestnut markings on the head, while the females are generally a plainer beige. (The two photos above represent a breeding-plumage male and female.) In the non-breeding season the sexes are still readily distinguishable, although the males are not quite as boldly patterned as they are in spring and summer and look a bit more like the females.

As a second species this week, for fun, why not look at the Pin-tailed Whydah (page 426) in the Indigobird and Whydah family. You’re not likely to see one unless you live near Los Angeles, where they have escaped from captivity and become naturalized in the wild — they are native to Africa and not really a North American species. But that could have been said a century ago about the House Sparrow and they now cover the continent, so who knows….

As your bird guide notes, all members of the Whydah family are brood parasites. They build no nests of their own, and the females spend the breeding season skulking about and locating other birds’ nests, and then dropping their own eggs into them when no one is looking. The Brown-headed Cowbird (page 538) is the only native North American bird that is also a brood parasite.

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.

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 did you make in your homeschool this Leo 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 made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations on 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – May 2021

26 May 2021 by Bob O'Hara

There’s a full moon tonight, so that means it’s time for a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses.

The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and to share their results with other homeschool families.

Here’s our list of just some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents!) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:

➢ The Lunar Society of the River Houses (riverhouses.org)

Browse through that project list and find one or two that would be a good fit for your family and a good match for your interests. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be well on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. 🔬 🔭 🖥 🦋 🔍 ⚗️ ⛏ 📖 🌲 😊

Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their accomplishments.

As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past lunar month on the two types of projects I participate in: eBird monitoring of bird populations, and distributed computing research using the Berkeley open infrastructure application. You and your students can participate right now in these projects, and in many others too.

On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I have been documenting a new site, a local college campus that I frequently visit. So far I’ve contributed a total of 202 checklists (observation reports) for this locality — it’s a site that has never been documented before. As more checklists are added, and as eBird combines them and charts them automatically, you’ll be able to get a real sense of seasonal distribution and migration patterns at this location. Here’s a snippet of what that looks like in progress, with reports since last September:

And here’s a recent sample checklist so you can see what they look like:

➢ Sample Checklist for Campus Site S75408328 (ebird.org)

You can start keeping a similar eBird list for a location near you — your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more useful results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website and start exploring.

Distributed computing projects use idle time on your computer to perform scientific calculations on various kinds of complex data. The most popular distributed computing projects run on the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing platform (BOINC), and I contribute computer time (whenever my laptop is plugged in) to three of these: (1) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; (2) the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy; and (3) the Asteroids@Home project, which calculates the shapes and orbits of poorly-known asteroids. (Yes, those are projects you and your students can really contribute to.)

I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, Asteroids@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and you can also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually processed and how much your team has processed — they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. (And while it’s running, Einstein@Home has a cool screensaver that shows you in real time what your computer is analyzing.) 📡

And here’s another level of skill development for your high school (or even advanced middle school) students: once you’ve processed a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results using an online spreadsheet, and this is what it looks like:

That’s just a simple graphing exercise — nothing particularly profound. It’s something that can be refined, developed, and expanded in the future. (And your students can develop their own individual charts as well.)

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects in many different scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. The examples above are just a few that happen to interest me — pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects in a great variety of areas that you and your family can join.

What scholarly and scientific explorations did you make in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ The friends who made the future: You can learn more about the original Lunar Society of Birmingham in “The Lunar Men,” a fine short video from History West Midlands. 🌕

❡ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. 📸

❡ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended backyard night-sky guide and world atlas (which has an astronomical section) will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. 🦉 🌠

❡ Whether they work together or apart: This is one of our regular Lunar Society Bulletins about the many cooperative research projects that we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🌍 🇸🇦 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Ancient Rock Art of Saudi Arabia

26 May 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Saudi Arabia in the Middle East is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Saudi Arabia’s World Heritage Sites: the Rock Art in the Hail Region.

The desert climate of Saudi Arabia has preserved intact the many rock carvings made in the Hail region by traders and travelers over thousands of years:

The serial property of the Rock Art in the Hail Region is comprised of two components: Jabal Umm Sinman at Jubbah, located approximately 90 km northwest of the city of Hail, and Jabal Al-Manjor and Jabal Raat at Shuwaymis, approximately 250 km south of Hail. At Jabal Umm Sinman Jubbah, the ancestors of present-day Arabs left marks of their presence in numerous petroglyph panels and inscriptions within a landscape that once overlooked a freshwater lake; and at Jabal Al-Manjor and Jabal Raat, Shuwaymis, the large number of petroglyphs and inscriptions has been attributed to almost 10,000 years of human history within a valley with flowing water. Together, these components contain the biggest and richest rock art complexes in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the wider region. Processes of desertification from the mid-Holocene altered the local environmental context and patterns of human settlement in these areas, and these changes are expressed in the numerous petroglyph panels and rich inscriptions. The attributes of the property include the large number of petroglyphs, inscriptions, archaeological features and the environmental setting. (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1472)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Rock Art in the Hail Region 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 did you explore in your homeschool this Leo Term? 😊

❡ 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. 🇸🇦

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring historical 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. 🌍