(Sign up for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) ๐
Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.
Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and your recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 429), so this week’s state is:
๐บ๐ธ Michigan State QuarterMICHIGAN (the 26th state, 26 January 1837) โ The Great Lakes State. Capital: Lansing. Michigan can be found on page 574 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Chippewa mici gama, meaning โgreat water,โ after lake of the same name” (almanac page 430). State bird: American Robin (bird guide page 414). Website:www.michigan.gov.
โกโ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for just a few minutes each week, and your little lesson is done. By the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a world of new geographical and historical information. ๐
This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
๐ฑ๐นโ LITHUANIA in eastern Europe. Population: 2,793,284. Capital: Vilnius. Website:lrvk.lrv.lt (in Lithuanian).
๐ฑ๐บโ LUXEMBOURG in western Europe. Population: 605,764. Capital: Luxembourg. Website:gouvernement.lu (in French, German, English, and Luxembourgish).
๐ฒ๐ฐโ MACEDONIA in southeastern Europe. Population: 2,118,945. Capital: Skopje. Website:www.vlada.mk (in Macedonian, Albanian, and English).
๐ฒ๐ฌโ MADAGASCAR in the Indian Ocean. Population: 25,683,610. Capital: Antananarivo. Website:www.primature.gov.mg (in French).
These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745โ852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489โ599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.
What grand geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? ๐
โกโ Read and think critically: The country links above go to official websites, which are not always in English and which may well be propagandistic in one way or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their critical reading and thinking skills.
โกโ Plan an imaginary vacation: Here’s a fun exercise for your students: take one of the countries that we list each week and write out a family travel plan. How would you get there? How much will it cost? Will you need a passport? Where will you stay? Will you have to exchange your currency? How do you say hello the local language? What cities and attractions and landmarks will you visit? What foods will you eat? How will you get around (car, train, boat, mule)? Make a simple worksheet with blank spaces for the answers, have your students do the research, and start planning your world tour. โ๏ธ ๐ ๐ ๐ณ ๐ ๐
(Have you noticed that our astronomy posts are usually headed “Watchers of the Skies“? If you didn’t know why we used that particular title, today you’ll find out.) ๐
The shortest month of the year is winding down. Why not send it off with a literary flourish by introducing your students to one of the most famous poems in the English language, John Keats’ sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February:
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet never did I breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific โ and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise โ
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
The “Chapman” of the title is George Chapman (ca. 1599โ1634), an Elizabethan writer and Classical scholar, and this poem is an account of Keats’ first reading of Chapman’s English translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. The story โ a wonderful one to share โ is that Keats was introduced to Chapman’s translation by his friend Charles Cowden Clarke, and the two young men stayed up nearly all night reading it to each other. The next morning, when Clarke came down to breakfast, he found this sonnet had been left for him on the breakfast table.
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” is a perfectly crafted example of a Petrarchan sonnet: fourteen lines, thematically and structurally arranged into an initial group of eight (the octave) and a final group of six (the sestet). Encourage your students to map the rhyme scheme and see how tight it is: ABBA ABBA CD CD CD. The first eight lines tell of the writer’s prior experience in “realms of gold” โ the imaginary (literary) landscape of ancient gods and kings and poets. He had heard tell that the greatest of the ancient poets was Homer, but not until he read Chapman’s translation did he truly understand why this was so. And at that point the sonnet turns: reading Chapman was like discovering a new planet, or a new ocean he had never seen before.
There’s some wonderful vocabulary here for your students to work through: realms, bards, fealty, demesne, ken, surmise. The planet Uranus was discovered in 1781 and the minor planet Ceres was discovered in 1801, so the discovery of new planets was very much a matter of public interest in Keats’ day. Unfortunately, Keats’ historical recollection was a bit off: the Spanish explorer Balboa โ not Cortรฉs โ was the first European to cross the Isthmus of Panama (Darien) and see the Pacific Ocean. But that’s OK; it’s a poem, not a history text.
There are a great many recordings of this sonnet available online. Here’s a good one that will help your students get the pronunciation (and so the rhymes) correct:
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“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” has been one of the most widely read, taught, and quoted sonnets in the English language for almost two hundred years. This week, invite your young scholars to make it their friend for life.
โกโ Then felt I like some watcher of the skies: 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 have your students speak it aloud a few times โ that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship. ๐
โกโ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including John Keats) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.
โกโ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.
Happy birthday to our first president! Today is the real (as opposed to the observed) birthday of George Washington (1732โ1799). Homeschoolers will certainly study his presidency, and his role in the American Revolution. But how about George Washington the teenage student?
Quite a few of Washington’s school papers have survived to the present day (amazing!), and one of the best known is a copywork assignment commonly called “George Washington’s Rules of Civility.” Here’s a formal transcript of the document from the University of Virginia:
This is a wonderful piece of history to share and discuss with your students. Many of the rules are perfect โ still today โ for copying onto your homeschool bulletin board:
โข Put not off your Clothes in the presence of Others, nor go out your Chamber half Drest
โข Drink not nor talk with your mouth full
โข If You Cough, Sneeze, Sigh, or Yawn, do it not Loud but Privately
โข Wear not your Clothes foul, unript or Dusty, but See they be Brush’d once every day
โข Run not in the Streets, neither go too slowly nor with Mouth open; go not Shaking yr Arms
โข Gaze not on the marks or blemishes of Others and ask not how they came
โข Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation
โข Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial fire Called Conscience
These were not original compositions, as some people have suggested. They were in fact common rules of conduct that had been in circulation for over a century and were often used as writing exercises for children. You can read more about the history of the rules here:
Go down the list with your students and ask: Which rules still apply today? Which seem outdated? What new rules do we follow today that Washington missed? A hundred interesting homeschool discussions will follow. ๐
The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and share their results with other homeschool families. Here’s an outline of the idea, along with a list of some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:
Browse through that project list and find one that would be a good fit for your family. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. ๐ฌ ๐ญ ๐ฅ ๐ฆ ๐ โ๏ธ โ ๐ ๐ฒ ๐
Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will evolve into something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their achievements.
As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past 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 in these projects (and many others) too.
On the eBird website (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I’ve been tracking the birds in a small riverside park near me (eBird hotspot L6926932), and have now contributed a total of 518 checklists (daily observation reports) for this locality. When all the checklists are combined you can really get a sense of the seasonal distribution and migration patterns for the year. (I just completed a full year cycle, so for the first time there are observation records for all 52 weeks of the year.)
You can start keeping a similar list for a location near you โ your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a public park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more interesting results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website (ebird.org) 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 to three of these: (1) the SETI@Home project, sponsored by the University of California, which searches for extraterrestrial intelligence (really!); (2) the Einstein@Home project, which studies neutron stars; and the MilkyWay@Home project, which studies the history and structure of our galaxy.
I’ve created River Houses team pages for each of these projects (Einstein@Home team, MilkyWay@Home team, SETI@Home team). Once your computer is signed up to participate you can join one of these teams and also print “certificates of computation” that show how much data you’ve individually analyzed and how much your team has analyzed โ they’re just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. ๐
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. Using Google Sheets, I’ve set up a simple chart of River Houses team results, and this is what it looks like:
(See attached blog post for chart)
That’s just a simple graphing exercise โ it’s something that we can refine, develop, and expand 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 a variety of scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to read about many more projects that your family can join.
What scholarly and scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this month? ๐
โกโ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. ๐ธ
โกโ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended star atlas will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. ๐ฆ ๐
Today is the birthday of one of the most important figures in the history of science: the great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473โ1543). In his honor, why not take a few homeschool minutes to introduce your students to Copernicus’ great work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium), first published in 1543.
The heliocentric model of Copernicus, from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Note the sun (Sol) at the center, and the earth (Terra) in the third orbit, along with earth’s moon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
“De Rev” (as history of science geeks call it) is one of the most important books ever published because it laid out a comprehensive sun-centered or heliocentric picture of the solar system, replacing the earlier earth-centered or geocentric picture.
Fewer than 300 copies of the original 1543 edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium survive today. But we live in a truly fortunate age, when a young student can sit at home and examine up close some of the rarest and most important books in history โ books that just a few years ago would have been accessible only to professional scholars in the world’s largest libraries.
Here is a copy of the “De Rev” that has been scanned and made available by RareBookRoom.org, a wonderful site that provides online access to some of the most important books ever written. The scans are very high resolution so all the pages can be examined one by one in great detail, right down to old handwritten notes in the margins and to the texture of the paper as it was impressed by the metal type. Spend a few homeschool minutes today with your students (at a large screen rather than a phone) exploring this bibliographic treasure:
The text is in Latin โ the language of all scientific books written at that time โ and the printing is exceptionally fine. Zoom in on a few pages using theย โ/+ scale at the top of the page to get a full appreciation for this great work, not only of science, but of the printer’s art as well.
If you have curious science students in your homeschool, be sure they know the name of Nicolaus Copernicus and how he changed our understanding of the world.
What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? ๐
โกโ Explore more: For a quick review of the Renaissance, the historical period in which Copernicus lived, turn to pages 250โ253 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books), and for an overview of the Scientific Revolution that he helped to spark see pages 266โ267. It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history lesson.
(For richer access, just click on our attached blog post โ it’s full of lovely links that don’t carry over to Facebook. You’ll like it!) ๐
Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.
๐บ๐ธโ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Arkansas, and our COUNTRIES are Lesotho ๐ฑ๐ธ, Liberia ๐ฑ๐ท, Libya ๐ฑ๐พ, and Liechtenstein ๐ฑ๐ฎ. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
๐ฆโ THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT is underway this weekend! I hope you and your students are counting โ along with thousands of other people across the country and around the world!
๐โ TODAY (Sunday, 17 February) โ Today is the 48th day of 2019; there are 317 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358โ364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). โฌฉ Today is also the birthday of the great Italian violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653โ1713).
MONDAY (18 February) โ The famous American stained-glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany was born on this day in 1848.
TUESDAY (19 February) โ Today is the birthday of the Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473โ1543), one of the truly great figures in the history of science. ๐ And, thereโs a full moon tonight, so that means weโll have a report on student research projects today from the River Houses Lunar Society. ๐
WEDNESDAY (20 February) โ Today is the birthday of the great American photographer Ansel Adams (1902โ1984). ๐ธ
THURSDAY (21 February) โ On this day in 1918, the last individual Carolina Parakeet โ the only species of parrot native to the United States โ died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. ๐
SUNDAY (24 February) โ On this day in 1803, the Supreme Court handed down its landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison, establishing the principle of judicial review. โ๏ธ And today is the birthday of the American painter and illustrator Winslow Homer (1836โ1910). ๐จ
๐ฅโ YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May our friendships be independent of time and be matured by character.”
โกโ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week โ you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?
๐โ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Lesotho is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is northern Lesotho’s Malibamat’so River. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Malibamat’so River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
โกโ Let the river run: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 691โ693), 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? ๐
(Sign up for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) ๐
Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.
Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and your recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 429), so this week’s state is:
๐บ๐ธ Arkansas State QuarterARKANSAS (the 25th state, 15 June 1836) โ The Razorback State. Capital: Little Rock. Arkansas can be found on page 564 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Algonquin name for Quapaw Indians, meaning โsouth windโ” (almanac page 430). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website:www.arkansas.gov.
โกโ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for just a few minutes each week, and your little lesson is done. By the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a world of new geographical and historical information. ๐
These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745โ852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489โ599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.
What grand geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? ๐
โกโ Read and think critically: The country links above go to official websites, which are not always in English and which may well be propagandistic in one way or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their critical reading and thinking skills.
โกโ Plan an imaginary vacation: Here’s a fun exercise for your students: take one of the countries that we list each week and write out a family travel plan. How would you get there? How much will it cost? Will you need a passport? Where will you stay? Will you have to exchange your currency? How do you say hello the local language? What cities and attractions and landmarks will you visit? What foods will you eat? How will you get around (car, train, boat, mule)? Make a simple worksheet with blank spaces for the answers, have your students do the research, and start planning your world tour. โ๏ธ ๐ ๐ ๐ณ ๐ ๐
(Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox each week โ sign up at: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) ๐
February is a month of extraordinary birthdays: Nicholas Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, George Washington, Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and more. In their collective honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of February is Stephen Spender’s encomium on “The Truly Great”:
The Truly Great
I think continually of those who were truly great.
Who, from the womb, remembered the soulโs history
Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns,
Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition
Was that their lips, still touched with fire,
Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song.
And who hoarded from the Spring branches
The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms.
What is precious, is never to forget
The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs
Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth.
Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light
Nor its grave evening demand for love.
Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother
With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit.
Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields,
See how these names are fรชted by the waving grass
And by the streamers of white cloud
And whispers of wind in the listening sky.
The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
Who wore at their hearts the fireโs centre.
Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun
And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
This is a beautiful and deeply philosophical poem โย great for high school students โ built around the ancient Greek concept of metempsychosis or “the transmigration of souls.”
Plato and other Greek philosophers taught that the individual soul was immortal, and that after one’s physical body dies, the soul returns to the spiritual realm where it chooses a new body into which it will be placed. It then drinks from the River of Forgetfulness (Lethe) so as to lose all memory of its previous life, and then it returns to the mortal world in a new soul-body combination.
Spender, in this poem, imagines that the truly great figures of history were great because they “remembered the soul’s history” โ they didn’t partake of the waters of forgetfulness and so had lifetimes of knowledge and understanding to draw upon as they passed through the world. How else could they have accomplished what they did, with the experience of only one lifetime?
What philosophico-literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? ๐
โกโ And left the vivid air signed with their honour: 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 โ that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. ๐
โกโ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Stephen Spender) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.
โกโ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.
Galileo Galilei, one of the most important scientists in history, was born on this day in 1564. Why not spend a little homeschool time this week learning about him at your local library or online. ๐
I’ve been having some computer problems today and can’t post a full notice, but here are two great resources you and your students can explore (preferably with a large screen rather than a phone):
And here is a classic Galilean proof โ dropping a hammer and a feather together on the moon (which has no atmosphere and so no atmospheric friction) and observing that they fall at exactly the same rate:
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That behavior is so counterintuitive to our earth-derived common sense that it’s difficult to absorb, even when we see it with our own eyes. “Mr. Galileo was correct!”
Take a few homeschool minutes this week to introduce your students to one of the great minds of human history.
What scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? ๐
There are six standard reference books that we recommend for every homeschool library โ not children’s books, but family books that can support your teaching in every subject and serve your homeschool for many years. One of these is the comprehensive and beautifully illustrated volume History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present (3rd edition). This book is a favorite of our River Houses mascot Horace the Otter, as you can see.
Horace is spending time with his history encyclopedia today because this is a notable anniversary. Two of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, were both born on this day in the same year: 1809. The history encyclopedia has fully illustrated outlines of the life and times of both Lincoln (page 316) and Darwin (page 340) โ just what you need for a quick review this week with your homeschool students.
Darwin was one of my academic specialties, so this time period is of special interest to me. Iย taught a basic college writing course for a number of years using original texts from the history of science, including Darwin’s Origin of Species, a work that was first published in London in 1859, the year before Lincoln was first elected president in the United States.
Horace the Otter learns about Charles Darwin and the history of science on Darwin’s birthday.
If you’re looking for a one-volume history encyclopedia that can support your homeschool teaching across any curriculum you may be following, History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present is a great choice. Happy birthday, Abe and Charles!
What bibliographic treasures have you discovered and what historical anniversaries have you marked in your homeschool lately? ๐
โกโ Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website (riverhouses.org) has links to several important online library collections that we like to explore. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (not a phone) and give them a browse. ๐
(Sign up for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) ๐
Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.
๐บ๐ธโ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Missouri, and our COUNTRIES are Kyrgyzstan ๐ฐ๐ฌ, Laos ๐ฑ๐ฆ, Latvia ๐ฑ๐ป, and Lebanon ๐ฑ๐ง. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
๐โ TODAY (Sunday, 10 February) โ Today is the 41st day of 2019; there are 324 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358โ364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). โฌฉ It’s also the traditional Christian feast day of Saint Scholastica (ca. 480โ543), the patroness of schools and education. ๐
MONDAY (11 February) โ Today is the birthday of the great American inventor Thomas Edison (1847โ1931).๐ก
WEDNESDAY (13 February) โ Today is the birthday of the American artist Grant Wood (1891โ1942). โฌฉ It’s also the birthday of the American aviator Chuck Yeager (b. 1923), the first person to break the sound barrier
THURSDAY (14 February) โ Happy Valentine’s Day! โค๏ธ Here’s hoping your little home academy will be full of love on this day and every day throughout the year.
FRIDAY (15 February) โ Today is the birthday of the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galileo (1564โ1642), one of the most important figures in the history of science. ๐ญ It’s also the birthday of the American women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony (1820โ1906). โฌฉ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for third week of February is Stephen Spender’s minor masterpiece “The Truly Great,” for the remarkable collection of important people born in February. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us.
SATURDAY (16 February) โ This is the first day of the 2019 Great Backyard Bird Count! It’s an ideal homeschool activity, sponsored by Cornell University. Visit birdcount.org and join in the fun! ๐ฆ
๐ฅโ YOUR WEEKLY TOAST is our traditional naval offering for Valentineโs Day: “To the wind that blows, and the ship that goes, and the lass that loves a sailor.”
โกโ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week โ you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?
๐โ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Lebanon is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Litani River, the longest river in Lebanon. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Litani River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
โกโ Let the river run: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 691โ693), 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!
AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Wednesday this month! ๐
What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? ๐
(For richer access, just click on our attached blog post โ it’s full of lovely links that don’t carry over to Facebook. You’ll like it!) ๐
Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.
Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and your recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 429), so this week’s state is:
๐บ๐ธ Missouri State QuarterMISSOURI (the 24th state, 10 August 1821) โ The Show Me State. Capital: Jefferson City. Missouri can be found on page 576 in your almanac and on plates 39 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Algonquin Indian term meaning โriver of the big canoesโ” (almanac page 430). State bird: Eastern Bluebird (bird guide page 408). Website:www.mo.gov.
โกโ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for just a few minutes each week, and your little lesson is done. By the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a world of new geographical and historical information. ๐
This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
๐ฐ๐ฌโ KYRGYZSTAN in central Asia. Population: 5,849,296. Capital: Bishkek. Website:www.gov.kg (in Kyrgyz and Russian).
๐ฑ๐ฆโ LAOS in southeastern Asia. Population: 7,234,171. Capital: Vientiane. Website:na.gov.la (in Lao and English).
๐ฑ๐ปโ LATVIA in eastern Europe. Population: 1,923,559. Capital: Riga. Website:mk.gov.lv (in Latvian).
๐ฑ๐งโ LEBANON in the Middle East. Population: 6,100,075. Capital: Beirut. Website:presidency.gov.lb (in Arabic).
These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745โ852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489โ599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.
What grand geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? ๐
โกโ Read and think critically: The country links above go to official websites, which are not always in English and which may well be propagandistic in one way or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their critical reading and thinking skills.
โกโ Plan an imaginary vacation: Here’s a fun exercise for your students: take one of the countries that we list each week and write out a family travel plan. How would you get there? How much will it cost? Will you need a passport? Where will you stay? Will you have to exchange your currency? How do you say hello the local language? What cities and attractions and landmarks will you visit? What foods will you eat? How will you get around (car, train, boat, mule)? Make a simple worksheet with blank spaces for the answers, have your students do the research, and start planning your world tour. โ๏ธ ๐ ๐ ๐ณ ๐ ๐
Are you the mother of a distracted teen this Valentine Season? Then we have a 2600 year old poem-of-the-week just for you:
It’s no use
Mother dear, I
can’t finish my
weaving
You may
blame Aphrodite
soft as she is
she has almost
killed me with
love for that boy
That’s Mary Barnard’s 1958 translation of one of the surviving fragments of the ancient Greek poet Sappho, who lived and wrote about 600 B.C. Times may change, but youth and its trials are ever green.
Perhaps instead of Barnard’s modern free-form translation, you’d prefer something more lyrical:
Oh! my sweet mother, ’tis in vain
I cannot weave as once I wove;
So wilder’d is my heart and brain,
With thinking of that youth I love.
That’s an 1826 rendering by the Irish poet Thomas Moore. Or, if you’re looking for something more prosaic, perhaps you’ll find David Campbell’s 1982 version satisfying in its simplicity:
Truly, sweet mother, I cannot weave my web, for I am overcome with desire for a boy because of slender Aphrodite.
Sappho was regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets of the ancient world, but her verse has survived only in fragments and in quotations in the works of other ancient writers.
One of the surviving fragments of Sappho’s poetry (not the verse quoted above), illustrating how fragile and remarkable much of our ancient inheritance is. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
This week’s love-sick lament, for example, is only known because an ancient grammarian cited it as an example of an unusual type of poetic meter; otherwise, it would have been lost.
So many different translations โ but what did Sappho really write? For all you Classically inclined homeschoolers, what she really wrote was something like this:
If you’re not Classically inclined, don’t worry. Just know that across the span of 2600 years, glukea mater โ sweet mother โ she really is speaking to you. ๐ฉโ๐ง
What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? ๐
โกโ Talking translations: Here’s a wonderful open-ended educational question you can talk about this week with your high school students: can there ever be a perfect translation from a foreign language? Many people first encounter this question in a serious way in the context of Bible translations, but it of course applies to all works written and spoken in other languages. On your next library visit, why not pick up two or three or four different translations of some literary work, and compare them over your homeschool study table. โ๏ธ
โกโ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.
The father of the Periodic Table, the great Russian chemist Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev, was born on this day in 1834. Happy birthday, Dmitri!
Why not celebrate this august anniversary with a simple interactive history of the Periodic Table prepared by the American Association for the Advancement of Science โ it’s quite suitable for homeschool high schoolers and advanced middle schoolers:
Attention all homeschool historians, geographers, artists, and treasure hunters! Here’s something new for you to search for this month: the Lowell National Historical Park “America the Beautiful” quarter from the U.S. Mint:
(Click to our blog post for the image: riverhouses.org/blog/2019-lowell-quarter)
Lowell National Historical Park “America the Beautiful” quarter, 2019. (Image: U.S. Mint.)
If you’re looking for a fun and easy way to include some interesting geographical and historical facts in your homeschooling schedule (as well as a little treasure hunting along the way), you can’t do better than to keep an eye on the “America the Beautiful” quarters series. This commemorative series began in 2010 and each year five new designs are issued featuring national parks and other historic sites in the U.S. states and territories.
The latest quarter commemorates the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts, and it goes into circulation this month:
“The Lowell National Historical Park Quarter commemorates the role of Lowell, MA in the Industrial Revolution, infusing the human story in addition to the industry processes and cultural environment at the time.
The era was defined in part by the ‘mill girls,’ young women who were recruited to work in the mills where they earned cash wages and lived in supervised, company-owned boarding houses. They became an important voice for labor by advocating for better working conditions, supporting abolition, and embracing education….
The design depicts a mill girl working at a power loom, known as the Draper loom, with its prominent circular bobbin battery. Both are considered among the greatest innovations in machine technology and changed the experience of textile factory work.“ (U.S. Mint)
The Mint has a remarkably comprehensive set of free lesson plans available for the whole America the Beautiful series โ you could make quite an American history course out of them. And the Mint also has a very nice simple album for this series (amzn.to/2D2A3dO) โ just the thing to get some educational treasure hunting under way.
What numismatical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? ๐
โกโ Come, here’s the map: The America the Beautiful quarters are a great tool for teaching about geography. Locate each park and each historic site in your homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and spread out your whole collection on atlas plate 35, the map of the entire United States. ๐บ๐ธ
โกโ Make it a tradition: Why not pick up an old roll of circulated quarters at the grocery store or the bank each week and invite your students to go through it around the kitchen table. A whole world of historical and geographical discovery awaits them. ๐ฐ
Tonight is the night of a full moon, so that means it’s time for a report from the 
![[Copernicus' heliocentric system]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/28/Copernican_heliocentrism_diagram-2.jpg)
