![[The River Houses]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/arms-icon-100x100.png "The River Houses"){kind=icon}
![[Homeschool Calendars and Planners]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/calendar-example-150x64.jpg)
Print your own set of free homeschool planners and educational calendars for the upcoming homeschool year that begins in September.
🖊️ 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “Sumer is i-cumin in”
![[Medieval Music]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/sumer-is-icumin-in-150x47.jpg){kind=small}
“Loudly sing, cuckoo!” (Our ancient homeschool poem-of-the-week, anonymously, for the beginning of our summer term.)
🗓️ 🍃 🏸 HAPPY HOMESCHOOL JUNE from the River Houses!
![[Roman Calendar Mosaic]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/june-mosaic-150x148.jpeg)
Happy homeschool June! Here are some little lessons, teaching traditions, and wonderful educational opportunities you and your students can watch for this month.
🗓️ 💪 HERCULES TERM and the River Houses Homeschool Year
![[Hercules Constellation Chart (1822)]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/hercules-jamieson-1822-150x125.jpg)
We divide the homeschool year into four three-month terms in the River Houses. Today is the first day of Hercules Term, our summer term, named for the Great Hero of the Heavens. Hercules Term runs from June through August.
🖊️ 🎂 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Birthday to Walt Whitman
![[Walt Whitman Stamp]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/whitman-stamp-1940-138x150.jpg)
“Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, / Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, / A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, / Chair’d in the adamant of Time.” (Happy birthday to the great Poet of America, Walt Whitman, born on this day in 1819.)
🌕 HOMESCHOOL CITIZEN-SCIENCE PROJECTS for May (and June!)
![[Full Moon]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/full-moon-square-150x147.jpeg)
Our May full-moon report on the many “citizen-science” projects around the world that you and your students can participate in from the comfort of your little home academy. Pick one and get started today!
🗓️ QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 31 May 2026
![[Weekly Homeschool Almanac]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/calendar-2-150x85.jpg)
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons for the week ahead, including: Old terms, new terms, Revolutionary resolutions, fabulous flights, summer poems, Dewey decimals, Sierra Leonian rivers, a toast to new worlds, and more!
🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: North Dakota, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and More
![[North Dakota State Seal]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Seal_of_North_Dakota-150x150.jpg)
Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: North Dakota, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, and Sierra Leone. Open up your atlas and almanac and follow along with us!
🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Indigobirds, Old World Sparrows, & Allies
![[Homeschool Science & Nature Study]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/birds-indigobirds-150x99.png)
Come along on our homeschool tour of North American birds and pick up some great science and natural history lessons along the way. This week: the Indigobirds and Whydahs, the Weavers, the Estrildid Finches, and the Old World Sparrows.
🇺🇸 WEEKLY AMERICAN HERITAGE: Rocky Mountain National Park
![[Homeschool American Heritage]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/america-250-150x120.jpg)
For America’s 250th anniversary, discover the history and landscape of the United States with your homeschool students. This week: Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
🎓 🎉 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC & HISTORY: Let Us Rejoice!
![[Celebrate!]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/party-popper-emoji.png)
Invite your homeschoolers to learn a few lines this week from the most famous of all medieval student songs – it’s an educational inheritance they can carry with them all around the world.
🎂 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: Happy Birthday, Ralph! (Emerson, that is)
Invite your homeschool students to discover the work of the great American essayist, poet, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, born this day in 1803. Emerson is wonderful summer reading for homeschoolers.
🇺🇸 “AFTER A HUNDRED YEARS / Nobody knows the Place”
“Weeds triumphant ranged / Strangers strolled and spelled / At the lone Orthography / Of the Elder Dead.” (A special peaceful homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for Memorial Day.)
🗓️ QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 24 May 2026
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons for the week ahead, including: Memorial Days, critical eclipses, relativistic predictions, vocal virtuosos, amazing ascents, American writers, Samoan rivers, a toast to heroes, and more!
🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Colorado, Samoa, Saudi Arabia, and More
![[Colorado State Seal]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Seal_of_Colorado-150x150.jpg)
Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: Colorado, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé & Príncipe, and Saudi Arabia. Open up your atlas and almanac and follow along with us!
🇺🇸 🕊️ HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Memorial Day
![[US Flag Stamp 2019]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/us-flag-stamp-2019-150x132.jpg)
“Rest, comrades, rest and sleep! / The thoughts of men shall be / As sentinels to keep / Your rest from danger free.” (Little homeschool lessons in literature, history, geography, and music, for the Memorial Day weekend.)
🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Bulbuls, Starlings, Waxwings, & Allies
![[Homeschool Science & Nature Study]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/birds-bulbuls-150x112.png)
Come along on our homeschool tour of North American birds and pick up some great science and natural history lessons along the way. This week: the Bulbuls, Starlings, Waxwings, Silky-Flycatchers, Olive Warblers, and Accentors.
🖊️ 🎓 GRADUATION SEASON: “Set me free to find my calling”
“Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow, / Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.” (Our promising late May poem-of-the-week, from Marta Keen, for homeschool graduation season and the coming summer.)
📏 ⏱️ 🌡️ HAPPY WORLD METROLOGY DAY!
![[Metric System Stamp]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/metric-system-stamp-korea-2019-150x115.jpg)
On this day in 1875, the meter was adopted as an international standard of measurement. That makes today World Metrology Day! Why not invite your students to take a few scientific measurements in your homeschool this week.
🇺🇸 WEEKLY AMERICAN HERITAGE: Niobrara National Scenic River
For America’s 250th anniversary, discover the history and landscape of the United States with your homeschool students. This week: the Niobrara National Scenic River in Nebraska.
🇨🇦 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC & HISTORY: “To find the hand of Franklin”
![[Franklin Reward]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/franklin-reward-150x98.jpg)
To understand a complex and beautiful piece of art or music, your students must first learn a great deal about the world — names, places, people, and events that may seem at first to be unrelated.
🗓️ QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 17 May 2026
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons for the week ahead, including: Migrating birds, maritime mysteries, graduation poems, inimitable investigators, Swedish naturalists, Rwandan rivers, a toast to blissful days, and more!
🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Nebraska, Rwanda, Saint Vincent, and More
![[Nebraska State Seal]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Seal_of_Nebraska-150x150.jpg)
Take a homeschool tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world with the River Houses. This week: Nebraska, Rwanda, Saint Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent & the Grenadines. Open up your atlas and almanac and follow along with us!
🖊️ 🌟 WONDERFUL WORDS: Hymn to the North Star
![[Polaris]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/polaris-150x120.jpg)
“A beauteous type of that unchanging good, / That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray / The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.” (An extra astronomical homeschool poem-of-the-week, from William Cullen Bryant, for Polaris, our Great Star for the month of May.)
🖊️ 🍃 WONDERFUL WORDS: Robert Frost’s “Birches”
![[Robert Frost Stamp (1974)]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/robert-frost-stamp-1974-97x150.jpg)
“One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.” (Our youthful homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Frost, for springtime play and growing up.)
🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Mockingbirds, Catbirds, & Thrashers
![[Homeschool Science & Nature Study]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/birds-mockingbirds-150x86.png)
Come along on our homeschool tour of North American birds and pick up some great science and natural history lessons along the way. This week: the loquacious Mockingbirds, Catbirds, and Thrashers.
🚀 HOMESCHOOL ASTRONOMY: Skylab, America’s First Space Station
![[Skylab Stamp]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/skylab-stamp-1974-150x95.jpg)
Do you have a future astronaut in your homeschool? Then why not take a few minutes this week to learn about Skylab, America’s first space station, launched on this day in 1973.