The River Houses Homeschool Network

📺 HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARIES for Your Homeschool Summer

9 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Although learning happens all year long, during the summer many homeschoolers follow a somewhat lighter schedule. One of the easiest and most constructive ways to spend your summer educational time (in the evening or when it’s too hot to go out) is to watch good quality documentaries together as a family.

Here are nine video documentary masterpieces and one great audio series that you can share with your homeschool students this summer over a period of days or weeks or months as you choose. I have embedded the first episode of each video series here; subsequent episodes are usually linked from the first.

The best educational approach to follow is not simply to watch these documentaries of course, but to discuss them. Students develop intellectually when they have to make mental effort under questioning. What did you think was the most interesting part of this episode? (Why?) What surprised you the most? (Why?) What was the most confusing part of the presentation? What are you skeptical about? (“I wonder if that’s really correct?”) What would you like to know more about? Don’t worry too much if your students’ attention is imperfect of if they are playing with legos while watching. In every case they will be absorbing names and dates and vocabulary and images that they will file away now and have ready for use at a later time.

The documentaries are listed here by date of production, and they are all suitable for high school students in my judgement. Some of course address difficult topics and so may not be appropriate for younger children. If your students were to watch and discuss all of these documentaries in a homeschool setting over the course of their high school years, they would almost certainly end up with a better understanding of history than most college students have today.

➢ Civilisation: A Personal View by Kenneth Clark — 13 episodes, 1969. A pioneering series on the history, art, and architecture of Europe. This series was the model for many others that followed. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Skin of Our Teeth.)

➢ The Ascent of Man by Jacob Bronowski — 13 episodes, 1973. A magnificent series on the history of science and civilization from ancient times to the present, conceived initially as a response to Clark’s history of art. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: Lower than the Angels.)

➢ The World at War from the BBC — 26 episodes, 1973. One of the most significant documentary series ever made, covering the entire history of World War II. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: A New Germany.)

➢ In Search of the Trojan War by Michael Wood — 6 episodes, 1985. Myth, history, and archeology come together in this excellent documentary on ancient Greece and the Trojan War. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Age of Heroes. Internet Archive: Complete series.)

➢ The Civil War by Ken Burns — 9 episodes, 1990. A pioneering and visually captivating history of the American Civil War. Perhaps the best American history documentary ever made. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Cause.)

➢ Liberty! The American Revolution from PBS — 6 episodes, 1997. An excellent documentary history of the American Revolution. (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: The Reluctant Revolutionaries.)

➢ Thomas Jefferson by Ken Burns — 2-part film, 1997. A documentary portrait of America’s most enigmatic founder. (Film description. Part 1.)

➢ John Adams by David McCullough — 7 episodes, 2008. An excellent dramatized biography of one of the most important figures in American history, based on the book by David McCullough (Series and episode descriptions. Episode 1: Join or Die.)

➢ They Shall Not Grow Old by Peter Jackson — Feature film, 2018. A remarkable history of World War I from the director of The Lord of the Rings. The film uses original footage that has been given new life through modern digital processing. (Film description.)

In addition to the video documentaries above, this audio documentary series developed by American singer Thomas Hampson, one of the world’s leading classical baritones, makes for excellent homeschool listening throughout the summer (or at any time of year).

➢ Song of America by Thomas Hampson — 13 episodes, 2011. A wonderful series of radio programs on the history of American classical song. Each episode focuses on a composer or on a poet whose work has been set to music: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Robert Frost, Stephen Foster, and many more. (About the series. Listen online.)

What historical epochs and momentous events are you studying in your homeschool this Hercules Term? ☀️

❡ Come, here’s the map: History and geography go hand in hand. As you watch the documentaries above, be sure to have your homeschool atlas on hand and open. 🌎

❡ Here, said the year: Add your name to our weekly River Houses mailing list and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “O! say can you see?”

8 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Next Tuesday (June 14th) is Flag Day, the anniversary of the date in 1777 when Congress adopted the Stars & Stripes as the national flag of the United States. That means our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this second week of June is “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” much better known as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” by Francis Scott Key (1779–1843):

Defence of Fort M’Henry

O! say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What so proudly we hail’d at the twilight’s last gleaming,
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watch’d, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there —
O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream —
’Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havock of war and the battle’s confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wash’d out their foul foot-steps’ pollution,
No refuge could save the hireling and slave,
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave;
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

O! thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov’d home, and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto — “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.

Key was a prominent Maryland lawyer who was involved in prisoner-exchange negotiations with the British during the too-little-remembered War of 1812 (1812–1815), sometimes called the Second War for American Independence. In September of 1814, Key was meeting with British naval officers on board a ship in Chesapeake Bay when the British began an artillery assault on Fort McHenry, the principal American defensive point at the entrance to Baltimore harbor.

Key was detained by the British for the duration of the attack so he wouldn’t be able to reveal any intelligence he had acquired about their plans, and he was thus left powerless with nothing to do but watch as his country’s fort was bombarded all through September 13th and overnight into the 14th. But as the sun rose on the 14th, by the dawn’s early light, he saw through a spyglass that the fort’s American defenders had survived the artillery bombardment with their flag still flying.

Key’s published poem commemorating the event, initially titled “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” was paired with a popular British club song of the day, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” and together they became known as “The Star-Spangled Banner” — and the rest is musical history.

You can see the real Star-Spangled Banner — the actual flag that flew that morning over Fort McHenry — at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. That’s a field trip you should certainly try to take at some point during your homeschooling years.

The original Star-Spangled Banner on exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. (Image: Smithsonian Institution.)

What wonderful words will you find and what musico-literary discoveries will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Gallantly streaming: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life. 🇺🇸

❡ Explore more: You can find a quick history of the national anthem (and all four of its verses) in your River Houses almanac. 📚

❡ Wave–brave: The National Anthem is a poem, so what is its rhyme scheme? Can your students work it out? In the first stanza we have: light–gleaming–fight–streaming air–there wave–brave. I’d make that ABAB CC DD. How about the second stanza? It has: deep–reposes–steep–discloses beam–stream wave–brave. Exactly the same pattern; and so also the third and fourth stanzas. And did you notice Key’s very clever stanza-endings? Each one finishes with the same two rhyming words: wave–brave. The whole poem is a precisely fitted piece of literary labor. ✒️

❡ Come, here’s the map: Baltimore, Maryland, appears on plate 43 in your recommended family atlas. The map will give you a real sense of how far up into the Chesapeake Bay the British navy had penetrated during the War of 1812. 🗺

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year, and add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🗞

🌍 🇸🇰 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: The Wooden Churches of Slovakia

8 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Slovakia in central Europe is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Slovakia’s World Heritage Sites: the Wooden Churches of the Carpathian Mountains.

Local architectural styles developed over centuries are on display in this remarkably preserved collection of village churches:

The wooden churches of the Slovak part of Carpathian Mountain Area illustrate the coexistence of different religious faiths within a small territory of central Europe. The series of eight properties includes Roman Catholic, Protestant and Greek Orthodox churches that were built between the 16th and 18th centuries, most of them in quite isolated villages, using wood as the main material and traditional construction techniques. Within the framework of their common features, the churches exhibit some typological variations, in accordance with the correspondent faith, expressed in their plans, interior spaces and external appearance. The churches also bear testimony to the development of major architectural and artistic trends during the period of construction and its interpretation and adaptation to a specific geographical and cultural context. Interiors are decorated with wall and ceiling paintings and works of art that enrich the cultural significance of the properties. (World Heritage Centre #1273)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of the Wooden Churches of the Carpathian Mountains on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

The wooden church of Saint Nicholas in Bodružal. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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 will you be exploring in your homeschool this Hercules 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Literary 800s

7 June 2022 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 Poetry (861), 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 academic 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. 🗞

🇫🇷 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Learning About D-Day 1944

5 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Tomorrow (Monday) is the 78th anniversary of D-Day, one of the most momentous days in modern history. On the 6th of June in 1944, the armed forces of Great Britain, the United States, Canada, and their allies, landed on the beaches of Normandy in France and began the long struggle to retake the continent of Europe from the occupying armies of Nazi Germany.

If you have older homeschool students who are learning about World War II, one of the best approaches you can take to an event like D-Day is to listen with them to some of the live news reports that were broadcast that day as the situation was unfolding.

Here are the very first tentative reports from CBS radio in New York, beginning just after midnight on 6 June 1944, made available by the Internet Archive. They are quite gripping, and you and your students can listen to them just as the American public would have listened to them in the early hours of D-Day morning. Note that the first reports were coming from German sources, and the announcers were cautioning people that they might be disinformation:

You can listen to the whole day’s broadcasts — a true one-of-a-kind history lesson — on the Internet Archive’s D-Day index page here:

➢ Live D-Day News Broadcasts from the Internet Archive (archive.org)

Historical anniversary days like this are also days for geography. Every homeschool should have a good atlas or collection of maps — we recommend the National Geographic atlas, but there are many other excellent ones also available. In the National Geographic atlas, plates 61 and 63 will show you the English Channel and the location of the invasion beaches. Keep those maps in view as you listen to the news broadcasts above and you will be able to locate the places being mentioned by the reporters in real time.

The English Channel between Britain and France. The Normandy invasion on 6 June 1944 took place along the coastline between Cherbourg on the west and Le Havre on the east.

Help your students understand how news would have traveled in 1944 as well. There was no Internet, of course, and no cell phones. Television was very limited. News reports came in (as you can hear in the broadcast) over teletype machines, and announcers would read and comment on the teletype reports. It was wartime, so there was censorship and disinformation all around. Today we can read simplified historical summaries of major events like D-Day, but as they were happening those events were often unclear and their outcomes uncertain.

What other historical anniversaries will you be remembering in your homeschool this Hercules Term?

❡ Explore more: For a quick homeschool review of the D-Day invasion and its place in the history of World War II, turn to page 399 (and the surrounding pages) in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 📚

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries. Print your own copy of our River Houses calendar of educational events to follow along with us, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 5 June 2022

5 June 2022 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.

🗓 💪 This is the first full week of HERCULES TERM, our summer term in the River Houses. Hercules Term runs from June through August.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is South Dakota, and our COUNTRIES are Singapore 🇸🇬, Slovakia 🇸🇰, Slovenia 🇸🇮, and the Solomon Islands 🇸🇧. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

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

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (5 June 2022) — Today is the 156th day of 2022; there are 209 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 347–353 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 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. 🇨🇳 🗽

Monday (6 June 2022) — 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. 🇫🇷

Tuesday (7 June 2022) — On this day in 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a resolution to the Continental Congress “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” The formal adoption of the Lee Resolution less than a month later, on 2 July 1776, established American independence. 🇺🇸 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 (8 June 2022) — Today is the birthday of Francis Crick (1916–2004), co-discoverer (with James Watson) of the double-helical structure of DNA. 🧬 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of June is Francis Scott Key’s “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” much better known today as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” for Flag Day (the 14th). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🇺🇸 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Wooden Churches of the Carpathian Mountains in Slovakia. 🇸🇰

Thursday (9 June 2022) — The Roman emperor Nero died (by suicide) on this day in the year 68, sparking a civil war and “the year of four emperors.” 🏛 And speaking of emperors, today is the birthday of the great Russian emperor Peter the Great (1672–1725). 👑

Friday (10 June 2022) — Today is the birthday of celebrated children’s book author Maurice Sendak (1928–2012). 🖋 And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Fringilline Finches, Cardueline Finches, Longspurs, and Snow Buntings. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (11 June 2022) — Alexander the Great, one of the most influential figures in ancient history, died on this day in the year 343 B.C. at the age of only 32. You can read more about him on page 97 of your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🏛 On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston a committee of five to draft a declaration of independence. 🖋 📜 🇺🇸 And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: Spica, the brightest star in the constellation Virgo. 🌟

Sunday (12 June 2022) — The Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated on this day in 1939 in Cooperstown, New York. ⚾️ And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Montana 🇺🇸, Somalia 🇸🇴, South Africa 🇿🇦, South Sudan 🇸🇸, and Spain 🇪🇸.

🥂 🗽 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for “The Tank Man” and all the Tiananmen freedom-protestors of June 1989, is the Chinese word 自由 (zì-yóu), pronounced tsi-yo: “Liberty.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week — you can take it up, or make up one of your own (“To North American dinosaurs!”), or invite a different person to come up with one for each meal (“To unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast in your homeschool this week? 🥂

🌏 🇸🇬 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Singapore in southeastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the thoroughly domesticated Geylang River of central Singapore. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Geylang River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Geylang River in central Singapore. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ Children of Ocean: Why not do a homeschool study of world rivers over the course of the year? Take the one we select each week (above), or start with the river lists in your almanac (pages 693–695), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you. 🌎 🌍 🌏

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? 😊

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

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: South Dakota, Solomon Islands, and More

5 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.

Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and our recommended homeschool reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 418), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
South Dakota State Seal
SOUTH DAKOTA (the 40th state, 2 November 1889) — The Coyote State, The Mount Rushmore State. Capital: Pierre. South Dakota can be found on page 585 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 419). State bird: Ring-necked Pheasant (bird guide page 60). Website: sd.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week posts, using your reference library as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for just a few minutes each week and your little lesson is done. By the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a wealth of new geographical and historical information, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 🔍

❡ Maps to color: National Geographic has a large blank United States map and a blank world map, complete with flags, printable in sections and ready to receive the colored pencils of your students. Why not give them a try this week. 🖍

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

🇸🇬 SINGAPORE in southeastern Asia. Population: 5,866,139. Capital: Singapore. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.sg (in English).
🇸🇰 SLOVAKIA in east-central Europe. Population: 5,436,066. Capital: Bratislava. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.government.gov.sk (in English and Slovak).
🇸🇮 SLOVENIA in southeastern Europe. Population: 2,102,106. Capital: Ljubljana. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.gov.si (in English and Slovenian).
🇸🇧 SOLOMON ISLANDS in the western Pacific Ocean. Population: 690,598. Capital: Honiara. Government: Parliamentary democracy under constitutional monarchy. Website: www.parliament.gov.sb (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 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules 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. 🇺🇸 🌎

🔭 WATCHERS OF THE SKIES – June 2022

4 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

On the first Saturday of every month we post educational skywatching notes for the homeschool month ahead. Here’s the monthly northern hemisphere night-sky review for June 2022 from the Hubble Space Telescope’s website — it features June constellations, including our term-namesake, Hercules:

And here’s another June night-sky review, courtesy of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California — it also features Hercules, as well as early morning planets:

One of the easiest astronomical exercises you and your students can do each month is print out your own copy of the current two-page Evening Sky Map and monthly sky calendar available from skymaps.com:

➢ Evening Sky Maps – Northern Hemisphere Edition (updated monthly)

Each map includes a constellation chart for the month as well as a schedule of upcoming astronomical events and an astronomical glossary. Give a copy to your students and ask them to study it and report back to you on three notable things you can watch for this month. (And as they report to you, ask them questions about what they’re telling you.) Do that for a few minutes each month, and before you know it you’ll have a skywatching expert in your homeschool.

The best stargazing nights in June will be toward the end of the month: the moon will be new (and the sky darkest) on the 28th. As always, you can look up the moon’s phases in your River Houses almanac and also on the timeanddate.com website. 🌑 🌓 🌕 🌗 🌑

June is the first month of Hercules Term, our spring term in the River Houses. Our Great Star for the month of June is the brilliant blue giant Spica (alpha Virginis), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us through the year as we learn about twelve of the high lights of the northern hemisphere night sky. 🌟

June is also the month of the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere — the astronomical beginning of summer — which falls this year on Tuesday the 21st. (In the southern hemisphere the 21st 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. 🏙 🌃 🏙

What celestial observations will you and your students be making in your homeschool this June? 😊

❡ All the star-sown sky: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. Our recommended backyard star guide and homeschool world atlas both contain charts of the constellations that will help you learn your way around the heavens. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time with your students beneath the starry vault. ✨

❡ The starry archipelagoes: For a great weekly astronomical essay, perfect for older homeschoolers, pay a visit to “The Sky This Week” from the U.S. Naval Observatory. These well-written pages, posted each Tuesday, usually focus on one or two special astronomical events or phenomena. If you have high school science students, have them read these pages aloud to you each week, or ask them to study them and narrate a summary back to you. 🌌

❡ Worlds scoop their arcs: Where are the planets right now? Not as we see them in the sky, but rather where are they in their orbits around the sun? Find out at The Planets Today. 🪐

❡ Make friendship with the stars: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🔭

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Wagtails and Pipits

3 June 2022 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.

This week’s birds are the Wagtails and Pipits (pages 430–433).

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:

WAGTAILS · PIPITS — Family Motacillidae. Slender-billed birds. Most species pump their tails as they walk. Wagtail flight is strongly undulating. Species: 67 World, 10 N.A. [North America]

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. How many species? (67 worldwide.) Are there any near us? (10 species in North America, and the individual maps will give us more detail.) What are their distinctive features? (Slender-billed, pump their tails up and down, undulating flight, and so on.) (And “undulating” 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, why not investigate the American Pipit (page 432), the only really widespread American species in the family, found all across the continent.

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 American Pipit? (6½ inches long.) What is its scientific name? (Anthus rubescens.) 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.)

Pipits are rather plain birds of open country, and they are most often seen on the ground or flying in small flocks. They nest in northern tundra regions and commonly winter in open farm fields and waste places, where they are well camouflaged when at rest. Their name comes from their common flight call.

For a second species in the Wagtail and Pipit family this week, take a look at the Eastern Yellow Wagtail (page 430), the only wagtail species that really has gotten a foothold on the North American continent.

Wagtails are mainly found in the Old World, and only a few species have ranges that extend eastward into western Alaska. They are generally more boldly patterned than pipits, but they are also ground-loving birds of open country.

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 is 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 will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules 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 using the free eBird website sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: 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. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE – June 2022: “Dance” and “Airport Infrastructure”

3 June 2022 by Bob O'Hara

Calling all homeschool photographers! One of the independent projects we recommend to homeschool students is the monthly Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. The June challenge is now open and the announced themes are “Dance” and “Airport Infrastructure.” You can see sample photos and learn how to submit your own entry here:

➢ Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge – Open Themes (updated monthly)

The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge encourages people to take and submit high-quality images for the public Wikimedia Commons database, the source from which Wikipedia and many other websites draw their images. Once you’ve registered and submitted an entry, you can also participate in the selection of future themes and in the voting for the monthly winners.

If you have enthusiastic young photographers in your home academy, why not encourage them to sign up and submit an entry. Working on a specific theme over a period of a few weeks is a great way for students to develop both their technical camera skills and their visual composition skills. And if you submit a number of entries over time you can assemble a personal portfolio page to show off your work — that would be good experience in how to create a professional presentation of yourself for future employment or college admissions.

You can find more ideas for independent homeschool projects in a wide range of scientific and scholarly fields on our River Houses Lunar Society page.

What photographic, artistic, and scientific discoveries will you be making in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 😊

❡ Explore more: Your recommended world almanac has a long list of famous artists on pages 174–177, and that list includes famous photographers. Why not pick out a name or two to research each month, either online or on your next visit to your local library — it would be a great way to give your students a little extra photographic inspiration! 📸

❡ Follow along with us: This is one of our regular “Lunar Society” posts about the many independent projects we recommend to homeschool students. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

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