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 (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:
🇺🇸 Wyoming State QuarterWYOMING (the 44th state, 10 July 1890) — The Cowboy State, the Equality State. Capital: Cheyenne. Wyoming can be found on page 590 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “From Algonquin words for ‘large prairie place,’ ‘at the big plains,’ or ‘on the great plain.’” (almanac page 430). State bird: Western Meadowlark (bird guide page 530). Website:www.wyo.gov.
❡ 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, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 😊
This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
🇹🇿 TANZANIA in eastern Africa. Population: 54,451,343. Capital: Dodoma/Dar es Salaam. Type of government: presidential republic. Website:www.tanzania.go.tz (in Swahili and English).
🇹🇭 THAILAND in southeastern Asia. Population: 68,615,858. Capital: Bangkok. Type of government: constitutional monarchy. Website:www.thaigov.go.th (in Thai and English).
🇹🇱 TIMOR-LESTE (East Timor) in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Population: 1,321,929. Capital: Dili. Type of government: semi-presidential republic. Website:timor-leste.gov.tl (in Timorese, Portuguese, and English).
🇹🇬 TOGO in southwestern Africa. Population: 8,176,449. Capital: Lomé. Type of government: presidential republic. Website:primature.gouv.tg (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 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 geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ 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.
❡ 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊
There is a total solar eclipse coming on Tuesday (2 July 2019), but alas it’s only going to be visible in South America (where we have few readers).
Path of the 2 July 2019 total solar eclipse. (Image: timeanddate.com.)
But don’t despair! Through the miracle of modern technology you and your homeschool students can watch this eclipse live from the comfort of your own living room. The eclipse page at the excellent timeanddate.com website has wonderful maps, charts, and animations of the eclipse’s path, and on the day itself it will host a live feed of the eclipse’s progress:
The animations are wonderful and will give your students a great sense of how tiny the area of totality really is — the area where observers will see the sun fully covered by the moon.
➔
What astronomical alignments and stellar spectacles will you be examining in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ Come, here’s the map: If you turn to plate 51 in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books) you’ll be able to discover more details about the countries that the zone of totality will pass through. 🌏
The spring bird migration season is over, but there’s plenty to observe and record with your students as the summer proceeds — and you can contribute to science along the way.
Two observations from one of my own recent lists, with Breeding Codes included.
If you keep track of the birds you see in your backyard or in a local natural area using the free eBird website from Cornell University — something we always recommend to homeschoolers — be sure to note important behaviors you see at this time of year, behaviors related to nesting and reproduction.
When you enter your daily bird list, eBird gives you the option to enter a “Breeding Code.” These codes document the fact that a particular species is breeding (or probably breeding) in your area, and they help scientists to monitor the status of regional bird populations. The different Breeding Codes appear in a drop-down menu right on the page as you’re entering your data.
eBird Breeding Codes you can enter along with your regular observations. (See the eBird help files for detailed explanations.)
Even if you don’t see (for example) a nest with eggs, there are many other ways that breeding can be confirmed. Early in the season it’s common to see birds carrying nest material — that’s confirmation that nest-building is underway. And later in the season you will often see parent birds feeding their young for several days after they have left the nest — that’s clear evidence that eggs were laid and young were successfully fledged, even if the nest was never located. (That’s the code you see in my own record above.)
And if you have young photographers in your homeschool, be sure to put their developing talents to good use as well, and add images to your eBird records to document not only the presence of the birds you see, but also their summertime behaviors.
What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊
❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that’s a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just out to the backyard. 🦉
Charles Messier (1730–1817) was a comet hunter. He spent hours at his telescope looking for faint fuzzy blobs that were slightly moving against the distant stellar background — the sure sign of a comet that might be on its way toward us. But Messier found that he was often distracted, sometimes for days, by faint fuzzy blobs that turned out not to be moving, and so were not comets.
He decided to compile a catalog of these not-comet objects to prevent himself and others from wasting time on them, and the now-famous Messier Catalog was born.
Messier’s 110 not-comets assembled into a composite photo by Michael A. Phillips. This collection of clusters, nebulae, and galaxies includes some of the most beautiful objects in the universe. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
What Messier compiled, without realizing it, was a catalog of many of the most spectacular astronomical objects in the sky — nebulae, star clusters, and galaxies — objects that were poorly understood from a scientific point of view in his own day. (The nature of galaxies, for example, as independent “island universes,” was not understood until well into the twentieth century.)
You can find a spectacularly illustrated modern collection of all the Messier objects at the Hubble Space Telescope’s website:
And if you have a small telescope, you can spot many of them on a dark night from your own backyard. 🔭
So, happy birthday, Charles! 🎉 You didn’t become especially famous for your comets. ☄️ But you did become very famous for your not-comets. 😊
What astronomical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ Choose something like a star: If you’d like some more simple and comfortable homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us month by month, making twelve heavenly friends-for-life over the course of the year. 🌟
The proto-urban archeological site of Sarazm in Tajikistan includes remains dating back nearly 6000 years. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
The settlement remains at the Sarazm site date back nearly 6000 years:
“Sarazm, which means “where the land begins,” is an archaeological site bearing testimony to the development of human settlements in Central Asia, from the 4th millennium BCE to the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. The ruins demonstrate the early development of proto-urbanization in this region. This centre of settlement, one of the oldest in Central Asia, is situated between a mountainous region suitable for cattle rearing by nomadic pastoralists, and a large valley conducive to the development of agriculture and irrigation by the first settled populations in the region. Sarazm also demonstrates the existence of commercial and cultural exchanges and trade relations with peoples over an extensive geographical area, extending from the steppes of Central Asia and Turkmenistan, to the Iranian plateau, the Indus valley and as far as the Indian Ocean.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #1141)
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 post one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list online at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.
What world treasures have you explored in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books) for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; 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 UNESCO’s one-paragraph 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 and geographical information. 🇹🇯
“On view now until December 1 – William Steig’s Sylvester and the Magic Pebble: A Golden Anniversary.” (Image: Carle Museum.)
Writer and illustrator Eric Carle is the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and many other popular children’s books — today happens to be his 90th birthday. The Carle Museum was established as a national center for the public exhibition and academic study of children’s book art:
“The mission of The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, a non-profit organization in Amherst, Massachusetts, is to inspire a love of art and reading through picture books. A leading advocate in its field, The Carle collects, preserves, presents, and celebrates picture books and picture book illustrations from around the world. In addition to underscoring the cultural, historical, and artistic significance of picture books and their art form, The Carle offers educational programs that provide a foundation for arts integration and literacy.
“The Carle houses more than 11,000 objects, including 7,300 permanent collection illustrations, three art galleries, an art studio, a theater, picture book and scholarly libraries, and educational programs for families, scholars, educators, and schoolchildren. Educational offerings include professional training for educators around the country and four onsite graduate programs in Children’s Literature in collaboration with Simmons College.“ (Carle Museum)
The Carle Museum has a full schedule of exhibitions and special programs for members. Alas, not many of the exhibitions are available online, but there are quite a few educational resources available through the museum’s online shop. If you and your students love picture books, the Carle Museum is a great place to bookmark and explore.
What illustrated treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊
❡ 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. 😊
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! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.
🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Idaho, and our COUNTRIES are Switzerland 🇨🇭, Syria 🇸🇾, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 23 June) — Today is the 174th day of 2019; there are 191 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ The great English mathematician Alan Turing was born on this day in 1912. His pioneering work in computer science and cryptanalysis was instrumental in the breaking of German codes during World War II. 🖥
Monday (24 June) — On this day in the year 1497, the Italian-English explorer John Cabot (ca. 1450–1500) landed in Newfoundland and became the first European since the Vikings to set foot in North America. ⚓️
Tuesday (25 June) — On this day in 1876, the combined forces of several Plains Indian tribes under the command of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated a U.S. Army regiment under the command of George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known ever since as “Custer’s Last Stand.” ⚔️ And today is the birthday of American children’s book illustrator Eric Carle (b. 1929), author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and founder of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. 👨🎨
Thursday (27 June) — Today is the birthday of the pioneering African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). ✒️ And it’s also the birthday of the American entertainer Bob Keeshan (1927–2004), much better known as Captain Kangaroo! 📺
Saturday (29 June) — The famous French economist Frédéric Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. 💰 And today is the birthday of the French writer and air force pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), author of The Little Prince. 🐘
🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May the road to happiness be lighted by virtue.”
❡ 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?
🌍 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Tajikistan is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Yaghnob River, one of the principal tributaries of the regional Zeravshan River. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Yaghnob River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
❡ 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 691–693), 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? 😊
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 (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:
🇺🇸 Idaho State QuarterIDAHO (the 43rd state, 3 July 1890) — The Gem State. Capital: Boise. Idaho can be found on page 569 in your almanac and on plates 36 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Said to be a coined name with the invented meaning ‘gem of the mountains’; suggested for the Pikes Peak mining territory (Colorado), then applied to the new mining territory of the Pacific Northwest. Another theory suggests Idaho may be Kiowa Apache term for the Comanche” (almanac page 430). State bird: Mountain Bluebird (bird guide page 408). Website:www.idaho.gov.
❡ 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, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 😊
This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:
🇨🇭 SWITZERLAND in central Europe. Population: 8,292,809. Capital: Geneva. Website:www.ch.ch (in English and several other languages).
🇸🇾 SYRIA in the Middle East. Population: 19,454,263. Capital: Damascus. Website:www.egov.sy (in Arabic).
🇹🇼 TAIWAN off the southeast coast of Asia. Population: 23,545,963. Capital: Taipei. Website:www.taiwan.gov.tw (in Chinese and English).
🇹🇯 TAJIKISTAN in central Asia. Population: 8,604,882. Capital: Dushanbe. Website:www.president.tj (in Tajik, Russian, English, and 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 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 geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ 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.
❡ 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊
Many of the weekly poems we write about here at the River Houses are aimed at high-school–level homeschoolers, but this week’s poem, for the fourth week of June, is easy summer fun for all ages. It’s Robert Louis Stevenson’s “The Swing,” for summertime play:
The Swing
How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!
Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
Rivers and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside —
Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown —
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!
“The Swing” was published in Stevenson’s classic collection A Child’s Garden of Verses, one of the best-loved children’s books of all time.
What wonderful words have you found and what poetical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ Up in the air and down: 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: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Robert Louis Stevenson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.
Today is the June solstice — we call it the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the winter solstice. The summer solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of summer, just as the winter solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of winter.
Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:
The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23º). The two solstices occur at the points in the orbit when the axis of rotation is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter) and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur when the earth’s axis of rotation is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so).
The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)
NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary — solstices, equinoxes, and more.
Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)
What calendrical events and astronomical transitions will you be marking in your homeschool this season? 😊
❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students about the seasons and the stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 🔭 🌞
Panoramic view of Drottningholm Palace in Sweden. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)
Drottningholm Palace and its associated grounds, near Stockholm, have been an official residence of the Swedish royal family since the seventeenth century:
“The Royal Domain of Drottningholm, situated on the island of Lovön close to Stockholm, is an exceptionally well-preserved ensemble of gardens and buildings with original interior furnishings. It includes Drottningholm Palace, the Palace Theatre, the Chinese Pavilion, Canton Village, the gardens and part of Malmen, and has been used for pleasure and summer recreation from the Baroque era until today. As the current home of the Swedish Royal Family, Drottningholm upholds a cultural continuity with the original purpose of the site.
“Drottningholm Palace is representative of 17th and 18th century western and northern European architecture, and the palace grounds were also created during that period. The palace was created with strong references to 17th century Italian and French architecture. The interiors reflect Sweden’s ambitions as one of the most powerful nations of 17th century Europe, from both cultural and political viewpoints. Leading Swedish architects worked together with the best craftspeople in Europe to create a unique ensemble of buildings with rich and lavish interiors.“ (UNESCO World Heritage Centre #559)
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 post one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list online at the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.
What world treasures have you explored in your homeschool this week? 😊
❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books) for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; 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 UNESCO’s one-paragraph 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 and geographical information. 🇸🇪
Tuesday is our regular Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and this week we have a big contest for you from the National Archives honoring the upcoming centennial of the 19th Amendment that gave women the right to vote.
The “Rightfully Yours” contest is open to students in grades 4–6:
“As the National Archives celebrates the centennial of women’s suffrage through its Rightfully Hers exhibit, this youth competition (for students in grades 4, 5 and 6) will honor the milestone achievement while encouraging young people to think about what the 19th Amendment and the path to Universal Suffrage means to them.
“Our Grand Prize winner will receive a trip to our National Archives Sleepover and all winners will receive free gifts from the National Archives Store and may even have their artwork incorporated into 19th Amendment inspired products!
“Theme: Create a visual piece of artwork that answers the question: What does the 100th anniversary of women winning the right to vote mean to you and your community?“ (National Archives Foundation)
You can find all the details at the Archives Foundation website:
(I note that the rules specify a grade range but don’t say anything in particular about homeschoolers. If you plan to enter you should probably check with them for a clarification — I certainly think a homeschooler should win!) 😊
This contest is part of a year-long centennial celebration of the 19th Amendment at the National Archives. You can see more of the scheduled centennial events and activities here:
Get your students thinking and get them sketching, and start working on your entry for this grand national contest!
What educational discoveries have you made at your library lately? 😊
❡ 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. 😊
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