🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 14 January 2024

Quick Freshes is our regular Sunday almanac for 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.

📖 Have you gotten your new WORLD ALMANAC for the new 2024 year? It’s one of the handiest educational reference books you can have in a homeschool library.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Mississippi, and our COUNTRIES are India 🇮🇳, Indonesia 🇮🇩, Iran 🇮🇷, and Iraq 🇮🇶. (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 backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 333–348 in your current world almanac. Browse through our regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (14 January 2024) — Today is the 14th day of 2024; there are 352 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 349–355 in your (brand new 2024!) River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is Ratification Day: on this day in 1784 in Annapolis, Maryland, Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American Revolutionary War. 🕊

Monday (15 January 2024) — Today is the midpoint of Orion Term and thus one of the four cross-quarter days of the River Houses year. How are things going in your homeschool? 🗓 Today is also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday in the United States. 🇺🇸 Queen Elizabeth I of England was crowned on this day in 1559. For an illustrated outline of the historical period named for her, turn to pages 260–261 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. 👑 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of January is James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and Sing” (1900), for American minister and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., born on this day in 1929. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🇺🇸

Tuesday (16 January 2024) — On this day in the year 27 B.C., the Roman Senate conferred the title “Augustus” on the general and de facto dictator Octavian, the great-nephew and adopted son of Julius Caesar, and the last remnants of the old republic were swept away. 👑

Wednesday (17 January 2024) — Benjamin Franklin was born on this day in 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. 📰 One of the most important battles in the Southern Theater of the American Revolution, the Battle of Cowpens, took place on this day in 1781 near Cowpens, South Carolina. ⚔️ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Elephanta Caves in India. 🇮🇳

Thursday (18 January 2024) — On this day in 1788, the first convict ships from Britain, now known as the First Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay, Australia. 🇦🇺 And today is the birthday of the Polish-British mathematician and historian of science Jacob Bronowski (1908–1974), creator of the pioneering documentary series “The Ascent of Man.” 📺

Friday (19 January 2024) — Today is the birthday of the polemical American lawyer, author, and freedom-philosopher Lysander Spooner (1808–1887). ⚖️ It’s also the birthday of the spooky American poet and short-story writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849). 👻 And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the New World Vultures, Ospreys, Hawks, Kites, and Eagles. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (20 January 2024) — One of the first two men to walk on the moon, American astronaut Buzz Aldrin, was born on this day in 1930. 👨‍🚀

Sunday (21 January 2024) — Today is St. Agnes Day, named for Agnes of Rome, a teenage Christian martyr of the fourth century and a favorite subject of artists and writers for hundreds of years. On this day, saith tradition, young girls will have their future husbands revealed to them in their dreams: “Agnes sweet, and Agnes fair, / Hither, hither, now repair; / Bonny Agnes, let me see / The lad who is to marry me.” 💍 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Illinois 🇺🇸, Ireland 🇮🇪, Israel 🇮🇱, Italy 🇮🇹, and Jamaica 🇯🇲.

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is in honor of Martin Luther King’s January 15th birthday: “Let freedom ring!”

❡ Toasts can be a wonderful educational tradition for your homeschool lunch or dinner 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: India in southern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the great Ganges, one of the world’s most historic rivers. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Ganges River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ 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, or start with the river lists in the “World Exploration and Geography” section of your world almanac, 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. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

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❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡