🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 12 January 2025

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. Subscribe to our free homeschool newsletter 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 2025 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 gibbous and waxing — a good time for moon watching! You can explore the solar system 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 in the Astronomy section your current world almanac. Browse through our regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🦦 HORACE THE OTTER says your LATIN word for the week is the adjective gravis, which means heavy or weighty. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Grave, gravid, gravity, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (12 January 2025) — Today is the 12th day of 2025; there are 353 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your (brand new 2025!) River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is also the birthday of the French author Charles Perrault (1628–1703), who gave the world Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Sleeping Beauty, and many other beloved fairy tales. 🛌 And it’s also the birthday of the American writer Jack London (1876–1916). 🐺

Monday (13 January 2025) — The National Geographic Society was founded on this day in 1888 in Washington, D.C. 🗺 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses on the many wonderful citizen-science projects that are available to homeschool students. 🌕

Tuesday (14 January 2025) — 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 Ratification Day: on this day in 1784 in Annapolis, Maryland, Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris, formally ending the American Revolutionary War. 🕊

Wednesday (15 January 2025) — 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. 👑 Our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Vicksburg National Military Park in Mississippi. 🇺🇸 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. 🇺🇸

Thursday (16 January 2025) — 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. 👑

Friday (17 January 2025) — 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 Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the long-legged Herons, Bitterns, Ibises, and Spoonbills. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (18 January 2025) — 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.” 📺

Sunday (19 January 2025) — 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 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 (observed as a federal holiday this year on Monday the 20th): “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: Iraq in the Middle East is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the great Tigris, one of the most important rivers in human history. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Tigris 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 (above), or start with the river lists in the World Exploration & 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

🙀 AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Monday this month!

What do you and your students 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. 🏡