🗓️ QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 1 February 2026

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.

🐦 THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT is coming up two weeks from now (13–16 February, Washington’s Birthday weekend) all across the country and around the world! It’s one of the best homeschool science activities all year. How many birds will you find in your neighborhood?

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Alabama, and our COUNTRIES are Japan 🇯🇵, Jordan 🇯🇴, Kazakhstan 🇰🇿, and Kenya 🇰🇪. (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 full — a good time to be out and about in the well-lit night! 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 more.

🗓️️ TODAY, Sunday (1 February 2026) — Today is the 32nd day of 2026; there are 333 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 On this day in 1942, at the height of World War II, the Voice of America, the official overseas radio service of the U.S. government, began broadcasting to territories in Europe controlled by the Axis powers. 📻 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. 🌕 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this first week of February is Robert Frost’s wintry classic “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. ❄️

Monday (2 February 2026) — Today is Groundhog Day, the historical cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox. ⏚ 🐖 On this day in 1653, the city of New Amsterdam was incorporated. We know it today as the city of New York. 🏙️️️️️

Tuesday (3 February 2026) — The Soviet Union’s Luna 9 spacecraft made the first-ever soft landing on the moon on this day in 1966. 🚀 Today is also the birthday of the popular American painter and illustrator Norman Rockwell (1894–1978). 🎨 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 Linguistic 400s. 📚

Wednesday (4 February 2026) — On this day in 1789, the Electoral College unanimously chose George Washington to be the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of Joshua Abraham Norton (1818–1880), better known of Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, an American original. 👑 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Lookout Mountain and Little River Canyon National Preserve in Alabama. 🇺🇸

Thursday (5 February 2026) — The largest gold nugget in history, nicknamed the Welcome Stranger, was discovered in Moliagul, Australia, on this day in 1869. It contained more than 200 pounds of gold. 💰

Friday (6 February 2026) — Today is the birthday of baseball great Babe Ruth (1895–1948). ⚾️ On this day in 1959, Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments filed the first patent for an integrated circuit chip, the component at the heart of nearly all modern electronic devices, including the one you’re using now. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for that work in 2000. 🥇 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the tropical Trogons and the piscivorous Kingfishers. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (7 February 2026) — Today is the birthday of two famous writers: the English novelist Charles Dickens (1812–1870) and the American novelist Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867–1957). 🖊️ And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (8 February 2026) — The College of William and Mary in Virginia, the second-oldest college in the United States, was chartered on this day in 1683. 🎓 Today is also the birthday of the great Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev (1834–1907), the discoverer of the Periodic Table. ⚗️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for second week of February will be a youthful amatory lyric from Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), “Awake ye muses nine,” for Valentine’s Day.️ Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. ❤️ And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Maine 🇺🇸, Kiribati 🇰🇮, North Korea 🇰🇵, South Korea 🇰🇷, and Kosovo 🇽🇰.

🥂 🌎 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old traditional that goes back at least to the 1860s: “May truth and liberty prevail throughout the world.”

❡ 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: Japan in eastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Ara or Arakawa River of Japan, the principal river of the Japanese capital of Tokyo. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Arakawa 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

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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