🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 9 February 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.

🖍 Hmm, THIS PAST WEEK was supposed to be Color Our Collections Week, but as of this writing the new coloring booklets have not appeared. Not sure what’s up. Perhaps they are having technical problems. In the meantime you can still download the booklets from last year (2024) on the CoC website and print them out at your convenience all through the year ahead.

🐦 THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT begins this Friday and continues through the following Monday (14–17 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 Missouri, and our COUNTRIES are Kuwait 🇰🇼, Kyrgyzstan 🇰🇬, Laos 🇱🇦, and Latvia 🇱🇻. (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 noun insula, which means island. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Insular, insulate, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (9 February 2025) — Today is the 40th day of 2025; there are 325 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of the English-American political philosopher and revolutionary Thomas Paine (1737–1809). 🇺🇸 It’s also the anniversary of the Great Meteor Procession of 1913. (A close call, perhaps.) 🌠

Monday (10 February 2025) — Today is the Christian feast day of Saint Scholastica (ca. 480–543), the patroness of schools and education (and long-remembered riots). 🎓 It’s also the birthday of the great Russian writer and Nobel laureate Boris Pasternak (1890–1960). 🖋

Tuesday (11 February 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great American inventor Thomas Edison (1847–1931). Fiat lux! 💡

Wednesday (12 February 2025) — Two major historical figures of the nineteenth century were both born on this day in 1809: Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 🇺🇸 and Charles Darwin (1809–1882). 🦋 Our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Gateway Arch National Park in Missouri. 🇺🇸 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. 🌕

Thursday (13 February 2025) — Today is the birthday of the American artist Grant Wood (1891–1942). 🎨 It’s also the birthday of the American aviator Chuck Yeager (1923–2020), the first person to break the sound barrier. ✈️

Friday (14 February 2025) — Happy Valentine’s Day! ❤️ Here’s hoping your little home academy will be full of love on this day and every day throughout the year. 💕 Today is the first day of the annual Great Backyard Bird Count! It’s an ideal homeschool science and nature activity, sponsored by Cornell University and running all weekend (14–17 February). Visit birdcount.org and join in the fun! 🐦 And speaking of birds, our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Woodpeckers! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (15 February 2025) — Today is the birthday of the Italian astronomer and physicist Galileo Galileo (1564–1642), one of the most important figures in the history of science. 🔭 It’s also the birthday of the American women’s rights advocate Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906). ⚖️ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of February is Stephen Spender’s minor masterpiece “The Truly Great,” for the remarkable collection of important people born in February. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌠

Sunday (16 February 2025) — Today is the birthday of Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), a colleague of Martin Luther and one of the first great scholars of the Protestant Reformation. 📖 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Arkansas 🇺🇸, Lebanon 🇱🇧, Lesotho 🇱🇸, Liberia 🇱🇷, and Libya 🇱🇾.

🥂 ❤️ OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old Valentine’s Day favorite: “May our love be ever young.”

❡ 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: Latvia in eastern Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the important Daugava River, which flows through the Latvian capital of Riga. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Daugava 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 Thursday 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. 🏡