🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 11 February 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.

🖍 THIS PAST WEEK was Color Our Collections Week! Did you download your year’s supply of wonderful educational coloring booklets? They are still available online and are free to all!

🐦 THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT is coming up next weekend (16–19 February) 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 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 (11 February 2024) — Today is the 42nd day of 2024; there are 324 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 349–355 in your recommended world almanac. 📚 Today is also the birthday of the great American inventor Thomas Edison (1847–1931). Fiat lux! 💡

Monday (12 February 2024) — 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). 🦋

Tuesday (13 February 2024) — 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. ✈️

Wednesday (14 February 2024) — 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. 💕 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you the to the ancient Megalithic Jar Sites in Xiengkhuang in Laos. 🇱🇦

Thursday (15 February 2024) — 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). ⚖️ 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. 🌠

Friday (16 February 2024) — This 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 (16–19 February). Visit birdcount.org and join in the fun! 🐦 Today is also 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 Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the fast-flying Caracaras and Falcons. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (17 February 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great Italian violinist and composer Arcangelo Corelli (1653–1713). 🎻 And on this day in 1923, archeologist Howard Carter unsealed the burial chamber of the Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun (ca. 1342–1325 B.C.) and became the first person to set eyes on the pharaoh’s sarcophagus in more than three thousand years. ⚰️

Sunday (18 February 2024) — The famous American stained-glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany was born on this day in 1848. 🎨 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: Laos in southeastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Xe Bang Fai River near the Laos–Vietnam border. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Xe Bang Fai 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 recommended 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 Tuesday this month!

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. 🏡