🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 16 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.

🐦 THE GREAT BACKYARD BIRD COUNT is underway right now (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 have you counted in your neighborhood? (I’ve already submitted two counts of my own.)

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Arkansas, and our COUNTRIES are Lebanon 🇱🇧, Lesotho 🇱🇸, Liberia 🇱🇷, and Libya 🇱🇾. (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 waning — 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 integer, which means complete or whole. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Integral, integrity, and integer itself, meaning a whole number in mathematics.)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (16 February 2025) — Today is the 47th day of 2025; there are 318 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 also the birthday of Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), a colleague of Martin Luther and one of the first great scholars of the Protestant Reformation. 📖

Monday (17 February 2025) — Today is the third Monday in February, which makes it the Washington’s Birthday holiday in the United States (though it’s often just called “Presidents’ Day” because Lincoln’s birthday is nearby). 🇺🇸 Today is also 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. ⚰️

Tuesday (18 February 2025) — The famous American stained-glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany was born on this day in 1848. 🎨

Wednesday (19 February 2025) — Today is the birthday of the Polish astronomer and polymath Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543), one of the great figures in the history of science. 🌞 🌍 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Arkansas Post National Memorial in Arkansas. 🇺🇸

Thursday (20 February 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great American photographer Ansel Adams (1902–1984). 📷

Friday (21 February 2025) — On this day in 1918, the last individual Carolina Parakeet, the only species of parrot native to the United States, died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoo. 🦜 😔 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the (living!) Caracaras and Falcons. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (22 February 2025) — Today is the (actual) birthday of George Washington (1732–1799), the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And speaking of presidents, on this day in 1924, President Calvin Coolidge delivered the first-ever radio address from the White House. 📻 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of February is John Keats’ famous sonnet “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” for all watchers of the skies. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🔭

Sunday (23 February 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great German-English composer George Frideric Handel (1685–1759). 🎺 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Michigan 🇺🇸, Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, and Madagascar 🇲🇬.

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST for this Washington’s Birthday week invites you to remember that in early America, no one was toasted more often than George Washington. This 1788 musical offering by Francis Hopkinson of Philadelphia was but one among thousands. What is the toast?

’Tis “Washington’s health!” Fill a bumper all round,
For he is our glory and pride.
Our arms shall in battle with conquest be crown’d
Whilst virtue and he’s on our side.

❡ 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: Lesotho in southern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is northern Lesotho’s Malibamat’so River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Malibamat’so 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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❡ 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. 🏡