🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 25 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 is the last week of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses. LEO TERM, our spring term, begins on Friday the first of March. 🦁

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Michigan, and our COUNTRIES are Liechtenstein 🇱🇮, Lithuania 🇱🇹, Luxembourg 🇱🇺, and Madagascar 🇲🇬. (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 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 (25 February 2024) — Today is the 56th day of 2024; there are 310 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 349–355 in your recommended world almanac. 📚 The first African-American to serve in the U.S. Congress, Hiram Rhodes Revels, Republican of Mississippi, was sworn in on this day in 1870. 🇺🇸 And today is the birthday of the great French impressionist painter and sculptor Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). 🎨

Monday (26 February 2024) — Today is the birthday of the German-American clothing manufacturer Levi Strauss (1829–1902). 👖 Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona was established on this day in 1919. 🪨 And today is also the birthday of the great American songwriter and rock-and-roll pioneer Antoine “Fats” Domino (1928–2017). 🎹

Tuesday (27 February 2024) — Today is the birthday of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882), one of the most popular American poets of the nineteenth century. 🖋

Wednesday (28 February 2024) — Happy Dord Day! 🎉 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Old City of Luxembourg. 🇱🇺

Thursday (29! February 2024) — Happy Leap Day! Or, if you want to sound splendiferously vocabularic, Happy Intercalary Day! 🗓 The English-American religious leader Mother Ann Lee, the founder of the Shaker movement, was born on this day in 1736 in Manchester, England. 🕯️

🗓 🦁 Leo Term 2024 Begins 🦁 🗓

Friday (1 March 2024) — Today is the first day of Leo Term, our spring term in the River Houses, named for the Great Lion of the Heavens. Leo Term runs from March through May. 🦁 Today is also the birthday of the great Polish pianist and composer Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849). 🎹 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Tyrant Flycatchers and the Becards. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of March is a famously amusing collection of “photographs” from Wallace Stevens, for migrating Red-winged Blackbirds and the coming spring thaw. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 💧

Saturday (2 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of Sam Houston (1793–1863), the first president of the Republic of Texas. 🌵 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 (3 March 2024) — The Scottish-American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1847. 📞 On this day in 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem. 🇺🇸 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Florida 🇺🇸, Malawi 🇲🇼, Malaysia 🇲🇾, Maldives 🇲🇻, and Mali 🇲🇱.

🥂 🗡 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for the close of Orion Term, is adapted from Robert Louis Stevenson and A.E. Housman: “To the hunter home from the hill.”

❡ 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: Lithuania in eastern Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Šventoji River, the longest river within Lithuania. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Šventoji 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 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 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. 🏡