🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 3 March 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 first full week of LEO TERM, our spring term in the River Houses. Leo Term runs from March through May.

🌏 🌑 🌞 A TOTAL SOLAR ECLIPSE will be coming up on Monday, April 8th, and the band of totality will pass right across North America. If you live anywhere near that path it will be worth traveling to see it; people in other areas are guaranteed a partial eclipse (weather permitting). Mark your calendars now and get the details right here.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Florida, and our COUNTRIES are Malawi 🇲🇼, Malaysia 🇲🇾, Maldives 🇲🇻, and Mali 🇲🇱. (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 at its third quarter — 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 (3 March 2024) — Today is the 63rd day of 2024; there are 303 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 349–355 in your recommended world almanac. 📚 The Scottish-American engineer Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was born on this day in 1847. 📞 And on this day in 1931, “The Star-Spangled Banner” was officially adopted as the U.S. national anthem. 🇺🇸

Monday (4 March 2024) — The first session of the First United States Congress opened on this day in Federal Hall in New York in 1789, putting the new U.S. Constitution into effect. 🇺🇸

Tuesday (5 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594). 🌐 And on this day in 1770, British troops shot and killed five protestors on the streets of Boston in what quickly came to be known as the Boston Massacre. ⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️⚰️ 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 Scientific 500s. 📚

Wednesday (6 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great Italian Renaissance painter and sculptor Michelangelo (1475–1564). 🎨 It’s also the birthday of the great English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861). 🖋 And on this day in 1836 during the Texas Revolution, the Alamo fell. Remember! ⚔️ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Lake Malawi National Park in Malawi. 🇲🇼

Thursday (7 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great British astronomer and polymath John Herschel (1792–1871). 🔭 It’s also the birthday of the great American horticulturist Luther Burbank (1849–1926). 🥔

Friday (8 March 2024) — The influential U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was born on this day in 1841 in Boston, Massachusetts. ⚖️ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the predatory Shrikes and the voluble Vireos. 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 second week of March is Walt Whitman’s “When I Heard the Learn’d Astronomer,” contrariwise for John Herschel (whose birthday was yesterday) and Albert Einstein (whose birthday is coming up on the 14th). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🔭

Saturday (9 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512), the father of “America.” 🌎 It’s also the birthday of the great American composer and pianist Samuel Barber (1910–1981). 🎼 And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major and the brightest star in earth’s night sky. 🌟

Sunday (10 March 2024) — Daylight Saving Time begins this morning in most U.S. jurisdictions (the second Sunday in March) at 2:00 a.m., when you should set your clocks ahead to 3:00 a.m. 🕑 ↻ 🕒 On this day in 1804, a formal ceremony was held in St. Louis, Missouri, to complete the Louisiana Purchase. 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇺🇸 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Texas 🇺🇸, Malta 🇲🇹, the Marshall Islands 🇲🇭, Mauritania 🇲🇷, and Mauritius 🇲🇺.

🥂 ⚔️ OUR WEEKLY TOAST is for the Texians of 1836: “Remember the Alamo!”

❡ 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: Mali in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Bafing River, which forms part of the border between Mali and Guinea to the southwest. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Bafing 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. 🏡