🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 2 March 2025

➤ Look up! There will be a Total Lunar Eclipse coming up on the night of 13–14 March 2025 (Thursday–Friday). It will be visible all across North America and in many other places as well. Get all the details on the timeanddate.com eclipse page and make a viewing plan for your homeschool today! 🌕

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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.

🗓 🦁 This is the first full week of LEO TERM, our spring term in the River Houses. Leo Term runs from March through May.

🇺🇸 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 a waxing crescent — a good time for stargazing! 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 labor, which means toil, work, or exertion. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (The Latin word labor has been carried over directly into English, accompanied by English derivatives such as laborious.)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (2 March 2025) — Today is the 61st day of 2025; there are 304 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 Sam Houston (1793–1863), the first president of the Republic of Texas. 🤠

Monday (3 March 2025) — 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. 🇺🇸

Tuesday (4 March 2025) — 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. 🇺🇸 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 (5 March 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great Flemish mathematician and cartographer Gerardus Mercator (1512–1594). 🌐 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 our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to De Soto National Memorial in Florida. 🇺🇸

Thursday (6 March 2025) — 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! ⚔️

Friday (7 March 2025) — 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). 🥔 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Tyrant Flycatchers and Becards. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (8 March 2025) — The influential U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was born on this day in 1841 in Boston, Massachusetts. ⚖️ 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. 🌟 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. 🔭

Sunday (9 March 2025) — 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. 🕑 ↻ 🕒 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 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: Malaysia in southeastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Muda River, the longest river in Malaysia’s Kedah state. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Muda 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. 🏡