🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 17 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.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Iowa, and our COUNTRIES are Mexico 🇲🇽, Micronesia 🇫🇲, Moldova 🇲🇩, and Monaco 🇲🇨. (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 waxing — 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 in the Astronomy section your current world almanac. Browse through our regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (17 March 2024) — Today is the 77th day of 2024; there are 289 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Erin go Bragh! (Ireland forever!) ☘️ And happy first day of National Surveyors Week! 🧭 On this day in 1776, British forces evacuated Boston after eleven months of siege. It was George Washington’s first victory in the American Revolution. 🇺🇸

Monday (18 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great World War I poet Wilfred Owen (1893–1918). 🖋 And on this day in 1965, Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (1934–2019) became the first person to walk in space (for 12 minutes). 👨‍🚀

Tuesday (19 March 2024) — Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Spring! 🌷 Today is the March Equinox, known as the vernal or spring equinox in the northern hemisphere and the autumnal or fall equinox in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of fall). 🗓 According to tradition, this is the day each year when the swallows come back to Capistrano (the San Juan Capistrano Mission, that is, in Orange County, California). 🐦 (No, that’s not a swallow, but it’s the closest we can get with today’s primitive emoji technology.) 😊

Wednesday (20 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of “The Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America,” the Puritan poet Anne Bradstreet (1612–1672). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of Mister Fred Rogers (1928–2003), everyone’s favorite neighbor. 🏡 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will explore the Ancient Rock Paintings of the Sierra de San Francisco in Mexico. 🇲🇽

Thursday (21 March 2024) — Today is (according to the old Julian Calendar still in effect at the time) the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), one of the greatest musical composers in history. 🎼

Friday (22 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of the English artist Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), for whom the Caldecott awards for illustrated children’s books are named. 🎨 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you (again) to the garrulous Crows and Jays (Part II). 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 the fourth week of March is Robert Frost’s lyrical meditation “Nothing Gold Can Stay,” a great memorization poem for early spring. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌱

Saturday (23 March 2024) — On this day in 1775 at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, Patrick Henry delivered his famous speech “Give me liberty, or give me death!” 🇺🇸

Sunday (24 March 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great Victorian artist and designer William Morris (1834–1896). 🖌 It’s also the birthday of the Hungarian-American magician Harry Houdini (1874–1926). Shazam! 🎩 🐇 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Wisconsin 🇺🇸, Mongolia 🇲🇳, Montenegro 🇲🇪, Morocco 🇲🇦, and Mozambique 🇲🇿.

🥂 ☘️ OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for St. Patrick’s Day, is an American traditional: “May Erin’s Harp and the Starry Flag united ever be!”

❡ 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: Mexico in southern North America is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the beautiful Yaqui River in northwestern Mexico. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Yaqui 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 & 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. 🏡