🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 23 March 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.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Wisconsin, and our COUNTRIES are Mongolia 🇲🇳, Montenegro 🇲🇪, Morocco 🇲🇦, and Mozambique 🇲🇿. (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 waning 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 numeral mille, which means thousand. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Millennium, millimeter, mile [a thousand paces], and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (23 March 2025) — Today is the 82nd day of 2025; there are 283 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 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!” 🇺🇸

Monday (24 March 2025) — 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! 🎩 🐇

Tuesday (25 March 2025) — Today is the birthday of the American agronomist and Nobel Laureate Norman Borlaug (1914–2009), who may have saved more lives than any human being in history. For some notes on his importance, see pages 464–465 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🌽 🌾 Today is also Tolkien Reading Day! 🐉

Wednesday (26 March 2025) — On this day in 1812, the Gerrymander was born! 🗳 And on this day in 1830, The Book of Mormon was first published in Palmyra, New York. 📖 Three great writers were also born on this day: A.E. Housman (1859–1936), Robert Frost (1874–1963), and Tennessee Williams (1911–1983). 🖋 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Ice Age National Scientific Reserve in Wisconsin. 🇺🇸

Thursday (27 March 2025) — On this day in 1912, the city of Tokyo, Japan, presented a gift of 3000 cherry trees to the city of Washington, D.C. You can follow their annual flowering at cherryblossomwatch.com. 🌸

Friday (28 March 2025) — The great Italian Renaissance painter and architect Raphael was born on this day in 1483. 🎨 Today is also the birthday of the Moravian theologian and educator John Amos Comenius (1592–1670), author of Orbis Sensualium Pictus (1658), one of the first-ever picture books for children (wherein we learn that the goose gagleth, the duck quaketh, and the bear grumbleth). 🦆 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you 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. 🦅

Saturday (29 March 2025) — Today is the birthday of two unrelated Waltons: the English composer William Walton (1902–1983) and the American businessman Sam Walton (1918–1992), the founder of Walmart. 🎵 🛒

Sunday (30 March 2025) — On this day in 1867, the United States purchased Alaska from the Russian Empire for about two cents an acre. 🏔 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be California 🇺🇸, Myanmar (Burma) 🇲🇲, Namibia 🇳🇦, Nauru 🇳🇷, and Nepal 🇳🇵.

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old traditional wish: “May honest men be great, and great men honest.”

❡ 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: Mozambique in southeastern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Limpopo River, which crosses Mozambique from northwest to southeast and empties into the Indian Ocean. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Limpopo 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. 🏡