🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 31 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.

🌏 🌑 🌞 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). Get the details right here and make an observing plan for your homeschool today!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is California, and our COUNTRIES are Myanmar (Burma) 🇲🇲, Namibia 🇳🇦, Nauru 🇳🇷, and Nepal 🇳🇵. (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 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.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (31 March 2024) — Today is the 91st day of 2024; there are 275 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 The great French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes was born on this day in 1596. 📈 And on this day in 1774, Great Britain ordered the closure of the major trading port of Boston, escalating the tensions that would eventually lead to the American Revolution. 🇬🇧 ⚔️ 🇺🇸

Monday (1 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great seventeenth century physician William Harvey (1578–1657), who first described the circulation of the blood in the human body. ❤️ It’s also the traditional opening date of the annual spaghetti harvest in Ticino, Switzerland. 🍝 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of April is the Prologue to Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, which opens with April showers. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. ☔️

Tuesday (2 April 2024) — The United States Mint was established on this day in 1792. 💰 Today is also the birthday of the Danish novelist and children’s author Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), which means that it’s International Children’s Book Day too! 📚 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 Technological 600s. 📚

Wednesday (3 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet George Herbert (1593–1633). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the American naturalist and author John Burroughs (1837–1921). 🏞 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Ancient Pyu Cities of Myanmar. 🇲🇲

Thursday (4 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of the American Quaker artist Edward Hicks (1780–1849), famous for his “Peaceable Kingdom.” 🎨

Friday (5 April 2024) — Happy First Contact Day! On this day in 2063, a Vulcan ship will land near Bozeman, Montana, bringing to an end our long galactic childhood. 🖖 And our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the friendly Chickadees, Titmice, and their allies. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (6 April 2024) — The Civil War Battle of Shiloh began on this day in 1862 near Shiloh, Tennessee. Herman Melville would later commemorate the battle in his poem “Shiloh: A Requiem.” ⚔️ 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 (7 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great English poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850). 🌈 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Minnesota 🇺🇸, the Netherlands 🇳🇱, New Zealand 🇳🇿, Nicaragua 🇳🇮, and Niger 🇳🇪.

🥂 🖖 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for First Contact Day, is a Vulcan traditional. The host says: “Peace and long life.” And the guests respond: “Live long and prosper.”

❡ 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: Namibia in southern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Namibia’s Fish River, a major tributary of the Orange River, one of the principal rivers of southern Africa. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Fish 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. 🏡