🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 7 April 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 Minnesota, and our COUNTRIES are the Netherlands 🇳🇱, New Zealand 🇳🇿, Nicaragua 🇳🇮, and Niger 🇳🇪. (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.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (7 April 2024) — Today is the 98th day of 2024; there are 268 days remaining in this leap 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 the great English poet William Wordsworth (1770–1850). 🌈

Monday (8 April 2024) — On this day in 1820, the famous ancient statue now known as the Venus de Milo was discovered on the Greek island of Milos in the southern Aegean Sea. 🏛 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of April is Delmore Schwartz’s “Calmly We Walk through This April’s Day,” a beautiful, philosophical, Heraclitean, high-school-level poem for spring. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌸

Tuesday (9 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of a great engineer with a great name: Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806–1859). (You may be cool, but you’ll never be Isambard-Kingdom-Brunel-in-a-top-hat-smoking-a-cigar-in-front-of-the-biggest-chains-in-the-world cool.) 🚢 And on this day in 1865, Confederate general Robert E. Lee formally surrendered to Union general Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in Virginia, effectively ending the American Civil War. 🕊

Wednesday (10 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of William Booth (1829–1912), the founder of the Salvation Army. ✝️ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Historic Center of Agadez in Niger. 🇳🇪

Thursday (11 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of the strange and wonderful eighteenth-century poet Christopher Smart (1722–1771). 🐈 It’s also the birthday of American educator and statesman Edward Everett (1794–1865), one of the most celebrated orators of his day, who in 1863 had the misfortune of speaking for the two hours before Abraham Lincoln delivered the two-minute Gettysburg Address. 🇺🇸

Friday (12 April 2024) — On this day in 1861, Confederate artillery opened fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, touching off the American Civil War. (For a quick review of the Civil War, turn to page 314 in your River Houses history encyclopedia.) ⚔️ And on this day in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin (1934–1968) became the first human being ever to orbit the earth. (You can find him also in your history encyclopedia, on page 578.) 👨‍🚀 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the diminutive Nuthatches, Creepers, and Wrens. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (13 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the third President of the United States. 🇺🇸 The Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on this day in 1943 by President Franklin Roosevelt, on the 200th anniversary of Jefferson’s birth. 🏛 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: Regulus, the brightest star in the constellation Leo the Lion. 🌟

Sunday (14 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great cartographer Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598), who produced history’s first atlas of the world. 🌐 And on this day in 1986, more than 90 people were tragically killed when the heaviest hailstones ever recorded (more than two pounds each) fell on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh. ⛈ And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Oregon 🇺🇸, Nigeria 🇳🇬, North Macedonia 🇲🇰, Norway 🇳🇴, and Oman 🇴🇲.

🥂 🚜 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is a traditional offering for the spring planting season: “May God speed the plow, and reward the men who drive it.”

❡ 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: The Netherlands in western Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Amstel River, which flows through the Netherlands’ capital city of Amsterdam (which in turn takes its name from an ancient dam on this river). You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Amstel 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

🙀 AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Saturday this month!

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. 🏡