🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 14 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.

🇺🇸 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION began 249 years ago this week, on the 19th of April in 1775. (Next year is the 250th anniversary!) We’ll have an assortment of special revolutionary posts going up this week for the occasion, including two famous American poems for your students. Watch for them to appear on the River Houses website all through the week.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Oregon, and our COUNTRIES are the Nigeria 🇳🇬, North Macedonia 🇲🇰, Norway 🇳🇴, and Oman 🇴🇲. (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.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (14 April 2024) — Today is the 105th day of 2024; there are 261 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 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. ⛈

Monday (15 April 2024) — Today is the midpoint of Leo Term and thus one of the four cross-quarter days of the River Houses year. How are things going in your homeschool? 🦁 Today is also the birthday of the great Renaissance painter and polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519). 🎨 And on this day in 1912, the passenger liner R.M.S. Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, two hours after striking an iceberg. More than 1500 passengers and crew died in the accident. 🚢 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of April is a special double feature: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Paul Revere’s Ride” and Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Concord Hymn,” for the beginning of the American Revolution in 1775. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🇺🇸

Tuesday (16 April 2024) — On this day in the year 73, the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada fell to the Roman army after several months of siege. ✡️ And on this day in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after being arrested for protesting segregation in Alabama. 🖋

Wednesday (17 April 2024) — On this day in 1524, the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano (1485–1528) became the first European to sail into what is now New York harbor. 🗽 Today is also the birthday of the American novelist and playwright Thornton Wilder (1897–1975). 🖋 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will explore the Prehistoric Rock Art of Alta in Norway. 🇳🇴

Thursday (18 April 2024) — On the evening of this day in 1775, Paul Revere and a network of alarm riders fanned out from Boston to warn the surrounding countryside that British troops were marching overnight to seize the colonists’ stores of arms and ammunition in the nearby town of Concord. 🏇 On this day in 1906, a major earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, California. 🔥 And, today is World Heritage Day! 🏛

Friday (19 April 2024) — The American Revolution began on this day in 1775 when British troops fired on the local militia on Lexington Green and then advanced to Concord where they met with growing resistance and were driven back to Boston. By the end of the day, 49 Americans and 73 British soldiers had been killed. 🇺🇸 ⚔️ 🇬🇧 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Gnatcatchers, Dippers, and Kinglets. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (20 April 2024) — Over the course of this day in 1775, 15,000 men from towns across Massachusetts and adjacent parts of New Hampshire and Rhode Island surrounded Boston and bottled-up the city’s British garrison, beginning an eleven-month siege that ended when British troops evacuated the city on 17 March 1776. 🇺🇸 ⚔️ 🇬🇧 Today is also the birthday, coincidentally, of the great American sculptor Daniel Chester French (1850–1931), whose first important commission was the Minuteman statue that stands today at Concord’s North Bridge. 🎨

Sunday (21 April 2024) — Tradition says that the legendary king Romulus founded the city of Rome on this day in 753 B.C. 👑 And on this day in 1836, Texas forces under Sam Houston defeated the Mexican army commanded by General Antonio López de Santa Anna in the Battle of San Jacinto. ⚔️ After a week of war commemorations, why not spend a few peaceful homeschool minutes with the great “Alleluia” of American composer Randall Thompson, born on this day in 1899. 🎵 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Kansas 🇺🇸, Pakistan 🇵🇰, Palau 🇵🇼, Panama 🇵🇦, and Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬.

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is one of our traditional offerings for the beginning of the American Revolution in April 1775: “To heroes of olden times.”

❡ 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: Ordinarily we post a Weekly World River from one of our countries-of-the-week in this space, but we make one exception each year: in honor of the Nineteenth of April, this week’s World River is always the quiet Concord River, just west of Boston, which has figured prominently in the American imagination for more than 200 years. You can read more about it in the comprehensive Concord River entry in Wikipedia, on your next visit to your local library, or perhaps in Henry David Thoreau’s classic literary travelogue A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers (1849).

❡ 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! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ 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. 🏡