🗓 🇺🇸 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 13 April 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.

🇺🇸 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION began 250 years ago this week, on the 19th of April in 1775. We’ll have an assortment of special Revolutionary posts going up for the occasion, including two famous American poems for your students. Watch for them to appear on the River Houses website. The next two years will present many exceptional opportunities to teach American history in your homeschool. Why not begin by turning to pages 298–299 in your recommended history encyclopedia, and then make a visit to your local library to find some books for your students about Lexington, Concord, and Paul Revere. If it’s a Dewey library, try the call number 973.3 in the Historical 900s.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Oregon, and our COUNTRIES are 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 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.

🦦 HORACE THE OTTER says your LATIN word for the week is the noun natura, which means nature. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Nature, natural, naturalist, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (13 April 2025) — Today is the 103rd day of 2025; there are 262 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 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. 🇺🇸 And 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. 🏛

Monday (14 April 2025) — 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. ⛈️

Tuesday (15 April 2025) — 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). 🎨 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. 🇺🇸

Wednesday (16 April 2025) — On this day in the year 73, the ancient Jewish fortress of Masada fell to the Roman army after several months of siege. ✡️ On this day in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after being arrested for protesting segregation in Alabama. 🖋 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Crater Lake National Park in Oregon. 🇺🇸

Thursday (17 April 2025) — 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). 🖋

Friday (18 April 2025) — On the evening of this day in 1775, exactly 250 years ago, 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. 🏇 And on this day in 1906, a major earthquake and fire destroyed much of San Francisco, California. 🔥 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the tiny Nuthatches, Creepers, and Wrens. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (19 April 2025) — The American Revolution began on this day in 1775, exactly 250 years ago, 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. 🇺🇸 ⚔️ 🇬🇧

Sunday (20 April 2025) — Over the course of this day in 1775, exactly 250 years ago, 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. 🎨 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Kansas 🇺🇸, Pakistan 🇵🇰, Palau 🇵🇼, Panama 🇵🇦, and Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬.

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is our traditional offering 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 250 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 (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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

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

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. 🏡