🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 20 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.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Kansas, and our COUNTRIES are Pakistan 🇵🇰, Palau 🇵🇼, Panama 🇵🇦, and Papua New Guinea 🇵🇬. (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 oculus, which means eye. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Ocular, oculist, oculomotor, and oculus itself, a term used in architecture.)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (20 April 2025) — Today is the 110th day of 2025; there are 255 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 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. 🎨

Monday (21 April 2025) — Tradition says that the legendary king Romulus founded the city of Rome on this day in 753 B.C. 👑 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. ⚔️ And 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. 🎵

Tuesday (22 April 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). 🧠 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of April is A.E. Housman’s famous spring ode “Loveliest of Trees,” for cherry-blossom season. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌸

Wednesday (23 April 2025) — The great poet and playwright William Shakespeare was (probably) born on this day in 1564. Happy birthday, Will! 🎭 Today is also the birthday of the great German physicist and Nobel laureate Max Planck (1858–1947). ⚛️ And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve in Kansas. 🇺🇸

Thursday (24 April 2025) — Tradition says that the city of Troy fell on this day in the year 1184 B.C. (although that tradition may not be correct). 🐴 And today is the birthday of the Library of Congress! On this day in 1800, President John Adams signed legislation to appropriate $5,000 for “such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress.” 📚

Friday (25 April 2025) — Happy National Arbor Day! 🌳 Today is the birthday of the English poet and novelist Walter de la Mare (1873–1956). 🖋 The World War I Battle of Gallipoli began on this day in 1915. The date is commemorated as Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand. 🇦🇺 🇳🇿 On this day in 1953, Francis Crick and James Watson published “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid,” outlining for the first time the double-helical architecture of DNA, the molecule of heredity. 🧬 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the tiny Gnatcatchers, Dippers, and Kinglets. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (26 April 2025) — On this day in 1803, thousands of meteor fragments fell from the skies over L’Aigle, France, demonstrating conclusively that “shooting stars” were in fact rocks falling from the sky. 🌠 And today is the birthday of the famous French-American naturalist and artist John James Audubon (1785–1851). 🎨

Sunday (27 April 2025) — On this day in 1667, John Milton, blind and impoverished, sold the publishing rights to his masterpiece Paradise Lost for £5. 🍎 Today is also the birthday of the American artist and inventor Samuel F.B. Morse (1791–1872), the creator of Morse Code. 🎨 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be West Virginia 🇺🇸, Paraguay 🇵🇾, Peru 🇵🇪, the Philippines 🇵🇭, and Poland 🇵🇱.

🥂 🎭 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for Shakespeare’s birthday, is from The Merry Wives of Windsor: “Heaven send thee good fortune.”

❡ 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: Papua New Guinea is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Fly River, one of the longest rivers of Papua New Guinea. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Fly 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. 🏡