🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 28 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 UPCOMING MONTH OF MAY is our special Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and all through May we’ll be sharing an assortment of extra homeschool notes on one of the world’s most wonderful natural phenomena.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is West Virginia, and our COUNTRIES are Paraguay 🇵🇾, Peru 🇵🇪, the Philippines 🇵🇭, and Poland 🇵🇱. (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 (28 April 2024) — Today is the 119th day of 2024; there are 247 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 American novelist Harper Lee (1926–2016), author of the school-standard story To Kill a Mockingbird. 🖋

Monday (29 April 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great American jazz musician and composer Duke Ellington (1899–1974). 🎹

Tuesday (30 April 2024) — On this day in 1789, on the balcony of Federal Hall in New York City, George Washington took the oath of office as the first President of the United States. 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1897, British physicist J. J. Thompson announced the discovery of the electron. ⚛️ Today is also the birthday of the great American choral conductor Robert Shaw (1916–1999). 🎶

Wednesday (1 May 2024) — Happy May! 🌼 May is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses. Keep an eye on the season’s progress with the BirdCast website. 🐦 🦆 🦅 The world’s first postage stamp, the Penny Black, was issued on this day in 1840 in the United Kingdom. 📬 And on this day in 1931, the Empire State Building was dedicated in New York City as (at the time) the tallest building in the world. 🏙 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Early Jesuit Missions of Paraguay. 🇵🇾 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of May is, naturally enough, “May and the Poets” by Leigh Hunt (1784–1859). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌼

Thursday (2 May 2024) — Peter and the Wolf, the much-loved orchestral work for children by Sergei Prokofiev (1891–1953), debuted in Moscow on this day in 1936. 🐺

Friday (3 May 2024) — Today is the birthday of the famous Italian Renaissance historian and political philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527). 👑 And on this day in 1715, astronomer Edmund Halley (of comet fame) successfully predicted, to within four minutes’ accuracy, a total solar eclipse that was visible across much of Europe. 🌍 🌑 🌞 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the melodious Thrushes. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (4 May 2024) — Happy Star Wars Day! May the Fourth be with you! 🤺 Today is the birthday of the great American landscape painter Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). 🎨 Today is also International Firefighters Day! 🚒 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 (5 May 2024) — The famous performance venue known today as Carnegie Hall opened in New York City on this day in 1891, with the great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) as guest conductor. (Tourist in New York: “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” New Yorker: “Practice, young man! Practice!”) 🎵 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Nevada 🇺🇸, Portugal 🇵🇹, Qatar 🇶🇦, Romania 🇷🇴, and Russia 🇷🇺.

🥂 🐑 🌾 THIS WEEK’S TOAST, for all the farmers of the world, is an old traditional for the beginning of the growing season — try offering it with a different person reading each line around the table:

Good luck to the hoof and the horn;
Good luck to the flock and the fleece;
Good luck to the growers of corn;
May they ever have plenty and peace!

❡ 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 Philippines in southeastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Agusan River on the Philippine island of Mindanao. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Agusan 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. 🏡