🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 4 May 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.

🦅 🦆 🐦 MAY is Bird Migration Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of extra homeschool notes on one of the world’s most wonderful natural phenomena. (Do you know how to find out what birds are migrating through your neighborhood this month?)

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Nevada, and our COUNTRIES are Portugal 🇵🇹, Qatar 🇶🇦, Romania 🇷🇴, and Russia 🇷🇺. (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 at its first quarter — 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 pater, which means father. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Paternal, patrimony, patriot, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (4 May 2025) — Today is the 124th day of 2025; there are 241 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 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). 🎨 And today is also International Firefighters Day! 🚒

Monday (5 May 2025) — 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!”) 🎵

Tuesday (6 May 2025) — Today is the birthday of the American admiral and polar explorer Robert Peary (1856–1920). 🎿 On this day in 1954, British athlete Roger Bannister (1929–2018) ran history’s first four-minute mile. 👟 And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Artistic 700s. 📚

Wednesday (7 May 2025) — Two great “B’s” were born on this day: the English poet Robert Browning (1812–1889) and the German composer Johannes Brahms (1833–1897). 🖋 🎼 On this day in 1915, a German U-boat sank the passenger liner R.M.S. Lusitania, killing nearly 1200 civilians. It was one of the principal events that drew the United States into World War I. 🚢 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Great Basin National Park in Nevada. 🇺🇸

Thursday (8 May 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great Austrian-British economist and Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992). 💰 And today in 1945 was V-E Day, the end of World War II in Europe. ✌️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of May is Anne Bradstreet’s “In Reference to Her Children,” for Mother’s Day and all homeschool moms everywhere. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🐦

Friday (9 May 2025) — Lincoln Cathedral in England was consecrated on this day in the year 1092. When its spire was added in the 1300s it became the first building to surpass the Great Pyramid of Giza in height and was the tallest building in the world for more than 200 years. ⛪️ 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 (10 May 2025) — On this day in 1775, in one of the great early successes of the American Revolution, a small group of colonial militia under the command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold (not yet a traitor) seized British-held Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain “in the name of the great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!” ⚔️ 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1869 at Promontory Summit, Utah, a golden spike joined east and west and completed the First Transcontinental Railroad across the United States. 🚂 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: the pole star Polaris, the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor, the Little Bear (which includes the Little Dipper). 🌟

Sunday (11 May 2025) — Happy Mother’s Day! ❤️ Today is the birthday of two great American composers: Irving Berlin (1888–1989) and William Grant Still (1895–1978). 🎼 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Nebraska 🇺🇸, Rwanda 🇷🇼, Saint Kitts & Nevis 🇰🇳, Saint Lucia 🇱🇨, and Saint Vincent & the Grenadines 🇻🇨.

🥂 🐦 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is for the beginning of Bird Migration Month: “To the early bird that catches the worm.”

❡ 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: Romania in eastern Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Olt River, the longest river that flows entirely within Romania. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Olt 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! 🗓

❡ 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. 🏡