🗓️ QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 24 May 2026

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.

🦁 🗓️️️ 💪 This is the last full week of LEO TERM, our spring term in the River Houses. HERCULES TERM, our summer term, begins on Monday of next week, the first of June.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Colorado, and our COUNTRIES are Samoa 🇼🇸, San Marino 🇸🇲, São Tomé & Príncipe 🇸🇹, and Saudi Arabia 🇸🇦. (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 waxing — a good time for moon watching! (And for locating locating the Sea of Tranquility!) 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 (24 May 2026) — Today is the 144th day of 2026; there are 221 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 also the birthday of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom (1819–1901), who gave her name to an entire historical era. You can read more about Victoria and the Victorians on page 348 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. 👑 And on this day in 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse sent the message “What hath God wrought!” from the U.S. Capitol building to his assistant in Baltimore, thirty-five miles away, instantly, thereby inaugurating the first commercial telegraph line between two U.S. cities. ⚡️

Monday (25 May 2026) — Today (the last Monday in May) is Memorial Day in the United States, the day we remember the nation’s war dead. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of the great American poet, essayist, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882). 🖊️ And on this day in 1977, the first Star Wars movie was released! 🚀

Tuesday (26 May 2026) — It’s National Paper Airplane Day! ✈️

Wednesday (27 May 2026) — Today is the birthday of the American poet and songwriter Julia Ward Howe (1819–1910), author of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” (“Mine eyes have seen the glory”). 🍇 🎺 ⚡️ ⚔️ And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. 🇺🇸

Thursday (28 May 2026) — A total solar eclipse occurred on this day in the year 585 B.C. during the Battle of the Halys River in central Anatolia (modern Turkey), leading to a truce. The exact date of that eclipse is one of the key reference points from which other dates in ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern history are calculated. 🌏 🌑 🌞

Friday (29 May 2026) — On this day in 1453, the city of Constantinople fell to the Ottoman armies of Sultan Mehmed II after a 53-day siege, bringing to an end the ancient Byzantine Empire that had survived for more than a thousand years. You can explore more on pages 198, 206, and 246 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. ⚔️ And speaking of eclipses, another solar eclipse, occurring on this day in 1919, allowed Sir Arthur Eddington to confirm Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. 🌏 🌑 🌞 And on this day in 1953, mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Tenzig Norgay became the first climbers ever to reach the summit of Mount Everest. 🏔️️ Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Indigobirds, Whydahs, Estrildid Finches, and Old World Sparrows. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (30 May 2026) — The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated on this day in the year 1922. 🏛️ Today is also the birthday of the great voice actor Mel Blanc (1908–1989), “the man of a thousand voices,” who gave us Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote, Road Runner, and even the Tasmanian Devil. 🐰

Sunday (31 May 2026) — Today is the last day of Leo Term and the last day of the River Houses academic year. Hercules Term, our summer term, begins tomorrow. 🗓️️️ Today is also the birthday of the great American poet Walt Whitman (1819–1892), who contained multitudes. 🔭 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be North Dakota 🇺🇸, Senegal 🇸🇳, Serbia 🇷🇸, Seychelles 🇸🇨, and Sierra Leone 🇸🇱.

🥂 🇺🇸 THIS WEEK’S TOAST is an old traditional, for Memorial Day: “May mankind never cease to produce heroes.”

❡ 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 island nation of Samoa in the Pacific Ocean is one of our countries of the week, and like many island nations, Samoa doesn’t have too many notable rivers. But it does have waterfalls, so our Weekly World “River” is the beautiful Sopoaga Falls on Samoa’s Upolu island. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Sopoaga Falls 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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