🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 1 June 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.

🗓 💪 This is the first full week of HERCULES TERM, our summer term in the River Houses. Hercules Term runs from June through August.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is South Dakota, and our COUNTRIES are Singapore 🇸🇬, Slovakia 🇸🇰, Slovenia 🇸🇮, and the Solomon Islands 🇸🇧. (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 a waxing crescent — a good time for stargazing! 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 rex (or regis in its possessive form), which means king. (The feminine version is regina, queen.) Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Regal, regent, regnant, and more!)

🗓 💪 Hercules Term 2025 Begins

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (1 June 2025) — Today is the 152nd day of 2025; there are 213 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 first day of HERCULES TERM, our summer term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hero of the Heavens. 💪 Today is also the birthday of the great English poet of the sea John Masefield (1878–1967), author of the finest thing Herman Melville never said. ⚓️ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of June is the anonymous medieval song “Sumer is i-cumin in,” for the beginning of Hercules Term. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. ⛱

Monday (2 June 2025) — Today is the birthday of poet and novelist Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), whose works have been loved and loathed by high school English students for generations. 📚 Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II (1926–2022) was crowned on this day in 1953. She was the longest-reigning monarch in British history and the longest-serving female head of state in world history. 👑

Tuesday (3 June 2025) — Today is the birthday of Scottish physician and scientist James Hutton (1726–1797), one of the pioneers of modern geology. ⛏ 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 Literary 800s. 📚

Wednesday (4 June 2025) — On this day in 1783, the brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier made the first public demonstration of their hot air balloon at Annonay in the south of France, and the age of flight began. 🎈 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota. 🇺🇸

Thursday (5 June 2025) — The first installment of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published on this day in 1851 in the National Era newspaper. 📰 And on this day in 1989, as a popular uprising against the Chinese communist government was being brutally suppressed in Beijing, a lone man near Tiananmen Square ran out into the street and for a few minutes stopped an entire column of tanks from advancing. Photographs of “the Tank Man” have since become emblems of freedom worldwide — except in China, where they are censored. For a brief history of communism in China, see page 424 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 🇨🇳 🗽

Friday (6 June 2025) — The invasion of Normandy on the coast of France, code-named Operation Overlord, began on this day, D-Day, in 1944. It was the largest amphibious military operation in history and it began the liberation of western Europe from Nazi occupation. For a brief review, see page 398 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. 🇫🇷 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the terrestrial Wagtails and Pipits. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (7 June 2025) — On this day in 1776, Richard Henry Lee of Virginia presented a resolution to the Continental Congress “that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States.” The formal adoption of the Lee Resolution less than a month later, on 2 July 1776, established American independence. 🇺🇸 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 (8 June 2025) — Today is the birthday of Francis Crick (1916–2004), co-discoverer (with James Watson) of the double-helical structure of DNA. 🧬 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of June is Francis Scott Key’s “Defence of Fort M’Henry,” much better known today as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” for Flag Day (the 14th). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🇺🇸 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Montana 🇺🇸, Somalia 🇸🇴, South Africa 🇿🇦, South Sudan 🇸🇸, and Spain 🇪🇸.

🥂 🗽 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, for “The Tank Man” and all the Tiananmen freedom-protestors of June 1989, is the Chinese word 自由 (zì-yóu), pronounced tsi-yo: “Liberty.”

❡ 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: Singapore in southeastern Asia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the eponymous Singapore River, which is very short but very important, as it flows through this island-nation’s central district. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Singapore 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. 🏡