🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 15 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. (Our new calendars for the 2025–2026 homeschool year are also now available!)

🏰 HAPPY FATHER’S DAY to all homeschool dads everywhere! What would the world do without you?

🇺🇸 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION began 250 years ago this past April at Lexington and Concord, and for the next two years there will be major America 250 commemorations coming along thick and fast. Every one of them will be an exceptional educational opportunity for you and your students. (Turn to pages 298–299 in your recommended history encyclopedia for an initial Revolutionary review.) Coming up this Tuesday, June 17th: the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, which captured the imagination of early America like few other events did. You can find a host of educational materials about Bunker Hill on the websites of the National Park Service and the American Battlefields Trust, and you can even make your own scale model of the Bunker Hill Monument (a perfect little homeschool craft project). For an excellent high school exercise, have your students read aloud Calvin Coolidge’s famous speech for Bunker Hill Day in 1918. And be sure to offer the men of Bunker Hill a toast this week too — scroll down to see one that’s almost 200 years old.

📺 One of the best ways to spend your SUMMER educational time is to watch good quality historical DOCUMENTARIES and discuss them as a family. Take a look at our recommended list and see if you can fit one or two of them into your schedule. (The series Liberty! is an excellent choice for American history.)

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Washington, and our COUNTRIES are Sri Lanka 🇱🇰, Sudan 🇸🇩, Suriname 🇸🇷, and Sweden 🇸🇪. (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 adjective sanctus, which means sacred or inviolable. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Sanctify, sanctuary, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (15 June 2025) — Happy Father’s Day! 🏰 Today is the 166th day of 2025; there are 199 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 Ancient Assyrian scribes recorded the occurrence of a total solar eclipse on this day in the year 763 B.C. The date of that eclipse serves a fixed reference point for much of ancient Mesopotamian chronology. 🌏 🌑 🌞 On this day in 1215, King John of England set his seal to Magna Carta, the Great Charter that is the historical foundation of English (and so American) law. ⚖️ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of June is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “The Children’s Hour,” for Father’s Day. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🏰

Monday (16 June 2025) — Today is the birthday of the American geneticist and Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock (1902–1992). 🌽 And on this day in 1963, Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova (b. 1937) became the first woman in space. 👩‍🚀

Tuesday (17 June 2025) — The Battle of Bunker Hill, the first coordinated encounter between opposing armies during the American Revolution, took place on this day in 1775, exactly 250 years ago. ⚔️ Today is also the birthday of one of the giants of American, nay, of world history, to wit, Ruth Graves Wakefield (1903–1977), the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie! 🍪

Wednesday (18 June 2025) — On this day in 1812, the United States declared war on Great Britain. ⚔️ On this day in 1873, Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for having attempted to vote in the presidential election of 1872. 🗳 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. 🇺🇸

Thursday (19 June 2025) — On this day in 1865, more than two years after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect, Union troops announced to slaves still living in Galveston, Texas, that they were free. The date was long celebrated in Texas as Juneteenth, and in 2021 it was recognized by Congress as a federal holiday. 🎉

Friday (20 June 2025) — Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Summer! ⛱️ Today is the June Solstice, known as the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere and the winter solstice in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of astronomical winter). 🗓 The University of Oxford, the oldest university in the English-speaking world, received its royal charter on this day in the year 1248. 🎓 The United States Congress approved the design of the Great Seal of the United States on this day in 1782. (You may have a copy of it in your pocket right now.) 💵 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Wood-Warblers (Part I), the gems of the northern forests. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (21 June 2025) — Today is the birthday of American painter and illustrator Rockwell Kent (1882–1971). 🎨

Sunday (22 June 2025) — On this day in 1633, the Catholic Church forced Italian scientist Galileo Galilei to “abjure, curse, and detest” the view he formerly supported, namely that the earth revolved around the sun and was not fixed at the center of the universe. 🔭 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of June is a tiny audiovisual gem by Edward Thomas, for the birds of summer. 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 Idaho 🇺🇸, Switzerland 🇨🇭, Syria 🇸🇾, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯.

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old offering for the men of Bunker Hill, 250 years ago: “To the glorious memory of our ancestors, who in 1775 at Bunker’s Hill shed their lifeblood to establish our liberties.”

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