🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 23 June 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. Subscribe to our free homeschool newsletter to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox once 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 2024–2025 homeschool year are now available!)

📺 One of the best ways to spend your SUMMER educational time is by watching good quality historical DOCUMENTARIES and discussing them as a family. Take a look at our recommended list and see if you can fit one or two into your schedule.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Idaho, and our COUNTRIES are Switzerland 🇨🇭, Syria 🇸🇾, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯. (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 (23 June 2024) — Today is the 175th day of 2024; there are 191 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 The great English mathematician Alan Turing was born on this day in 1912. His pioneering work in computer science and cryptanalysis was instrumental in the breaking of German codes during World War II. 🖥

Monday (24 June 2024) — On this day in the year 1497, the Italian-English explorer John Cabot (ca. 1450–1500) landed in Newfoundland and became the first European since the Vikings, centuries before, to set foot in North America. ⚓️

Tuesday (25 June 2024) — On this day in 1876, the combined forces of several Plains Indian tribes under the command of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated a U.S. Army regiment under the command of George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known ever since as “Custer’s Last Stand.” ⚔️ And today is the birthday of American illustrator Eric Carle (1929–2021), author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other popular children’s books. 🐛

Wednesday (26 June 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great French astronomer Charles Messier (1730–1817), who accidentally documented and numbered many of the most beautiful objects in the universe. 🔭 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Proto-Urban Site of Sarazm in Tajikistan. 🇹🇯

Thursday (27 June 2024) — Today is the birthday of the pioneering African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). 🖋 And it’s also the birthday of the American children’s entertainer Bob Keeshan (1927–2004), better known as Captain Kangaroo! 📺

Friday (28 June 2024) — On this day in 1914 the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo set World War I in motion, and on this day in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles brought that war to an end. See pages 370–375 in your homeschool history encyclopedia for an overview of “The Great War.” ⚔️ 🕊 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the tropical Tanagers and the peculiar Western Spindalis. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (29 June 2024) — The famous French economist and freedom-philosopher Frédéric Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. 💰 And today is the birthday of the French writer and air force pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), author of The Little Prince. 🐘

Sunday (30 June 2024) — Today is World Asteroid Day, marking the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska Event when a meteoroid perhaps as much as 600 feet long exploded in the atmosphere and flattened more than 700 square miles of forest in Siberia. 🌠 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Wyoming 🇺🇸, Tanzania 🇹🇿, Thailand 🇹🇭, Timor-Leste (East Timor) 🇹🇱, and Togo 🇹🇬.

🥂 🐦 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is one for you to adapt to your own location, taken from our weekly poem, “Adlestrop” by Edward Thomas. From the ending of the poem we could toast: “To all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.” But your toast can be to your own state, or town, or county as you please: “To all the birds of Idaho.” “To all the birds of Florida.” “To all the birds of Michigan.”

❡ 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: Switzerland in central Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Aare River, a tributary of the Rhine and one of the most important rivers of Switzerland. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Aare 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 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. 🏡