🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 22 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!)

📺 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.

🌳 SUMMER is also a great time to explore LOCAL HISTORY & FAMILY HISTORY in your homeschool.

🇺🇸 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 a waning 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 silva, which means forest or grove. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Silviculture, sylvan, Penn-sylvania, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (22 June 2025) — Today is the 173rd day of 2025; there are 192 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 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. 🔭 And 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. 🚂

Monday (23 June 2025) — 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. 🖥

Tuesday (24 June 2025) — 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. ⚓️

Wednesday (25 June 2025) — 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.” ⚔️ Today is also the birthday of American illustrator Eric Carle (1929–2021), author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and other popular children’s books. 🐛 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve in Idaho. 🇺🇸

Thursday (26 June 2025) — 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. 🔭

Friday (27 June 2025) — Today is the birthday of the pioneering African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the American children’s entertainer Bob Keeshan (1927–2004), better known as Captain Kangaroo! 📺 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Wood-Warblers (Part II), the tiny gems of the American forests. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (28 June 2025) — 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.”) ⚔️ 🕊

Sunday (29 June 2025) — The famous French economist and freedom-philosopher Frédéric Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. 💰 Today is also the birthday of the French writer and air force pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), author of The Little Prince. 🐘 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: Syria in the Middle East is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Barada River, which flows (most of the year) through the Syrian capital of Damascus. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Barada 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. 🏡