🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 21 July 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.

🌕 JULY is our special MOON MONTH in the River Houses! Why not explore some of the wonderful Apollo 11 moon landing resources that are available to your students this month (and every month of the year).

🕯 It is also my pleasure to inform you that️ NATIONAL MOTH WEEK is now underway! Don’t forget to download your free moth coloring book today!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is New Mexico, and our COUNTRIES are the United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪, the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, the United States 🇺🇸, and Uruguay 🇺🇾. (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 full — a good time to be out and about in the well-lit night! (And to locate 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 (21 July 2024) — Today is the 203rd day of 2024; there are 163 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 American novelist and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. 🖋 The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, −128.6 ºF (−89.2 ºC), was measured on this day in 1983 at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica. ❄️ And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses on the many independent “citizen science” projects that are available to homeschool students. 🌕

Monday (22 July 2024) — On this day in 1793, the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie (1764–1820) reached the Pacific Ocean near present-day Bella Coola, British Columbia, having completed the first transcontinental crossing of North America. 🇨🇦 Today is also the birthday of the American poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943). 🖋 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of the month is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ intricate masterpiece “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” for Hopkins’ upcoming birthday and the halcyon days of summer. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🔔

Tuesday (23 July 2024) — On this day in 1995, what would become one of the brightest comets of the twentieth century was discovered independently by American astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. Comet Hale–Bopp was visible to the naked eye through much of 1996 and 1997, but if you missed it, you’re out of luck, because it won’t be back for another 2500 years. ☄️

Wednesday (24 July 2024) — Today is the birthday of “The Liberator,” Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), one of the most important figures in the history of Latin America. Bolívar played a central role in establishing the independence of Bolivia (which was named for him), Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, and Venezuela. 🇧🇴 On this day in 1847, a group of Mormon pioneers under the leadership of Brigham Young arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and established the settlement that became Salt Lake City, Utah. 🏞 And on this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 capsule carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 🌕 🚀 🌏 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Ironbridge Gorge in the United Kingdom. 🇬🇧

Thursday (25 July 2024) — Today is the birthday of the German medical researcher Paul Langerhans (1847–1888) who discovered the insulin-secreting cell clusters of the pancreas, known today as the islets of Langerhans. 🔬 Today is also the birthday of the English biochemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958) who played a key role in the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA. 🧬

Friday (26 July 2024) — The great painter of the American West, George Catlin, was born on this day in 1796. 🎨 The most well known of the many attempts to create a universal language for all mankind got underway on this day in 1887 with the publication of Unua Libro, the First Book setting forth the proposed international language of Esperanto. 🗣 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the familiar Blackbirds and their allies. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (27 July 2024) — The inimitable Bugs Bunny made his screen debut on this day in 1940 in a short animated film called A Wild Hare. Elmer Fudd couldn’t catch him then, and hasn’t to this day. 🐰

Sunday (28 July 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great English polymath Robert Hooke (1635–1703), one of the pioneers of microscopy and the first person to apply the world “cell” to the basic structural unit of living things. 🔬 One of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was born on this day in 1844. 🖋 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Arizona 🇺🇸, Uzbekistan 🇺🇿, Vanuatu 🇻🇺, Vatican City 🇻🇦, and Venezuela 🇻🇪.

🥂 🌎 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old traditional, offered for the crew of Apollo 11 who safely returned from the moon this week in 1969: “A fair welcome at the end of a long journey.”

❡ 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 United Arab Emirates in the Middle East is one of our countries-of-the-week, but as a desert country it has no permanent rivers. It does however has seasonal streams called wadis, so our Weekly World “River” is Wadi Wurayah, an important ecological area in the northeastern U.A.E. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Wadi Wurayah 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. 🏡