🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 20 July 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.

🚀 HAPPY MOON LANDING DAY (July 20th)! 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 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 adjective vacuus, which means empty. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Vacant, vacuous, vacuum, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (20 July 2025) — Today is the 201st day of 2025; there are 164 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 birthday of the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), the father of modern genetics. 🫛 And on this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 lunar module touched down on the Sea of Tranquility and American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men ever to walk on the moon (while command module pilot Michael Collins continued to orbit overhead). 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 🌎 🚀 🌕 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀

Monday (21 July 2025) — The American novelist and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. 🖋 And the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, −128.6 °F (−89.2 °C), was measured on this day in 1983 at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica. ❄️

Tuesday (22 July 2025) — 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. 🔔

Wednesday (23 July 2025) — 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. ☄️ And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico. 🇺🇸

Thursday (24 July 2025) — 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. 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 🌕 🚀 🌏 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀

Friday (25 July 2025) — 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. 🧬 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Cardinals and their allies. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (26 July 2025) — 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. 🗣

Sunday (27 July 2025) — 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. 🐰 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Arizona 🇺🇸, Uzbekistan 🇺🇿, Vanuatu 🇻🇺, Vatican City 🇻🇦, and Venezuela 🇻🇪.

🥂 🚀 OUR TOAST THIS WEEK, from Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” is one of our traditional offerings in honor of the first men to walk on the moon, July 20th, 1969: “To heroic hearts.”

❡ 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 Kingdom in western Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the River Thames, one of the most storied rivers in the English-speaking world and the heart of the UK capital city of London. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Thames 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! 🗓

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒

❡ 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. 🏡