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. Add your name to our free mailing list 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.
๐บ๐ธ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Oklahoma, and our COUNTRIES are Turkmenistanย ๐น๐ฒ, Tuvaluย ๐น๐ป, Ugandaย ๐บ๐ฌ, and Ukraineย ๐บ๐ฆ. (Our separate Sunday Statesย & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
๐ THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waning crescentย โ aย good time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 341โ356 in your current world almanac. Browse through our homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (16 July 2023) โ Today is the 197th day of 2023; there are 168 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357โ363 in your world almanac.ย ๐ Today is also the midpoint of Hercules Term and thus one of the four cross-quarter days of the River Houses year. How are things going in your homeschool?ย ๐ช The District of Columbia was established as the capital of the United States on this day in 1790.ย ๐บ๐ธ Today is the birthday of the American religious leader Mary Baker Eddy (1821โ1910), founder of the Christian Science movement.ย โ๏ธ Today is also the birthday of the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872โ1928), leader of the first expedition to reach the South Pole.ย ๐ฆ๐ถ And on this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Four days later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon.ย ๐
Monday (17 July 2023) โ Today isย … World Emoji Day!ย ๐๐ด๐ George Frideric Handel’s masterpiece “Water Music” premiered on this day in 1717, played by fifty musicians on a barge floating down the Thames River in London.ย ๐ต Today is also the birthday of the great Christian hymn writer and educator Isaac Watts (1674โ1748).ย ๐ผ
Tuesday (18 July 2023) โ The Great Fire of Rome broke out on this day in the year 64. Over the next six days it destroyed much of the city. Some reports (which may or may not be true) claimed that the Emperor Nero entertained himself by playing the lyre as he watched the city go up in flames.ย ๐ฅ On this day in 1863 during the American Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a regiment made up almost entirely of African-American soldiers, attempted unsuccessfully to capture Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina. Their story was dramatized in the 1989 film Glory.ย โ๏ธ
Wednesday (19 July 2023) โ The first national convention on women’s rights, the two-day Seneca Falls Convention, opened on this day in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York.ย โ๏ธ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Kunya-Urgench in Turkmenistan.ย ๐น๐ฒ
Thursday (20 July 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the Augustinian friar Gregor Mendel (1822โ1884), the father of modern genetics.ย ๐ผ 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).ย ๐จโ๐๐จโ๐๐จโ๐ ๐ ๐ ๐ ๐จโ๐๐จโ๐๐จโ๐
Friday (21 July 2023) โ The American novelist and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899.ย ๐ The lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, โ128.6ย ยบF (โ89.2ย ยบC), was measured on this day in 1983 at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica.ย โ๏ธ And our Friday Bird Families post 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.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (22 July 2023) โ Today is the first day of National Moth Week!ย ๐ฏ๏ธ On this day in 1793, the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie (1764โ1820) reached the Pacific Ocean near present-day Bella Coola, British Columbia, having completed the first transcontinental crossing of North America.ย ๐จ๐ฆ Today is also the birthday of the American poet and novelist Stephen Vincent Benรฉt (1898โ1943).ย ๐ 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.ย ๐
Sunday (23 July 2023) โ 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 HaleโBopp 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.ย โ๏ธ And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be New Mexicoย ๐บ๐ธ, United Arab Emiratesย ๐ฆ๐ช, United Kingdomย ๐ฌ๐ง, United Statesย ๐บ๐ธ, and Uruguayย ๐บ๐พ.
๐ฅ ๐ OUR TOAST THIS WEEK, from John Masefield’s “Sea Fever,” is one of our traditional annual offerings in honor of the first men to walk on the moon, July 20th, 1969. The host says, “All I ask is a tall ship,” and the guests respond, “and a star to steer her by.”
โกโ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family table. We offer one each week โ 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?ย ๐ฅ
๐ ๐บ๐ฌ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Uganda in eastern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Kazinga Channel, an important wildlife area in Uganda’s Queen Elizabeth National Park. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Kazinga Channel entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.
โกโ 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 your world almanac (pages 695โ697), 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. Aย whole world of geographical learning awaits you.ย ๐โ๐โ๐
What do you have planned for your homeschool this week?ย ๐
โกโ 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. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events and follow along with us.ย ๐
โกโ 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!ย ๐
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โกโ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groupsย โ local chapters that we call โHouses.โ 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.ย ๐ก