🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 28 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. (Our new calendars for the 2024–2025 homeschool year are also now available!)

🌕 JULY has been our special MOON MONTH in the River Houses, and we hope you’ll keep teaching homeschool lunar lessons all year round! Every month is a good month to learn about the phases of the moon and to discover the history of the first Apollo 11 moon landing.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Arizona, and our COUNTRIES are Uzbekistan 🇺🇿, Vanuatu 🇻🇺, Vatican City 🇻🇦, and Venezuela 🇻🇪. (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 just barely past its third quarter — 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 (28 July 2024) — Today is the 210th day of 2024; there are 156 days remaining in this leap 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 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. 🔬 And one of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was born on this day in 1844. 🖋

Monday (29 July 2024) — The seven-mile-long Cape Cod Canal first opened on this day in 1914, significantly reducing sailing time between Boston and New York (and markedly increasing safety). 🚢

Tuesday (30 July 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great (and largely homeschooled) English writer Emily Bronte (1818–1848), author of Wuthering Heights. 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the American engineer and industrialist Henry Ford (1863–1947). 🚗

Wednesday (31 July 2024) — On this day in 1964 the Ranger 7 probe transmitted the first close-up images of the moon taken by an American spacecraft, just minutes before it was intentionally crash-landed on the lunar surface. 🚀 🌕 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Historic Center of Bukhara in Uzbekistan. 🇺🇿

Thursday (1 August 2024) — Today is the birthday of Maria Mitchell (1818–1889), the discoverer of “Miss Mitchell’s Comet” and the first American woman to work as a professional astronomer. ☄️ Today is also the birthday of the great American writer Herman Melville (1819–1891), author of Bartleby the Scrivener, Moby-Dick, and many other literary classics. 🐳 And in Melville’s honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of August, and also our weekly toast, is the ringing little toast-poem “To the Master of the Meteor,” appearing below. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🍻

Friday (2 August 2024) — The first United States census, conducted under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, commenced on this day in 1790. The total count was 3,929,214. 🇺🇸 And the first Lincoln Cents were released into circulation on this day in 1909, the centennial year of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. 💰 Our Friday Bird Families post this week, the last one for the 2023–2024 homeschool year, will introduce you to an assortment of accidental and extinct North American birds that are featured at the end of your recommended bird guide. Visit our River Houses calendar page and print out a new Calendar of American Birds to follow for the new homeschool year coming up next month. 🦅

Saturday (3 August 2024) — The famous opera house “La Scala” opened on this day in 1778 in Milan, Italy. 🎵 Today is also the birthday of the Pulitzer Prize–winning World War II journalist Ernie Pyle (1900–1945). 📰 And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (4 August 2024) — The great English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792. 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the great American trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong (1901–1971). 🎺 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Alaska 🇺🇸, Vietnam 🇻🇳, Yemen 🇾🇪, Zambia 🇿🇲, and Zimbabwe 🇿🇼.

🍻 ⚓️ OUR TOAST THIS WEEK and our weekly poem for the first week of August are one and the same, for Herman Melville’s birthday: the ringing toast-poem “To the Master of the Meteor.” The Meteor was a sailing ship, and the master (captain) of the Meteor was Herman’s brother Thomas Melville, somewhere at sea. Why not treat your students to this wonderful toast around your family table this week:

Lonesome on earth’s loneliest deep,
Sailor! who dost thy vigil keep —
Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep
Over monstrous waves that curl and comb;
Of thee we think when here from brink
We blow the mead in bubbling foam.
Of thee we think, in a ring we link;
To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink,
And the Meteor rolling home.

❡ 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 tiny island nation of Vanuatu in the Pacific Ocean is one of our countries-of-the-week, but Vanuatu doesn’t have much in the way of large rivers. It does have some lovely waterfalls, however, such as the Lololima Falls, so they will serve as our Weekly World River. You can find their location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read (a little) more about these falls in the (unillustrated) Lololima “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. 🏡