🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 11 August 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!)

🌠 THE PERSEID METEOR SHOWER is expected to reach its annual peak on the nights of August 11th through 13th (tonight through Tuesday night). This should be a relatively good year for viewing from about 11 p.m. onward after the moon sets. Be sure to go outside and take a look! (And give your eyes time to get adjusted to the dark.) The Perseids are debris from comet Swift–Tuttle.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK, as the homeschool year approaches its close, is Hawaii, and our “COUNTRY” is Antarctica! 🇦🇶 (Our separate Sunday States & Countries lesson for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌒 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waxing 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.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (11 August 2024) — Today is the 224th day of 2024; there are 142 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 According to the Mesoamerican Long Count Calendar, used by the Maya and several other pre-Columbian civilizations, the world was created on this day in the year 3114 B.C. (as reckoned by our own modern Gregorian Calendar). 🗓

Monday (12 August 2024) — The Perseid Meteor Shower is expected to peak tonight and tomorrow night! 🌠 Today is the birthday of poet and educator Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929), the author of the great anthem “America the Beautiful.” 🇺🇸 It’s also the birthday of Austrian physicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), one of the founders of quantum mechanics. 🐈

Tuesday (13 August 2024) — Today is the birthday of American abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucy Stone (1818–1893). ⚖️ It’s also the birthday of spooky British-American film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980). 🎬 And … it’s International Lefthanders Day! 🎉

Wednesday (14 August 2024) — On this day in the year 1040, Scotland’s King Duncan I was killed by his rival Macbeth, probably in battle and not in his sleep as depicted in Shakespeare’s play. 🗡 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week, the last one of the 2023–2024 homeschool year, will visit some newly inscribed World Heritage Sites around the world. 🇺🇳

Thursday (15 August 2024) — Today is the birthday of the French general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821). 👑 It’s also the birthday of the British pianist and composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912). 🎼 And on this day in 1977, an Ohio State University radio telescope picked up a deep-space radio signal with unusual characteristics that seemed to indicate an intelligent source. Dubbed the “Wow! signal,” nothing like it has been detected since and its origin remains unexplained (although there is no shortage of theories). 📡 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of August, from Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885), is the seasonal sonnet “August” for, um, August! Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. ☀️

Friday (16 August 2024) — On this day in 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph cable was put into service with an exchange of messages between U.S. President James Buchanan and Britain’s Queen Victoria. 🇺🇸⌁🇬🇧 Today is also the birthday of the British soldier, writer, and archeologist T.E. Lawrence (1888–1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia. 🐪 Our year-long series of Friday Bird Families posts that reviewed all the birds of North America is now complete! Take a look at all the wonderful avian friends we made this past year, and visit our main River Houses calendar page to print a new Calendar of American Birds for the new homeschool year that will begin in September. 🦅

Saturday (17 August 2024) — Today is the birthday of the American folk hero, soldier, and politician Davy Crockett (1786–1836). 🐻 And on this day in 1807, the world’s first commercial steamboat service was inaugurated when Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat departed New York City for Albany, 130 miles up the Hudson River. 🚢

Sunday (18 August 2024) — On this day in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified. 🗳 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week, the last regular post in the series for the 2023–2024 homeschool year, will feature U.S. Territories & Possessions 🇺🇸 and the Oceans of the World 🌊.

🥂 📡 OUR TOAST THIS WEEK, in honor of the Wow! Signal of 1977 and the upcoming birthday of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry on August 19th, looks to the future: “To strange new worlds.”

❡ 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 (even ice): The south-polar continent of Antarctica is our “country” of the week, so our Weekly World River is the Recovery Glacier, a large ice river that flows ultimately into the Weddell Sea on the east side of the Antarctic Peninsula. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Recovery Glacier 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

🙀 AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Tuesday this month!

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. 🏡