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, as the homeschool year approaches its close, is Hawaii, and our “COUNTRY” is Antarctica!ย ๐ฆ๐ถ (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 (13 August 2023) โ Today is the 225th day of 2023; there are 140 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357โ363 in your recommended world almanac.ย ๐ Today is the birthday of American abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucy Stone (1818โ1893).ย โ๏ธ It’s also the birthday of spooky British-American film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899โ1980).ย ๐ฌ Andย … it’s International Lefthanders Day!ย ๐
Monday (14 August 2023) โ 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.ย ๐ก
Tuesday (15 August 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the French general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769โ1821).ย ๐ It’s also the birthday of the British pianist and composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875โ1912).ย ๐ผ 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).ย ๐ก Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of August, from Helen Hunt Jackson (1830โ1885), is “August” for, um, August! Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year.ย โ๏ธ
Wednesday (16 August 2023) โ 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.ย ๐บ๐ธโ๐ฌ๐ง Today is also the birthday of the British soldier, writer, and archeologist T.E.ย Lawrence (1888โ1935), better known as Lawrence of Arabia.ย ๐ช And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week, the last one of the 2022โ2023 homeschool year, will visit some newly inscribed World Heritage Sites around the world.ย ๐บ๐ณ
Thursday (17 August 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the American folk hero, soldier, and politician Davy Crockett (1786โ1836).ย ๐ป 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.ย ๐ข
Friday (18 August 2023) โ On this day in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified.ย ๐ณ And, 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.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (19 August 2023) โ On this day in 1812, during the War of 1812, the American frigate U.S.S. Constitution defeated Great Britain’s H.M.S. Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia and earned the nickname “Old Ironsides” (because cannonballs bounced off her sturdy hull). Old Ironsides is today the oldest commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy and you can pay her a visit any day you like in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston.ย โ๏ธ And speaking of famous ships, today is also the birthday of Gene Roddenberry (1921โ1991), the creator of Star Trek! ๐
Sunday (20 August 2023) โ Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s famous 1812 Overture debuted on this day in 1882 in Moscow.ย ๐ General William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, died on this day in 1912, and, we may hope, entered into heaven.ย ๐บ On this day in 1975, NASA launched the Viking 1 Mars probe. Viking 1 became the first successful Mars lander and remained in operation for more than six years. (An earlier probe, the Soviet Union’s Marsย 3, did successfully land on Mars in 1971, but it transmitted for only twenty seconds.)ย ๐ And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week, the last regular post in the series for the 2022โ2023 homeschool year, will feature the U.S. Territoriesย & Possessionsย ๐บ๐ธ and the Oceans of the Worldย ๐.
๐ฅ ๐ก OUR TOAST THIS WEEK, in honor of the Wow! Signal of 1977 and the birthday of Gene Roddenberry in 1921, looks to the future: “Strange new worlds.”
โกโ Toasts can be a wonderful educational tradition for your homeschool lunch or dinner table. We offer one each weekย 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 (“Toย unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast in your homeschool this week?ย ๐ฅ
๐ ๐ฆ๐ถ EVERYTHING FLOWS: Antarctica is our โcountryโ of the week, so our Weekly World River is the Beardmore Glacier, one of the world’s largest glaciers and a famous river of ice that guided many early polar explorers. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Beardmore Glacier 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.ย ๐ซ
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