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.
๐ ๐ฆข CYGNUS TERM, our fall term in the River Houses, and the brand new 2023โ2024 homeschool year, will begin this Friday, September 1st!
๐โ OUR BONUS “STATE” OF THE WEEK, to wrap up our year-long world tour for 2022โ2023, is the planet Earth itself, and our “COUNTRIES” are the Solar System and the amazing Universe beyond! (You can find them in our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week, which went up just a few minutes ago.)
๐ THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxingย โ aย good time for moon watching! 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 regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (27 August 2023) โ Today is the 239th day of 2023; there are 126 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357โ363 in your recommended world almanac.ย ๐ One of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history took place on this day in 1883 in the Krakatoa archipelago of Indonesia. Over the course of the previous day an ash cloud seventeen miles high had developed over the islands, and on the 27th four massive explosions occurred, the largest of which was heard 3000 miles away in the Indian Ocean. The ash injected into the atmosphere by the Krakatoa eruption produced vivid sunsets all around the world for many months.ย ๐
Monday (28 August 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the American naturalist and artist Roger Tory Peterson (1908โ1996), whose series of compact field guides helped to make amateur bird study popular around the world.ย ๐ฆ And on this day in 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his famous “Iย Have aย Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.ย ๐ย ๐บ๐ธ
Tuesday (29 August 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the great philosopher of liberty John Locke (1632โ1704), whose works influenced the framing of the American system of government.ย ๐
Wednesday (30 August 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the novelist Mary Shelley (1797โ1851), author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818).ย ๐ญ๐บ The great physicist and Nobel Laureate Ernest Rutherford was born on this day in 1871.ย โ๏ธ It’s also the birthday of baseball great Ted Williams (1918โ2002), the last major league player to bat over .400 in a season (1941).ย โพ๏ธ Our Wednesday World Heritage tours that began all the way back last September are now complete! Take a look at all the world’s wonders we explored and stop by our homeschool calendar page to print a copy of the new schedule we’ll be following in the 2023โ2024 homeschool year ahead!ย ๐ And, there’s a full moon tonight, the second one this month! That means weโll have another report from the River Houses Lunar Society on the many independent “citizen science” projects that are available to homeschool students.ย ๐
Thursday (31 August 2023) โ Italian educator and physician Maria Montessori was born on this day in 1870. Her approach to early childhood education remains popular in homeschools as well as in public and private schools around the world.ย ๐ซ
๐ก ๐ The 2023โ2024 River Houses Year Beginsย โ Let the river run!
๐ ๐ฆข Cygnus Term 2023โ2024 Begins
Friday (1 September 2023) โ A New River Houses Homeschool Year Begins! ๐ Today is the first day of Cygnus Term, our fall term in the River Houses, named for the Great Swan of the Heavens.ย ๐ฆข Andย for this first week of September, this first week of Cygnus Term, and this first week of the 2023โ2024 River Houses year, our homeschool poem-of-the-week is our traditional adaptation of the Roman poet Horace (65โ8 B.C.): “Aย handsome house to lodge aย friend, / Aย river at my garden’s end.” Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the new (poetical!) 2023โ2024 homeschool year. ๐ Our Friday Bird Families post this week, the first of the 2023โ2024 homeschool year, will introduce you to your recommended bird guide. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the coming year.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (2 September 2023) โ On this day in 1752, nearly two centuries after the countries of Continental Europe, Great Britain and her American colonies adopted the Gregorian Calendar: Wednesday, September 2nd, 1752, was followed by Thursday, September 14th, 1752.ย ๐ 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.ย ๐ญ
Sunday (3 September 2023) โ The American Revolution came to a formal end on this day in 1783 with the signing of the Treaty of Paris between Great Britain and the new United States of America.ย ๐บ๐ธ๐๐ฌ๐ง And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be Delawareย ๐บ๐ธ, Afghanistanย ๐ฆ๐ซ, Albaniaย ๐ฆ๐ฑ, Algeriaย ๐ฉ๐ฟ, and Andorraย ๐ฆ๐ฉ.
๐ฅ ๐ THIS WEEK’S SPECIAL TOAST is our traditional offering for the beginning of every new River Houses year: “Let the river run!”
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
๐โ EVERYTHING FLOWS, even the stars: The Universe is our “country” of the week for this last week of the River Houses year, so our Weekly World River is the constellation Eridanus, the Great River of the Heavens. You can chart its course in the astronomical section of your homeschool atlas and in your backyard night-sky guide, and you can read more about it in the comprehensive Eridanus 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, 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 this week, this coming month, this coming term, and this wonderful upcoming homeschool year?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