🗓️ 🎉 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 7 September 2025

(This is the first of our regular Quick Freshes posts for the 2025–2026 homeschool year. Print your own River Houses Calendar to follow along with us, and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year.)

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 each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🗓 🦢 This is the first full week of CYGNUS TERM, our fall term in the River Houses. Cygnus Term runs from September through November.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Delaware, and our COUNTRIES are Afghanistan 🇦🇫, Albania 🇦🇱, Algeria 🇩🇿, and Andorra 🇦🇩. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries lesson for the week, the first one of the brand new homeschool year, went up just a few minutes ago. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and follow along with us from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.)

🌕 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is full — a good time to be out and about in the well-lit night! 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 (7 September 2025) — Today is the 250th day of 2025; there are 115 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 Today is also the birthday of Queen Elizabeth I of England (1533–1603), who gave her name to the Elizabethan Era. For an illustrated homeschool review and timeline of this important historical period, turn to page 260 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. 👑 And it’s also the birthday of the much-loved American painter Anna Mary Robertson Moses (1860–1961), better known as Grandma Moses. 🎨 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses on the many wonderful citizen-science projects that are available to homeschool students. 🌕

Monday (8 September 2025) — Today is one of the most important anniversary dates in American — nay, in world cultural history: on this day in 1966, the first episode of Star Trek, “The Man Trap,” was broadcast on NBC television. 🚀 🖖 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of September is Elizabeth Jennings’ lovely “Song at the Beginning of Autumn,” for the start of Cygnus Term. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the 2025–2026 homeschool year. 🍁

Tuesday (9 September 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). 📚 It’s also the birthday of the American businessman Harland David Sanders (1890–1980), better known as Colonel Sanders, the founder of the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant chain. 🍗

Wednesday (10 September 2025) — Today is the birthday of the great English composer Henry Purcell (1659–1695). 🎵 It’s also the birthday of the American physicist Arthur Compton (1892–1962), winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for his studies of electromagnetism. ⚡ And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to New Castle Court House Museum in Delaware. 🇺🇸

Thursday (11 September 2025) — Today is the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3000 people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. 🇺🇸 It’s also the birthday of the Scottish explorer Mungo Park (1771–1806), one of the first Europeans to travel to the interior of Africa. 🌍

Friday (12 September 2025) — This is the traditional date of the Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C., one of the most consequential battles in the history of the Western world, in which the Athenians and their allies defeated the armies of Darius the Great of Persia in his attempt to conquer mainland Greece. ⚔️ On this day in 1962, President John F. Kennedy declared that the United States would land a man on the moon “before this decade is out.” 🚀 🌕 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the familiar Ducks, Geese, and Swans (Part I). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the new 2025–2026 homeschool year. 🦆

Saturday (13 September 2025) — Today is the birthday of the German composer and pianist Clara Schumann (1819–1896). 🎵 It’s also the birthday of the British novelist, children’s author, and WWII fighter pilot Roald Dahl (1916–1990). 🖋 And since this is the second Saturday of the month, we’ll introduce you to one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. For this first month of the new homeschool year: Deneb, the brightest star in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. 🌟

Sunday (14 September 2025) — The annual Monarch butterfly migration is underway in many parts of the United States this week. How many have you seen? 🦋 On this day in 1814 during the British bombardment of Baltimore, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem that he called “Defence of Fort M’Henry.” We know it today as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the United States. 🇺🇸 The Soviet space probe Luna 2, the first man-made object to reach the lunar surface, crash-landed onto the moon on this day in 1959. 🚀 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Pennsylvania 🇺🇸, Angola 🇦🇴, Antigua & Barbuda 🇦🇬, Argentina 🇦🇷, and Armenia 🇦🇲.

🥂 🎉 THIS WEEK’S SPECIAL TOAST is our traditional offering for the beginning of every new River Houses year: “Let the river run!”

❡ 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: Algeria in northern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Sebaou River, which flows into the Mediterranean on Algeria’s northern coast. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Sebaou 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 (above), 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 Saturday this month!

What do you and your students have planned for this week, this month, this term, and this wonderful new homeschool year? 😊

❡ 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! 🗓️

❡ Support our work: If you enjoy our educational materials, please support us by starting your regular Amazon shopping from our very own homeschool teaching supplies page. When you click through from our page, any purchase you make earns us a small commission at no extra cost to you. Thank you for helping us to keep going and growing! 🛒