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 is Pennsylvania, and our COUNTRIES are Angolaย ๐ฆ๐ด, Antigua & Barbudaย ๐ฆ๐ฌ, Argentinaย ๐ฆ๐ท, and Armeniaย ๐ฆ๐ฒ. (Our separate Sunday Statesย & Countries lesson 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 regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (10 September 2023) โ Today is the 253rd day of 2023; there are 112 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 the great English composer Henry Purcell (1659โ1695).ย ๐ต And it’s also the birthday of the American physicist Arthur Compton (1892โ1962), winner of the 1927 Nobel Prize for his studies of electromagnetism.ย โก
Monday (11 September 2023) โ Today is the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3000 people in New York, Virginia, and Pennsylvania.ย ๐บ๐ธ It’s also the birthday of the Scottish explorer Mungo Park (1771โ1806), one of the first Europeans to travel to the interior of Africa.ย ๐
Tuesday (12 September 2023) โ 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. โ๏ธ And on this day in 1962, President Johnย F. Kennedy declared that the United States would land a man on the moon “before this decade is out.”ย ๐ย ๐
Wednesday (13 September 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the German composer and pianist Clara Schumann (1819โ1896).ย ๐ต It’s also the birthday of the British novelist, children’s author, and WWII fighter pilot Roald Dahl (1916โ1990).ย ๐ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Mbanza Kongo in Angola.ย ๐ฆ๐ด
Thursday (14 September 2023) โ The annual Monarch butterfly migration is underway in many parts of the United States this week. How many have you seen?ย ๐ฆ On this day in 1814 during the British bombardment of Baltimore, Francis Scott Key wrote a poem that he called “Defence of Fort MโHenry.” We know it today as “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the United States. ๐บ๐ธ The Soviet space probe Lunaย 2, the first man-made object to reach the lunar surface, crash-landed onto the moon on this day in 1959.ย ๐
Friday (15 September 2023) โ Today is the birthday of novelist James Fenimore Cooper (1789โ1851), one of the most popular writers of nineteenth-century America.ย ๐ It’s also the birthday of writer and illustrator Robert McCloskey (1914โ2003), author of Make Way for Ducklings (1941) and other children’s classics.ย ๐ฆ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you (again, and appropriately enough) to the Ducks, Geese, and Swans. (Partย II, because there are a lot of them!) Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year.ย ๐ฆ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of September is Robert Frost’s “The Tuft of Flowers,” for the fall harvest, our common labor, and the Monarch butterfly migration. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the 2023โ2024 homeschool year.ย ๐ฆ
Saturday (16 September 2023) โ On this day in 1776, with George Washington in direct command, the Continental Army in New York successfully defended several key positions on Manhattan Island in the Battle of Harlem Heights.ย โ๏ธ
Sunday (17 September 2023) โ Today is Constitution Day! On this day in 1787, the U.S. Constitution was signed in Philadelphia by the members of the Constitutional Convention. Why not pay a homeschool visit to the original Constitution today at its current home in the National Archives.ย ๐บ๐ธ Today is also the anniversary of the Battle of Antietam in 1862, one of the bloodiest days in American history, with more than 22,000 Union and Confederate casualties.ย โ๏ธ And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be New Jerseyย ๐บ๐ธ, Australiaย ๐ฆ๐บ, Austriaย ๐ฆ๐น, Azerbaijanย ๐ฆ๐ฟ, and the Bahamasย ๐ง๐ธ.
๐ฅ ๐บ๐ธ THIS WEEK’S TOAST is in memory of Francis Scott Key and 9/11/2001 (and the army at Marathon): “To the land of the free and the home of the brave.”
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 ๐ฆ๐ด EVERYTHING FLOWS: Angola in southwestern Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Cunene or Kunene River, which flows through Angola and along the Angolan border with Namibia. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Cunene River 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
๐ AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Wednesday this month!
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