🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 15 September 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.

🌞 🌏 🌕 There will be a PARTIAL LUNAR ECLIPSE on the night of 17–18 September 2024 (this Tuesday–Wednesday night). The earth’s deep shadow (the umbra) will only clip the edge of the full moon, so it won’t be a major event, but it will definitely be worth going outside to see with your students. The best time will be about 10:45 p.m. Eastern U.S. time on the evening of Tuesday the 17th. Get all the details right here (be sure to enter your location) and make a viewing plan today!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is New Jersey, and our COUNTRIES are Australia 🇦🇺, Austria 🇦🇹, Azerbaijan 🇦🇿, and the Bahamas 🇧🇸. (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 gibbous and waxing — a good time for moon watching! 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 (15 September 2024) — Today is the 259th day of 2024; there are 107 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac 📚 Today is the birthday of novelist James Fenimore Cooper (1789–1851), one of the most popular writers of nineteenth-century America. 🖋 It’s also the birthday of writer and illustrator Robert McCloskey (1914–2003), author of Make Way for Ducklings (1941) and other children’s classics. 🦆 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 2024–2025 homeschool year. 🦋

Monday (16 September 2024) — 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. ⚔️

Tuesday (17 September 2024) — 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. 🇺🇸 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. ⚔️ And, there’s a full moon tonight (and a PARTIAL ECLIPSE!), 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. (And we’ll in fact have a big Lunar Society announcement!) 🌕

Wednesday (18 September 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great English writer and lexicographer Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784). 📖 On this day in 1793, President George Washington, dressed (appropriately enough) in his masonic regalia, laid the cornerstone of the U.S. Capitol Building. 🏛 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Morristown National Historical Park in New Jersey. 🇺🇸

Thursday (19 September 2024) — Arrrr! It be International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day, me hearties! 🏴‍☠️ On this day in 1991, “Ötzi the Iceman,” a 5000-year-old naturally preserved mummy, was discovered frozen in the ice in the mountains along the Alpine border between Italy and Austria. 🏔

Friday (20 September 2024) — “On the 20th of September 1839, an English officer, residing in the neighbourhood of Calcutta, saw a quantity of live fish descend in a smart shower of rain. They were about three inches in length, and all of one kind. Some, falling on hard ground, were killed; some, which fell on soft grass, continued in life.” 🐟🐟 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the Ducks, Geese, and Swans (Part II). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦢

Saturday (21 September 2024) — Today is the birthday of the great English composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934). 🎵 And on this day in 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor (1930–2023) was unanimously approved by the U.S. Senate as the first female Supreme Court justice. ⚖️

Sunday (22 September 2024) — Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Fall! 🍂 Today is the September Equinox, known as the autumnal or fall equinox in the northern hemisphere and the vernal or spring equinox in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of spring). 🗓 On this day in 1776, American spy Nathan Hale, age 21, was executed by the British in New York City. His final words were said to be, “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of the great experimental physicist Michael Faraday (1791–1867). ⚡️ And today is Hobbit Day! 🌋 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of September, as astronomical summer becomes fall, is a pensive equinoctial lyric by Emily Dickinson. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the 2024–2025 homeschool year. 🍃 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Georgia 🇺🇸, Bahrain 🇧🇭, Bangladesh 🇧🇩, Barbados 🇧🇧, and Belarus 🇧🇾.

🥂 🏴‍☠️ OUR WEEKLY TOAST, in honor of International Talk-Like-a-Pirate Day, is the universal pirate toast, recognized across the Seven Seas: “Arrrr!”

❡ 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: The Bahamas in the West Indies is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is Fresh Creek on Andros Island, one of the many small streams and tidal inlets along that island’s coastline. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Fresh Creek 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

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! 🗓

❡ 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! 🛒

❡ 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. 🏡