🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 10 November 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.

🌠 THE ANNUAL LEONID METEOR SHOWER will peak on Saturday–Monday of next weekend. Unfortunately, the peak this year will coincide with a full moon on Friday the 15th that will wash out all but the brightest meteors. (That of course is a little lesson for your students in itself.) The Leonids are debris from Comet Tempel–Tuttle. For more on meteor showers, turn to pages 130–133 in your backyard astronomy guide.

🐦 FEED THE BIRDS: If you want a simple way to get started with homeschool bird study why not join Project FeederWatch and have your students make a contribution to science by counting the birds in your own backyard. The FeederWatch season has just begun and it runs all the way through April.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is New York, and our COUNTRIES are Costa Rica 🇨🇷, Cote d’Ivoire 🇨🇮, Croatia 🇭🇷, and Cuba 🇨🇺. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post 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.

🦦 HORACE THE OTTER says your LATIN word for the week is the verb curro, which means run. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find that are based on the Latin cur- root. (Current, curriculum, cursive, cursorial, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (10 November 2024) — Today is the 315th day of 2024; there are 51 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 the German priest and monk Martin Luther (1483–1546), the leader of the Protestant Reformation. For an illustrated review of the Reformation and its consequences, turn to pages 197 and 256–259 in your River Houses history encyclopedia. ✝️ Today is also the birthday of the English artist and satirist William Hogarth (1697–1764). 🎨

Monday (11 November 2024) — Today is Veterans Day in the United States, the federal holiday on which we honor all those who have served in the nation’s armed forces. 🇺🇸 On this day in 1572, Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe observed a new star in the constellation Cassiopeia, now known as supernova SN 1572. 🌟 On this day in the year 1620, the Mayflower Compact was signed in what is now Provincetown Harbor on the Massachusetts coast. 📜 And on this day in 1918, at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the guns of World War I fell silent. This is the anniversary that is recognized as Veterans Day in the United States, and as Armistice Day and Remembrance Day in many other countries. 🕊

Tuesday (12 November 2024) — Today is the birthday of American women’s rights advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902). ⚖️ It’s also the birthday of the great French sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840–1917). 🎨 And on this day in 2014, the Philae spacecraft touched down on the surface of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, becoming the first manmade object ever to land safely on a comet. ☄️

Wednesday (13 November 2024) — Saint Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential figures in the history of Christianity, was born on this day in the year 354 in ancient Numidia, a region of the Roman Empire that is today part of Algeria. ✝️ Today is also the birthday of Scottish novelist and poet Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894), the author of A Child’s Garden of Verses and many other much-loved classics for young people. “Bright is the ring of words!” 🔔 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Saratoga National Historical Park in New York. 🇺🇸

Thursday (14 November 2024) — Today is the birthday of Charles Lyell (1797–1875), the father of modern geology. ⚒ It’s also the birthday of German composer and pianist Fanny Mendelssohn (1805–1847). 🎹 The great French Impressionist painter Claude Monet was born on this day in 1840. 🎨 And today is the birthday of American composer and conductor Aaron Copland (1900–1990). 🎵

Friday (15 November 2024) — On this day in 1777, after many months of debate, the Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation and sent them to the states for ratification. 🇺🇸 The cornerstone of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., was laid on this day in 1939 by President Franklin Roosevelt. 🏛 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of November is A.E. Housman’s “Stars, I have seen them fall,” for the annual Leonid meteor shower. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🌠 Our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the leggy Lapwings, Plovers, and Jacanas. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅 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. 🌕

Saturday (16 November 2024) — The movie Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first in the series, was released on this day in 2001. It earned just shy of $1 billion worldwide at the box office. 🧙

Sunday (17 November 2024) — Today is the birthday of German mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius (1790–1868), the inventor (or discoverer?) of the strip that bears his name. 🥓 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be North Carolina 🇺🇸, Cyprus 🇨🇾, Czechia (Czech Republic) 🇨🇿, Denmark 🇩🇰, and Djibouti 🇩🇯.

🥂 🕊 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, taken from our weekly poem, is our annual offering for Veterans Day, Armistice Day, and the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918: “At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”

❡ 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 island-nation of Cuba in the Caribbean Sea is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Cauto River (Río Cauto), the longest river in Cuba. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Cauto 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 Wednesday this month!

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! 🗓

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❡ 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. 🏡