🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 24 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.

🗓 🦢 This is the last week of Cygnus Term, our fall term in the River Houses. ORION TERM, our winter term, will begin next Sunday, December 1st! 🗡

🎵 🎄 🎅 The upcoming month of DECEMBER will be our regular Holiday Music Month, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes that will help you teach little musical lessons all along the way. Watch for them to begin appearing just Past Three O’Clock on next Sunday morning!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Rhode Island, and our COUNTRIES are Dominica 🇩🇲, the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴, Ecuador 🇪🇨, and Egypt 🇪🇬. (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 a waning crescent — a good time for stargazing! 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 noun domus, which means house or home. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Domestic, domesticate, domicile, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (24 November 2024) — Today is the 329th day of 2024; there are 37 days remaining in this leap year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 One of the most influential books ever written, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, was published on this day in 1859. 🦋 And the much loved novel Black Beauty was published on this day in 1877. 🐴

Monday (25 November 2024) — On this day in 1783, at the end of the American Revolution, the final negotiated evacuation of British troops from New York City was completed. The last toast offered at the ceremonial dinner held that evening was, “May the Remembrance of This Day be a Lesson to Princes.” 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of the great Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), who planted beautiful public libraries all around the world. (Thank you!) 📚

Tuesday (26 November 2024) — The first lighthouse on the deadly Eddystone rocks off the southwest coast of England was destroyed on the night of 26/27 November in the Great Storm of 1703. No trace of the six occupants of the lighthouse was ever found. ⛈️ The classic movie Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered on this day in 1942. 🎥 And today is the birthday of Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000), creator of the beloved Peanuts comic strip. 🐶

Wednesday (27 November 2024) — Today is the birthday of the Swedish astronomer and physicist Anders Celsius (1701–1744), a man of degrees. 🌡 The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in New York City on this day in 1924. 🏬 And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Roger Williams National Memorial in Rhode Island. 🇺🇸

Thursday (28 November 2024) — HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 🦃 🦃 (That’s emoji for “gobble gobble.”) We’ll have some lovely music to share with you today. Thank you all for following us here at the River Houses! 😊 Today is (probably) the birthday of the Puritan preacher and sometime prisoner John Bunyan (1628–1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the second most widely printed book in history (after the Bible). 🚶 Today is also the birthday of the great English mystical poet William Blake (1757–1827). 🐯 And on this day in 1972, the first successful arcade video game, Pong, was released. (Does anyone remember arcade games?) 🏓

Friday (29 November 2024) — Today is the birthday of the American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), author of Little Women and Little Men. 👧 👦 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the leggy Sandpipers (Part II). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (30 November 2024) — Today is the birthday of another American novelist, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835–1910). 🐸 It’s also the birthday of British statesman and Nobel laureate Winston Churchill (1874–1965). 🇬🇧 And on this day in 1954, a meteorite smashed through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama, and struck a woman named Ann Hodges, who was taking a nap. The Sylacauga meteorite, as it is now called, is the only known meteorite in the Western Hemisphere ever to have struck a person. (Hodges was bruised, but sustained no permanent injuries.) 🌠 🤕

🗓 🗡 Orion Term 2024–2025 Begins

Sunday (1 December 2024) — Today is the first day of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. 🗡 And December is also our Holiday Music Month! Keep your eyes and ears open for many musical delights throughout the month. 🎵 🎄 🎅 On this day in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights activist Rosa Parks (1913–2005) was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, an event that led to the Montgomery bus boycott and the growth of the American civil rights movement. 🚌 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of December is “R.L.S.,” a gem-like homage to Robert Louis Stevenson written by A.E. Housman (1859–1936), for all homeschool hunters, literary and celestial. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🗡 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Vermont 🇺🇸, El Salvador 🇸🇻, Equatorial Guinea 🇬🇶, Eritrea 🇪🇷, and Estonia 🇪🇪.

🥂 🦅 🦃 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is a Thanksgiving traditional that makes a traditional American comparison: “To our two national fowls, the American Eagle and the Thanksgiving Turkey: may the one give peace to all our states, and the other a piece for all our plates.”

❡ 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 Dominican Republic in the West Indies is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Yaque del Norte River, the Dominican Republic’s longest river. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Yaque del Norte 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. 🌎 🌍 🌏

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. 🏡