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.
๐ ๐ก ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses, begins this Friday, December 1st! (And that means this is going to be a busy posting week!)
๐ต ๐ ๐ DECEMBER is also our regular Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of seasonal favoritesย โ classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and sillyย โ 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 Friday morning!
๐บ๐ธ OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Rhode Island, and our COUNTRIES are Dominicaย ๐ฉ๐ฒ, the Dominican Republicย ๐ฉ๐ด, Ecuadorย ๐ช๐จ, and Egyptย ๐ช๐ฌ. (Our separate Sunday Statesย & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago.)
๐ THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxingย โ aย good time for moon watching! You can explore the night sky 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 on pages 341โ356 in your current world almanac. Browse through our regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
๐ TODAY, Sunday (26 November 2023) โ Today is the 330th day of 2023; there are 35 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357โ363 in your recommended world almanac.ย ๐ 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.ย โ The classic movie Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered on this day in 1942.ย ๐ฅ And today is the birthday of Charles M. Schulz (1922โ2000), creator of the beloved Peanuts comic strip.ย ๐ถ
Monday (27 November 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the Swedish astronomer and physicist Anders Celsius (1701โ1744), a man of degrees.ย ๐ก The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in New York City on this day in 1924.ย ๐ฌ And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means weโll have a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses on the many independent “citizen science” projects that are available to homeschool students.ย ๐
Tuesday (28 November 2023) โ Today is (probably) the birthday of the Puritan preacher and sometime prisoner John Bunyan (1628โ1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the second most widely printed book in history (after the Bible).ย ๐ถ Today is also the birthday of the great English mystical poet William Blake (1757โ1827).ย ๐ฏ And on this day in 1972, the first successful arcade video game, Pong, was released. (Does anyone remember arcade games?)ย ๐
Wednesday (29 November 2023) โ Today is the birthday of the American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832โ1888), author of Little Women and Little Men.ย ๐งย ๐ฆ And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Morne Trois Pitons National Park in Dominica.ย ๐ฉ๐ฒ
Thursday (30 November 2023) โ Today is the birthday of another American novelist, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835โ1910).ย ๐ธ It’s also the birthday of British statesman and Nobel laureate Winston Churchill (1874โ1965).ย ๐ฌ๐ง 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.)ย ๐ ย ๐ค
๐ ๐ก Orion Term 2023โ2024 Begins
Friday (1 December 2023) โ Today is the first day of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens.ย ๐ก And December is also our Holiday Music Month! Keep your eyes and ears open for many musical delights throughout the month.ย ๐ตย ๐ย ๐ Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Skuas, Jaegers, Auks, Murres, and Puffins. (All wonderful names, yes?) 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 first week of December is “R.L.S.,” a gem-like homage to Robert Louis Stevenson written by A.E. Housman (1859โ1936), for all homeschool hunters, literary and celestial. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year.ย ๐ก
Saturday (2 December 2023) โ The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest Jewish synagogue building in the United States, was dedicated on this day in 1763.ย ๐ And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks.ย ๐ญ
Sunday (3 December 2023) โ Today is the birthday of Gilbert Stuart (1755โ1828), the famous portrait-painter of early America.ย ๐จ It’s also the birthday of Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (1857โ1924), author of The Heart of Darkness and other staples of English literature courses worldwide.ย ๐ And our Sunday Statesย & Countries for next week will be Vermontย ๐บ๐ธ, Elย Salvadorย ๐ธ๐ป, Equatorial Guineaย ๐ฌ๐ถ, Eritreaย ๐ช๐ท, and Estoniaย ๐ช๐ช.
๐ฅ ๐ก OUR TOAST THIS WEEK is our traditional offering for the beginning of Orion Term and for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. The host says: “Not the laurel, but the race.” And the guests respond: “Not the quarry, but the chase.”
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 ๐ฉ๐ฒ EVERYTHING FLOWS: The West Indian nation of Dominica is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Layou River, Dominica’s longest river. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Layou 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
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