🗓️ QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 14 December 2025

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 each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

❤️ It’s such a busy time of year! But don’t worry — just relax and pick one or two items below to enrich your schedule. With that, your weekly lessons are done!

🌠 The annual GEMINID meteor shower is peaking this weekend Saturday–Monday nights (13–15 December). The Geminids are debris from an unusual object called 3200 Phaethon.

🎵 🎄 🎅 DECEMBER is Holiday Music Month in the River Houses and throughout the month (all the way until Twelfth Night, actually) we’re sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes to help you teach little musical lessons all along the way. Check our home page regularly to see them as they appear!

🎵 🎄 📻 And speaking of HOLIDAY MUSIC, I have WQXR’s Holiday Channel on in the background almost every day this month. Won’t you join me?

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Kentucky, and our COUNTRIES are Eswatini 🇸🇿, Ethiopia 🇪🇹, Fiji 🇫🇯, and Finland 🇫🇮. (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.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (14 December 2025) — Today is the 348th day of 2025; there are 17 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars in the Science & Technology section of your recommended world almanac. 📚 Today is also the birthday of the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). 🔭 On this day in 1911, Roald Amundson, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting became the first men ever to reach the South Pole. For an illustrated review of the final phases of the exploration of our planet’s surface, turn to pages 320–321 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. 🎿 And today is the first of the Halcyon Days, the seven days on either side of the winter solstice during which, saith ancient tradition, the stormy seas are calm. 🏝

Monday (15 December 2025) — The famous film Gone With the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, on this day in 1939. 🎬 On this day in 1970, the Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 made the first-ever soft landing on another planet (Venus). 🚀 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of December, as the winter solstice approaches, is Robert Frost’s “Reluctance,” for autumn’s end. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🍂

Tuesday (16 December 2025) — It’s Beethoven’s birthday! (Well, probably.) 🎵 It’s also the birthday of the great English novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817). 🖋 And on this day in 1773, a group of disgruntled Bostonians dumped hundreds of pounds of imported tea into Boston Harbor, and “the Boston Tea Party” has been a part of American history ever since. ☕️

Wednesday (17 December 2025) — Today is the birthday of the American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). 🖋 On this day in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful heavier-than-air flight in their prototype airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina — and the rest is aviation history. ✈️ And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Fort Boonesborough in Kentucky. 🇺🇸

Thursday (18 December 2025) — The English physicist and Nobel laureate J.J. Thompson, the discoverer of the electron, was born on this day in 1856. ⚛️

Friday (19 December 2025) — “These are the times that try men’s souls.” The first of a series of pamphlets by Thomas Paine called “The American Crisis” was published on this this day in 1776 in Philadelphia. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of the pioneering African-American historian Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950). 🔎 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the strong-flying Gulls, Terns, and Skimmers (Part II). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (20 December 2025) — Today is the birthday of the American physicist Robert J. Van de Graaff (1901–1967), known for making people’s hair stand on end. ⚡️ And the storied Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” premiered on this day in 1946 in New York City. 📽

Sunday (21 December 2025) — Happy First Day of (Astronomical) Winter! ⛄️ Today is the December Solstice, known as the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere and the summer solstice in the southern hemisphere (where today is the first day of astronomical summer). 🗓 On this day in 1913, the first modern crossword puzzle was published in the New York World newspaper. 📰 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Tennessee 🇺🇸, France 🇫🇷, Gabon 🇬🇦, The Gambia 🇬🇲, and Georgia 🇬🇪.

🥂 🇺🇸 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is in honor of Thomas Paine and his “American Crisis”: “To that celestial article, FREEDOM.”

❡ 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 African nation of Ethiopia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Tekezé River, one of the principal rivers of Ethiopia. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Tekezé 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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