🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 17 December 2023

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.

❤️ 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!

🎵 📻 On CHRISTMAS EVE we’ll be listening live to the Christmas carols broadcast from King’s College at Cambridge University. Please join us and millions of other listeners around the world. Check right here for the schedule.

📖 Have you gotten your NEW WORLD ALMANAC for the new 2024 year? It’s one of the handiest educational reference books you can have in a homeschool library.

🎵 🎄 🎅 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?

📡 🎅 🎁 Is SANTA ON SCHEDULE? Don’t ask Amazon, ask NORAD!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Tennessee, and our COUNTRIES are France 🇫🇷, Gabon 🇬🇦, The Gambia 🇬🇲, and Georgia 🇬🇪. (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 waxing crescent — a good time for stargazing! 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 341–356 in your current world almanac. Browse through our regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (17 December 2023) — Today is the 351st day of 2023; there are only 14 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357–363 in your recommended world almanac. 📚 Today is the birthday of the American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). 🖋 And 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. ✈️

Monday (18 December 2023) — The English physicist and Nobel laureate J.J. Thompson, the discoverer of the electron, was born on this day in 1856. ⚛️

Tuesday (19 December 2023) — “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. 🇺🇸 And today is also the birthday of the pioneering African-American historian Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950). 🔎

Wednesday (20 December 2023) — Today is the birthday of the American physicist Robert J. Van de Graaff (1901–1967), known for making people’s hair stand on end. ⚡️ The storied Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” premiered on this day in 1946 in New York City. 📽 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Chartres Cathedral in France. 🇫🇷

Thursday (21 December 2023) — 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. 📰

Friday (22 December 2023) — Today is the birthday of the great Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). 🎼 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the Tropicbirds, Loons, and Albatrosses. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of December is in fact a double feature: “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Clarke Moore (for Christmas Eve), and “Auld Lang Syne” by Robert Burns (for New Year’s Eve). Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🎅 🥂

Saturday (23 December 2023) — On this day in 1783 in Annapolis, Maryland, George Washington, the American Cincinnatus, surrendered his sword to Congress and resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. 🇺🇸 And today is the birthday of Joseph Smith (1805–1844), the founder of the Mormon Church. 🌳

Sunday (24 December 2023) — It’s Christmas Eve! 🎅 We’ll be tuning in today to the live broadcast of the beautiful Festival of Lessons and Carols from King’s College at Cambridge University. Please join us! 🎶 On this day in 1968, Apollo 8 entered orbit around the moon, and its crew of three — Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders — became the first men ever to see the planet earth rise over another world. 🚀 🌕 🌍 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Ohio 🇺🇸, Germany 🇩🇪, Ghana 🇬🇭, Greece 🇬🇷, and Grenada 🇬🇩.

🥂 ⛄️ OUR TOAST THIS WEEK is our traditional offering for the winter solstice: “To cold weather and warm hearts.”

❡ 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: Gambia in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is (naturally enough) the Gambia River, the country’s principal river. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Gambia 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, or start with the river lists in your world almanac (pages 695–697), 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 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. 🏡