🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 22 December 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 each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🎄 MERRY CHRISTMAS-WEEK to all our homeschool readers and friends!

🎵 📻 On CHRISTMAS EVE morning we’ll be listening live to the Christmas carols broadcast from King’s College at Cambridge University in England. Please join us and millions of other listeners around the world. Here’s how.

📡 🎅 🎁 IS SANTA ON SCHEDULE? Don’t ask Amazon, ask NORAD! (And watch for our special post going up this week.)

📖 Have you gotten your NEW WORLD ALMANAC for the new 2025 year? It’s one of the best educational reference books you can have in your 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?

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Ohio, and our COUNTRIES are Germany 🇩🇪, Ghana 🇬🇭, Greece 🇬🇷, and Grenada 🇬🇩. (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 at its third quarter — 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 noun finis, which means end or boundary. Write it on your homeschool blackboard and send your students to your family dictionary to see how many related English words they can find. (Final, finial, finish, finitude, infinite, and more!)

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (22 December 2024) — Today is the 357th day of 2024; there are only nine 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 also the birthday of the great Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). 🎼 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. 🎅 🎉

Monday (23 December 2024) — 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. 🌳

Tuesday (24 December 2024) — 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 our planet earth rise over another world. 🚀 🌕 🌍

Wednesday (25 December 2024) — Merry Christmas to all friends of the River Houses and to all homeschoolers everywhere! 🎄 Isaac Newton was born on this day in 1642. 🍎 And on this night in 1776, George Washington led the cold and demoralized soldiers of the Continental Army across the freezing Delaware River to secure a decisive victory over Britain’s Hessian mercenaries in the Battle of Trenton. For an illustrated review of this Revolutionary period, turn to pages 298–299 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. ⚔️ And our Wednesday tour of American Heritage Sites this week will take you to Hopewell Culture National Historical Park in Ohio. 🇺🇸

Thursday (26 December 2024) — Today is Boxing Day in many Commonwealth countries, St. Stephen’s Day in many others, and Wren Day in Ireland. 🎁 Today is also the birthday of the English inventor and polymath Charles Babbage (1791–1871), whose “difference engine” is widely regarded as the first mechanical computer. 🖥

Friday (27 December 2024) — Today is the birthday of two of history’s great scientists: the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) and the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822–1895). 🔭 ⚗️ The Flushing Remonstrance, “the Magna Carta of the New World,” in which the citizens of Flushing, New York, refused to obey the governor’s order to persecute their Quaker neighbors, was issued on this day in 1657. 🕊 And our Friday Bird Families lesson this week will introduce you to the water-loving Tropicbirds, Loons, and Albatrosses. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (28 December 2024) — On this day in 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen reported the discovery of a new type of radiation never before encountered. Today we call Röntgen’s new radiation X-rays. 💀

Sunday (29 December 2024) — On this day in the year 1170, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II. For an illustrated review of the history of church and state in the Middle Ages, turn to pages 194–197 in your homeschool history encyclopedia. 🗡 On this day in 1890, soldiers of the 7th U.S. Cavalry massacred 300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota. 🖤 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Louisiana 🇺🇸, Guatemala 🇬🇹, Guinea 🇬🇳, Guinea-Bissau 🇬🇼, and Guyana 🇬🇾.

🥂 🎄 OUR TOAST THIS WEEK is a traditional century-old offering for Christmas: “Here’s to friends we’ve yet to meet; / Here’s to those here: all here I greet; / Here’s to childhood, youth, and age; / Here’s to prophet, bard, and sage; / Here’s to your health — may all be bright / On this so special Christmas night.”

❡ 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: Greece in southern Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Eurotas (Evrotas) River on Greece’s Peloponnesian peninsula. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Eurotas 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. 🏡