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.
📖 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?
🇺🇸 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 gibbous and waxing — a 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 341–356 in your current world almanac. Browse through our regular homeschool astronomy posts for even more.
🗓 TODAY, Sunday (24 December 2023) — Today is the 358th day of 2023; there are only seven days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different modern and historical calendars on pages 357–363 in your recommended world almanac. 📚 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. 🚀 🌕 🌍
Monday (25 December 2023) — 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. ⚔️
Tuesday (26 December 2023) — 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. 🖥 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report from the Lunar Society of the River Houses on the many independent “citizen science” projects that are available to homeschool students. 🌕
Wednesday (27 December 2023) — 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 Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Old Town of Regensburg in Germany. 🇩🇪
Thursday (28 December 2023) — 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. 💀
Friday (29 December 2023) — 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. 🗡 And 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. 🖤 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the pelagic Shearwaters, Petrels, and Storm-Petrels. Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🌊
Saturday (30 December 2023) — Today is the birthday of the English composer and organist William Croft (1678–1727), whose short choral works for funeral services are among the most beautiful pieces of music ever written. 🎵 Today is also the birthday of Indian–English author and Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936). 🖋
Sunday (31 December 2023) — It’s New Year’s Eve! 🎉 It’s also the birthday of the great French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954). 🎨 And our Sunday States & Countries for next week will be Louisiana 🇺🇸, Guatemala 🇬🇹, Guinea 🇬🇳, Guinea-Bissau 🇬🇼, and Guyana 🇬🇾.
🥂 🎄 OUR TOAST THIS WEEK is our old traditional 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: Ghana in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Densu River, which supplies much of the water for Ghana’s capital, Accra. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Densu 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. 🏡