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Here β€” said the Year β€”

β€”Emily Dickinson

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons about the four terms that make up the River Houses year (Cygnus, Orion, Leo, and Hercules), and about our annual River Houses calendars. Download and print your own educational calendars on our main homeschool calendars page, and add your name to our River Houses homeschool mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week! 😊

πŸ—“ HAPPY AUGUST to All Our Homeschool Readers and Friends!

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-august

Happy August to all our readers and friends! Here are some things to look for in the homeschool month ahead.

August panel from Roman mosaic at El Djem, Tunisia, ca. A.D. 225. (Image: Ad Meskens / Wikimedia Commons.)
August with 31 days is the last month of Hercules Term, our summer term in the River Houses, and it’s the last month of the River Houses year. Visit our main calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print out some of our simple homeschool calendars β€” they’ll help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. πŸ—“

The month of August was originally called Sextilis (“Sixth”) back when the ancient Roman calendar considered the spring equinox in March to be the beginning of the year. (That’s why next month is September, “Seventh,” followed by October, “Eighth,” and so on.) The sixth month was renamed August in honor of the emperor Caesar Augustus in the year 8Β B.C. You can learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

We’ll have homeschool poems this month from Herman Melville (for his birthday), Robert Frost (for the Perseid meteor shower), Helen Hunt Jackson (for late summer), and Robert Louis Stevenson (to bring our River Houses year to a close). βœ’οΈ

Our monthly Great Star for August is Vega (alpha Lyrae), which we’ll be writing about next week. Print your own copy of our River Houses Star Calendar and follow along with us as we visit twelve Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky and make them friends for life. 🌟

Our Sunday states-of-the-week for August β€” we’ve reached the end! β€” will be Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. Territories and Possessions (and our countries will run from Vietnam to Zimbabwe and beyond). πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ 🌏

Also coming up this month:

⬩ 12–13 August (M–Tu): The annual Perseid meteor shower! 🌠

⬩ 15 August (Th): Our monthly full-moon report from the Lunar Society (real research opportunities for homeschool students). πŸŒ•

What calendrical events will you be marking in your homeschool this month? 😊

❑ Thirty days hath September: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Terms & Calendars posts (riverhouses.org/topics/calendars). Print your own set of River Houses Calendars (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. Add your name to our free mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. πŸ—“

πŸ—“ NEW PRINTABLE CALENDARS for the 2019–2020 Homeschool Year (Pinned)

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-2020-calendars

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Today is the midpoint of Hercules Term, our summer term in the River Houses. Our four terms β€” Cygnus, Orion, Leo, and Hercules β€” divide the homeschool year into four quarters that roughly correspond to the seasons. In many old calendar systems the first day of each term would be called a quarter day, and the mid-point of each term would be called a cross-quarter day.

On this cross-quarter day of Hercules Term we’re delighted to make available a new set of printable calendars for the upcoming 2019–2020 homeschool year that will begin in September:

The main calendar covers an assortment of major events and historical anniversaries throughout the year, and the four specialized calendars cover our annual schedules for poetry, astronomy, states and countries, and world historic sites. All five calendars are one-page pdf files, very simple to print and post on your family bulletin board.

These educational calendars are not designed for use with a specific curriculum β€” they are enrichment tools that can supplement any curriculum (even an open unschooling program), and they provide a light, comfortable, easy structure for your entire homeschool year. Pick one or two or three that strike your fancy, print them out, and follow along with us throughout the coming year.

Please share these calendars widely with all your homeschool groups and friends. When you and I have a calendar in common we have a range of shared experiences in common, and that’s what builds community, week by week, month by month, all through the year.

What calendrical events will you be marking in your homeschool this season? 😊

❑ Here, said the year: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Terms & Calendars posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. πŸ—ž

🌝 KNOW YOUR MOONS! πŸŒ‘πŸŒ’πŸŒ“πŸŒ”πŸŒ•πŸŒ–πŸŒ—πŸŒ˜πŸŒ‘

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-moon-phases

There will be a lovely gibbous moon high up in the southern sky this evening. Can your homeschool students recognize the phases of the moon? Why not teach them the lunar cycle during this momentous month when we are remembering the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing.

Did you know there’s an emoji symbol for each phase of the moon? It’s true! Whenever we’re posting about the moon here at the River Houses we try to use the correct emoji, and you can do the same, illustrating the moon’s phases for your students, quizzing them with emojis, and inviting them to recite the northern-hemisphere formula, “fills in from the right, drains out to the left”:

πŸŒ‘ NEW
πŸŒ’ WAXING CRESCENT
πŸŒ“ FIRST QUARTER
πŸŒ” WAXING GIBBOUS ← tonight
πŸŒ• FULL (second quarter)
πŸŒ– WANING GIBBOUS
πŸŒ— THIRD QUARTER
🌘 WANING CRESCENT
πŸŒ‘ NEW (again)

A complete cycle, from new to new, is one (lunar) month β€” 29 days β€” and the word month and moon are in fact cognate words, having the same historical origin. (Compare the expression, “many moons ago,” meaning, “many months ago.”)

The time from one quarter to the next β€” from new to first quarter, from first quarter to full (second quarter), from full to third quarter, or from third quarter to new again β€” is about seven days, and that’s the basis for the week, which is a quarter of a month: four quarters in one “moon,” four weeks in one month. (This also explains why lunar terminology is sometimes confusing to beginners: the first and third “quarter” moons are half full, because “quarter” doesn’t refer to appearance but rather to a given point within the monthly lunar cycle.)

Commemorative 2019 stamp marking the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The landing site in the Sea of Tranquility, which you can locate on a clear night with binoculars, is indicated by a yellow dot. (Image: U.S. Postal Service.)

What celestial observations will you and your students be making in your homeschool this lunar month? 😊

❑ Crescent and gibbous and waxing and waning: The word crescent is common in English in many contexts, but the word gibbous β€” convex, bulging, humped, hunchbacked β€” is much less common and is rarely used today to describe anything other than the moon, which is a shame because it’s a wonderful word. Similarly, waxing (growing, increasing) and waning (shrinking, decreasing) are used most often now as paired terms in the context of the moon, but they do still survive in a few other contexts (to wax poetic; his interest waned). πŸŒ” 🌘

❑ Watchers of the skies: This is one of our regular Homeschool Astronomy posts. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 😊

🌞 THE JUNE SOLSTICE is Here!

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-june-solstice

Today is the June solstice β€” we call it the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the winter solstice. The summer solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of summer, just as the winter solstice is (in astronomical terms) the first day of winter.

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23ΒΊ). The two solstices occur at the points in the orbit when the axis of rotation is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter) and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur when the earth’s axis of rotation is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary β€” solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website.

What calendrical events and astronomical transitions will you be marking in your homeschool this season? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students about the seasons and the stars is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌞

πŸ—“ HERCULES TERM 2019

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-hercules

Today marks the beginning of our Summer Term β€” Hercules Term β€” here in the River Houses. Hercules Term runs from June through August.

We put great stock in the educational value of the calendar in the River Houses. The calendar is the framework on which we human beings hang a great many of the facts we know about the world: historical events, natural phenomena, personal reminiscences, the seasons, blooming flowers, migrating birds, the sun and moon, the planets, the stars. A key part of every student’s intellectual development is the development of “calendar sense” β€” a sense of time and history.

Our annual River Houses calendar divides the homeschool year into four three-month terms (quarters) that roughly correspond to the seasons, and these terms are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:

This calendrical division is a new and open-ended idea that we’re developing for the River Houses, and we think has a great deal of educational potential. We’re looking forward to its elaboration as time goes on.

As you think about your own homeschool year, think about how different parts of it β€” curricular, co-curricular, social, or recreational β€” might be informally arranged into these four three-month terms. You could have a different decorating theme in your classroom each term, for example, or you could schedule a regular trip to a special place at the beginning of each term to see how the seasons change. You could group your curricular work by term, or set goals at the beginning of each term that you want your students to meet. You could have your students measure their height and weight at the beginning of each term, or take their penny-jar to the bank for a quarterly deposit. At the end of each term you could assemble a portfolio of student accomplishments. With a little imagination you will be able to come up with a clever and comfortable arrangement and a new way to think about the structure of your educational year.

[The constellation Hercules]
The constellation Hercules, the Great Hero of the Heavens, making his nightly passage to the western horizon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Today is the first day of Hercules Term, named for the Great Hero of the Heavens, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, who is up in the southeast each evening now at sunset and will be passing high overhead throughout the summer.

Hercules Term is home to Flag Day (14Β June), Father’s Day (16Β June), and Independence Day (4Β July); to the important 50th anniversary of the first moon landing this year (20Β July, which is also Gregor Mendel’s birthday); and to the annual Perseid meteor shower (12–13 August) β€” not to mention countless other holidays and anniversaries, local and global, public and private, that you may wish to mark each year on your own homeschool calendar.

If you want to make a special astronomical study this Hercules Term, your River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a handy set of sky maps and a planisphere that will show you the location of the constellation Hercules and its most prominent stars:

“The keystone-shaped figure formed by the stars Ο€ [pi], Ξ· [eta], ΞΆ [zeta] and Ξ΅ [epsilon] Herculis helps to identify this constellation; also the stars ΞΈ [theta] and ΞΉ [iota] Herculis, representing respectively the bent left knee and the left foot of the kneeling Hercules, appear to rest directly on the head of Draco, the Dragon. It is one of the most ancient of the constellations. The outstanding feature of Hercules is the great globular cluster M13, the finest visible in the northern latitudes. On dark nights it is barely visible to the naked eye but it is easily seen in fieldglasses. A small telescope begins to reveal its beauty, while at least a 4β€³ telescope is necessary to resolve the stars. In a large telescope, it is a never-to-be-forgotten sight. There are thought to be no less than 100,000 stars in this cluster. Ras Algethi [Ξ±Β Herculis, the brightest star in the constellation] is binary and also an irregular variable, varying in magnitude from 3.1 to 3.9.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 8)

Why not spend a little time out after dark with your students over the next three months and locate the Great Hero as he makes his nightly passage to the west. Once you learn to spot him, you’ll have a friend for life.

[Chart of the constellation Hercules]
Star chart of the constellation Hercules. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What educational adventures do you and your homescholars have planned for this Hercules Term? 😊

❑ Quarter days and cross-quarter days: Dividing the year into quarters is an ancient and natural practice: the annual movement of the sun across the sky automatically gives us two equinoxes, two solstices, and four seasons. Our four terms are just a simple modification of that natural arrangement so that our River Houses calendar will align more conveniently with the ordinary months and with the more-or-less customary American school year. In many traditional calendrical systems, going back into the Middle Ages, the first day of each quarter is called a quarter day and the midpoint of each quarter is called a cross-quarter day. That means the quarter days of the River Houses year are 1 September, 1 December, 1 March, and 1 June, and the cross-quarter days are 15 October, 15 January, 15 April, and 15 July. (Fun fact: a vestige of the old system of quarter and cross-quarter days is Groundhog Day, also known as Candlemas on the Christian calendar: it’s the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.) Quarter days have for centuries been the traditional days on which school terms began, so homeschoolers who follow our River Houses calendar are participating in a very ancient tradition indeed. 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this term and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. πŸ”­

❑ Choose something like a star: If you’d like some more simple and comfortable homeschool astronomy lessons, download and print a copy of our River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us month by month, making twelve heavenly friends for life over the course of the year. 🌟

πŸ—“ LIBRARY LESSONS: What Would a Perfect Calendar Look Like?

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-utopian-calendar 😊

We love calendars here at the River Houses, and we love books and libraries too, so what could be better than a proposal for a perfect calendar, courtesy of the Library of Congress?

People have been trying to “reform” the world’s many date-keeping systems ever since date-keeping began. Lunar calendars, solar calendars, Julian calendars, Gregorian calendars, local calendars, perpetual calendars, leap years, leap seconds, extra days β€” the quest seems endless.

Joseph Collins’ “Proposed Utopian Calendar,” 1939. (Image: Library of Congress.)

Here’s one person’s vision for a perfect calendar β€” Joseph Collins’ “Proposed Utopian Calendar” from 1939, now scanned and available from the Library of Congress, complete with notes for teachers (like you!) on how to use this primary source to get students thinking about calendars and history:

Collins was disturbed by the fact that the months didn’t all have the same number of days, and that the same date didn’t always fall on the same day of the week. So he devised a complex mathematical system to correct for these problems β€” and thanks to the Library’s educational programs you can read his proposal in his own words, explore his new calendar diagram, and use them to sharpen your students’ thinking skills. After your students have spent some time contemplating Collins’ calendar, challenge them to come up with one of their own. Can there ever be such a thing as a perfect calendar? If so, why don’t we use it? If not, why not?

What educational discoveries have you made at your library lately? 😊

❑ Dukedoms large enough: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize, and there’s no better homeschool field trip than a field trip to a new library! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the library collections near you β€” public and private, large and small β€” and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

❑ Books in the running brooks: The sidebar on the River Houses website (riverhouses.org) has links to several important online library collections that we like to explore. Why not sit yourself down at a large screen for a while (rather than a phone), and give them a browse. 😊

❑ When in doubt, go to the library: This is one of our regular Homeschool Books & Libraries posts. Add your name to our free weekly mailing list (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. πŸ“š

🌟 STAR BRIGHT: Regulus for April (And a New Star Calendar)

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-regulus 😊

We started a new tradition last month β€” a monthly Great Star β€” and this month we’re continuing and extending it. Please visit our homeschool calendars page and print a copy of our brand new River Houses Star Calendar, a simple one-page introduction to twelve of the Great Stars of the northern-hemisphere night sky that we will be learning about over the course of the year, and that we hope will become your friends for life:

April is the middle month of Leo Term, and as the new calendar will show you, our great-star-of-the-month for April is Regulus, the brightest star in constellation Leo, the Lion of the Heavens. Its formal designation is Ξ±Β Leonis β€” “alpha of Leo.” Leo and Regulus are high in the southern sky in the early evening this month, passing over to the west as the night goes on.

The constellation Leo, showing the position of its alpha star, Regulus, the “Little King” that is the heart of the lion. The dashed red line is the ecliptic, the path that the sun, moon, and planets follow across the sky. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

If you want to introduce your students to Regulus, you can start with some basic astronomy from your homeschool star atlas (riverhouses.org/books):

“Leo is a zodiacal constellation lying south of Ursa Major [the Great Bear, which includes the Big Dipper]. It is one of the most beautiful of the constellations and is easily recognized; the stars forming the head of the lion are arranged in the shape of a sickle, or reversed ‘?’. Regulus, its brightest star, has a magnitude of 1.3 and is 19th among the 20 brightest stars in the sky. It lies almost exactly on the plane of the ecliptic and is therefore eclipsed by the sun once a year (on about August 23).“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 6)

The planisphere on the front of your star atlas will help you locate Regulus, and that’s plenty for beginning students β€” your little lesson is done. If you want to get more advanced, the Wikipedia page on Regulus is packed with additional information on everything from astrometrics to cultural history.

The Regulus we see is blue-white, but that Regulus is actually just the primary star (RegulusΒ A) of a quadruple system that is arranged into two pairs: Regulus A and a suspected white dwarf that is detectable only spectroscopically, and Regulus B and C (a pair that is visible as a single star in small telescopes). The B-C pair orbit each other, and together they orbit the primary star Regulus A (and its own tiny companion).

Regulus A (the primary star of the system) and its Regulus B-C neighbors (actually two stars, but appearing single here). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The primary star Regulus A is about three times the diameter of our sun and it is spinning so fast that it bulges out at the equator: it takes only 16 hours to complete one rotation, in contrast to about 25 days for the sun. The four-star Regulus system is estimated to be about one billion years old β€” quite old, but less than a quarter of the age of our own solar system. If you’d like to give Regulus an in-person inspection just bring your earth-based spaceship up to the speed of light and you’ll be able to get there in only 79 years. πŸš€

Download and print your own copy of our new River Houses Star Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us as we visit a different Great Star each month. 🌟

What stellar observations have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights, including the names and characteristics of the brightest stars. Your general world atlas also has beautiful maps of the whole northern and southern hemisphere night skies on plates 121–122. Why not find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 πŸ”­ 🌌 🌟

❑ Alpha and beta and gamma, oh my: Most of the principal stars within each constellation have both old vernacular names β€” Vega, Sirius, Arcturus, and so on β€” as well as more formal scientific designations. The German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572–1625) devised the formal system of star designations that is still in common use today. In Bayer’s system, the stars in each constellation, from brightest to dimmest, are assigned a lowercase letter of the Greek alphabet: Ξ±β€…(alpha, brightest), Ξ²β€…(beta, second brightest), Ξ³β€…(gamma, third brightest), Ξ΄β€…(delta, fourth brightest), and so on. This letter designation is combined with the Latin name of the constellation in its possessive (genitive) form: Lyra becomes Lyrae (“of Lyra”), Canis Major becomes Canis Majoris (“of Canis Major”), and so on. The brightest star in the constellation Lyra (the star Vega) thus becomes Ξ±β€…Lyrae (“alpha of Lyra”), the brightest star in Canis Major (the star Sirius) becomes Ξ±β€…Canis Majoris (“alpha of Canis Major”), and so on, through all 24 Greek letters and all 88 constellations. How bright would you expect, say, the Οƒβ€…(sigma) star of Orion to be? Not very bright β€” it’s far down the alphabet β€” but Οƒβ€…Orionis happens to be the top star of Orion’s sword, so even though it’s not very bright it’s still notable and easy to locate on a dark night.

🌷 SPRING is Here! (Astronomically Speaking)

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Today is the March equinox β€” we call it the vernal or spring equinox in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the autumnal or fall equinox. The vernal equinox is the first day of spring (astronomically speaking), just as the autumnal equinox is the first day of fall (astronomically speaking).

❑ Little lessons: “β€˜Vernal’ and ‘autumnal’ are beautiful words. Let’s look them up in our dictionary (riverhouses.org/books).”

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23ΒΊ). The two solstices occur at the points in the annual orbit when the axis is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter), and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur at the points in the annual orbit when the earth’s axis is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal and astronomical vocabulary β€” solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website.

What calendrical events or astronomical apparitions will you be marking in your homeschool this week? 😊

πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡Έ 🌎 FOR YOUR BULLETIN BOARD: A Printable States & Countries Schedule

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Every Sunday we put up our weekly States & Countries posts that invite you and your students to tour the U.S. states and the countries of the world with us. Just spend a few minutes each week finding the countries and states with your atlas and almanac and reading a fact or two about them, and over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of cultural and geographical information.

In case you’d like to plan ahead, we just put together a simple one-page printable schedule that shows when each state and each country will be coming up on the annual calendar. It’s available now on our main homeschool calendars page β€” download it and post it on your homeschool bulletin board today:

What calendrical events will you be marking and what geographical discoveries will you be making in your homeschool this week? 😊

πŸ—“ LEO TERM 2019

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Today marks the beginning of our Spring Term β€” Leo Term β€” here in the River Houses. Leo Term runs from March through May.

We put great stock in the educational value of the calendar in the River Houses. The calendar is the framework on which we human beings hang a great many of the facts we know about the world: historical events, natural phenomena, personal reminiscences, the seasons, the sun and moon, the planets, the stars. A key part of every student’s intellectual development is the development of “calendar sense” β€” a sense of time and history.

Our annual River Houses calendar divides the homeschool year into four three-month terms (quarters) that roughly correspond to the seasons, and these terms are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:

  • ✦ Fall or Cygnus Term (September–November)
  • ✦ Winter or Orion Term (December–February)
  • ✦ Spring or Leo Term (March–May)
  • ✦ Summer or Hercules Term (June–August)

This calendrical division is a new and open-ended idea that we think has a great deal of educational potential. We’re looking forward to its development and elaboration as time goes on.

As you think about your own homeschool year, think about how different parts of it β€” curricular, co-curricular, social, or recreational β€” might be informally arranged into these four three-month terms. You could have a different decorating theme in your classroom each term, for example, or you could schedule a regular trip to a special place at the beginning of each term to see how the seasons change. You could group your curricular work by term, or set goals at the beginning of each term that you want your students to meet. At the end of each term your students could assemble a quarterly portfolio of their accomplishments. With a little imagination you will be able to come up with a clever and comfortable arrangement and a new way to think about the structure of your educational year.

[The constellation Leo]
The constellation Leo, the Great Lion of the Heavens, making his nightly passage to the western horizon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Today is the first day of Leo Term, named for the Great Lion of the Heavens who is rising in the east in the evening now and who will be passing overhead throughout the spring.

If you want to make a special astronomical study this term, your River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a handy set of sky maps and a planisphere that will show you the location of Leo and its most prominent stars:

“Leo is a zodiacal constellation lying south of Ursa Major. It is one of the most beautiful of the constellations and is easily recognized; the stars forming the head of the lion are arranged in the shape of a sickle, or reversed ‘?.’ Regulus, its brightest star, has a magnitude of 1.3 and is 19th among the 20 brightest stars in the sky. It lies almost exactly in the plane of the ecliptic and is therefore eclipsed by the sun once a year (on about August 23). Ο„ [tau] Leonis, a double star, can be separated with binoculars. A meteor shower, the Leonids, radiates from the head of the lion every year about the 14th or 15th of November.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, page 6)

Why not spend a little time out after dark with your students over the next three months and locate the Great Lion as he makes his nightly passage to the west. Once you learn to spot him, you’ll have a friend for life.

[Chart of the constellation Leo]
Star chart of the constellation Leo. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What educational adventures do you have planned for this Leo Term? 😊

❑ Quarter days and cross-quarter days: Dividing the year into quarters is an ancient and natural practice: the annual movement of the sun across the sky automatically gives us two equinoxes, two solstices, and four seasons. Our four terms are just a simple modification of that natural system so that our River Houses calendar will align more conveniently with the ordinary months and with the more-or-less customary American school year. In many traditional calendrical systems, going back into the Middle Ages, the first day of each quarter is called a quarter day and the midpoint of each quarter is called a cross-quarter day. That means the quarter days of the River Houses year are 1 September, 1 December, 1 March, and 1 June, and the cross-quarter days are 15 October, 15 January, 15 April, and 15 July. (Fun fact: a vestige of the old system of quarter and cross-quarter days is Groundhog Day, also known as Candlemas on the Christian calendar: it’s the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.) Quarter days have for centuries been the traditional days on which school terms began, so homeschoolers who follow our River Houses calendar are participating in a very ancient tradition. 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. πŸ”­

❄️ THE DECEMBER SOLSTICE is Here!

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Today is the December solstice β€” we call it the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, but in the southern hemisphere it’s the summer solstice. The winter solstice is (astronomically speaking) the first day of winter, just as the summer solstice is (astronomically speaking) the first day of summer.

Whenever you’re investigating things temporal or calendrical, timeanddate.com is always a good place to start:

The seasons occur because the earth’s axis of daily rotation is not quite perpendicular to the plane of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun (it’s tilted by about 23ΒΊ). The two solstices occur at the points in the orbit when the axis is tilted most directly away from the sun (in December, on the first day of northern-hemisphere winter), and most directly toward the sun (in June, on the first day of northern-hemisphere summer). The two equinoxes, in March and September, occur when the earth’s axis is “sideways” to the sun (so to speak), making the intervals of daylight and darkness equal (or very nearly so).

The two equinoxes (March and September) and the two solstices (June and December) are defined with respect to the earth’s position in its annual orbit around the sun. (Image: timeanddate.com.)

NASA has a fun educational crossword puzzle for kids that’s filled with seasonal vocabulary β€” solstices, equinoxes, and more.

Solstices, equinoxes, orbits, and more! A seasonal crossword puzzle for kids. (Image: NASA.)

You can print out your own copy at NASA’s “For Educators” website.

What calendrical events and astronomical transitions will you be marking in your homeschool this season? 😊

πŸ—“ ORION TERM 2018–2019

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Today marks the beginning of our Winter Term β€” Orion Term β€” here in the River Houses. Orion Term runs from December through February.

We put great stock in the educational value of the calendar in the River Houses. The calendar is the framework on which we human beings hang a great many of the facts we know about the world: historical events, natural phenomena, personal reminiscences, the seasons, the sun and moon, the planets, the stars. A key part of every student’s educational development is the development of “calendar sense” β€” a sense of time and history.

Our annual River Houses calendar divides the homeschool year into four three-month terms (quarters) that roughly correspond to the seasons, and these terms are named after prominent seasonal constellations of the northern hemisphere:

  • ✦ Fall or Cygnus Term (September–November)
  • ✦ Winter or Orion Term (December–February)
  • ✦ Spring or Leo Term (March–May)
  • ✦ Summer or Hercules Term (June–August)

This calendrical division is a new and an open-ended idea that we think has a great deal of educational potential. We’re looking forward to its development as time goes on.

As you think about your own homeschool year, think about how different parts of it β€” curricular, co-curricular, social, or recreational β€” might be informally arranged into these four terms. You could have different astronomical decorating themes in your classroom, for example, or you could schedule a regular trip to a particularly special place at the beginning of each term to see how the seasons change. You could group your curricular work by term, or set goals for your students to meet each term, or have your students write achievement reports at each term’s end. With a little imagination you may be able to come up with a clever and comfortable arrangement and a new way to think about the structure of your educational year.

[The constellation Orion]
The constellation Orion, the Great Hunter of the Heavens, making his nightly passage to the western horizon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Today is the first day of Orion Term (December–February), named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens who is rising now in the east each evening about 8:00 p.m. and who will be passing overhead throughout the winter.

If you want to make a special astronomical study this term, your River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a handy set of sky maps and a planisphere that will show you the location of Orion and its most prominent stars:

“Orion is generally considered to be the most beautiful and imposing constellation in the heavens. It is easily recognized; the four bright stars forming a large rectangle and the three second magnitude stars, equally spaced and forming a straight line (the Belt of Orion) enclosed by the rectangle, are a delight to the eye. No other constellation has so many bright stars. Compare the colors of Betelgeuse, a giant red star, and Rigel, a brilliant blue-white star. Rigel has a magnitude of 0.18 and is the 7th brightest star in the sky. Betelgeuse has a magnitude of 0.45 and ranks 10th in brightness. Orion is in a portion of the sky that contains seven of the 30 brightest stars in the heavens; these are to be found in Orion, Auriga, Gemini, Taurus, Canis Major and Canis Minor. There are two famous nebulae in Orion; one, the [Great] Orion Nebula, is visible to the naked eye. It is the prototype of the diffuse nebulae; a great cloud of cosmic dust and gases many light years in diameter and 1,500 light years away. ΞΈ [theta] Orionis marks the center of the Great Nebula; viewed through binoculars, the star seems to be enveloped in a hazy field that marks the nebula’s presence. Even in a small telescope, the Great Nebula is an awe-inspiring sight. The other famous nebula is the so-called ‘Horse’s Head’ Nebula, a dark nebula silhouetted against a glowing cloud of cosmic dust in the shape of a horse’s head. This remarkable object is not visible to the naked eye; long photographic exposures are required to show its details. The darkness of this cosmic cloud is due to the fact that there are no nearby stars to illuminate it. Οƒ [sigma], ΞΈ [theta], and ΞΉ [iota] Orionis mark the Sword of Orion. Ξ΄ [delta] Orionis, the northernmost star in the Belt of Orion, lies almost exactly on the celestial equator. The Belt stars serve as valuable pointers; the line through them extended to the southeast points to Sirius and to the northwest, to Aldebaran in Taurus.“ (Celestron Sky Maps, pages 18–19)

Why not spend a little time out after dark this term with your students and locate the Great Hunter as he makes his nightly passage to the west. Once you learn to spot him, you’ll have a friend for life.

[Chart of the constellation Orion]
Star chart of the constellation Orion. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What educational adventures do you have planned for this Orion Term? 😊

❑ Quarter days and cross-quarter days: Dividing the year into quarters is an ancient and natural practice: the annual movement of the sun across the sky automatically gives us two equinoxes, two solstices, and four seasons. Our four terms are just a simple modification of that natural system so that our River Houses calendar will align more conveniently with the ordinary months and with the more-or-less customary American school year. In many traditional calendrical systems, going back into the Middle Ages, the first day of each quarter is called a quarter day and the midpoint of each quarter is called a cross-quarter day. That means the quarter days of the River Houses year are 1 September, 1 December, 1 March, and 1 June, and the cross-quarter days are 15 October, 15 January, 15 April, and 15 July. (Fun fact: a vestige of the old system of quarter and cross-quarter days is Groundhog Day, also known as Candlemas on the Christian calendar: it’s the cross-quarter day between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.) Quarter days have for centuries been the traditional days on which school terms began, so homeschoolers who follow our River Houses calendar are participating in a very ancient tradition. 😊

❑ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. πŸ”­