Post Archives: Quick Freshes for Homeschool Families

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-08-18

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR “STATES” OF THE WEEK are the special U.S. Territories of American Samoa 🇦🇸, Guam 🇬🇺, the Northern Mariana Islands 🇲🇵, Puerto Rico 🇵🇷, the U.S. Virgin Islands 🇻🇮, and the District of Columbia, and our “COUNTRIES” are the five oceans of the world. (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 waning — an increasingly good time for moon watching! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 18 August) — Today is the 230th day of 2019; there are 135 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 On this day in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified. ☑️

Monday (19 August) — On this day in 1812, during the War of 1812, the American frigate U.S.S. Constitution defeated Great Britain’s H.M.S. Guerriere off the coast of Nova Scotia and earned the nickname “Old Ironsides.” Old Ironsides is today the oldest commissioned warship in the U.S. Navy and you can pay her a visit any day you like in the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston. ⚓️ And speaking of ships, today is also the birthday of Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991), the creator of Star Trek! 🖖

Tuesday (20 August) — On this day in 1975, NASA launched the Viking 1 Mars probe. Viking 1 became the first successful Mars lander and remained in operation for more than six years. (An earlier probe, the Soviet Union’s Mars 3, did successfully land on Mars in 1971, but it transmitted for only 14 seconds.) 🚀 Today is also the birthday of the American writer H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937), author of many creepy (but popular) horror stories. 🙀

Wednesday (21 August) — On this day in 1959, Hawaii became the 50th state of the Union. 🇺🇸 The Great American Solar Eclipse of 2017 took place on this day just two years ago — perhaps you saw it! 🌏 🌑 🌞

Thursday (22 August) — The English Civil War between the King and Parliament began on this day in 1642 when Charles I raised the royal standard at Nottingham. 👑 Today is also the birthday of famed French pianist and composer Claude Debussy (1862–1918). 🎹 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the final week of August, the last week of the 2018–2019 River Houses year, is “Envoy,” a cheerful farewell wish for happy houses and living waters from Robert Louis Stevenson. 🏡 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Friday (23 August) — On this day in 1775, four months after Lexington and Concord, and two months after Bunker Hill, King George III formally proclaimed the American colonies to be in a state of “open and avowed rebellion.” ⚔️

Saturday (24 August) — Although there is some debate among scholars, this is generally believed to be the day on which Mount Vesuvius erupted in A.D. 79, burying the ancient Roman cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. 🌋 And on this day in 1814, during the War of 1812, British troops captured the city of Washington and burned the White House and the U.S. Capitol. 🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸

Sunday (25 August) — On the second day of the burning of Washington in 1814, the U.S. Treasury, the Library of Congress, and other public buildings were destroyed by British Troops. 🇬🇧⚔️🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of American illustrator Walt Kelly (1913–1973), the creator of the comic strip Pogo. 🎨 And it’s also the birthday of the great American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990). 🎵

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May we choose virtue and avoid vice.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌊 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Last week we completed our annual tour of the countries of the world (from which we had been selecting our Weekly World Rivers), so it is only fitting this week that we look to the source of them all. The ancient Greeks believed that the whole world (as they knew it) was encircled by a great flowing river, and they personified this universal river as the god Okeanos (Oceanus, Ocean). Okeanos was one of the Titans, a child of Ouranos (Uranus, Heaven) and Gaia (Terra, Earth), and with his sister-wife Tethys, Okeanos fathered all the rivers of the world. You can read much more about this father of the waters in the comprehensive Okeanos/Oceanus entry in Wikipedia, or perhaps on your next visit to your local library. Our Weekly World River for this next-to-last week of the River Houses year is therefore the World River, Okeanos.

❡ Let the river run: 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 almanac (pages 691–693), 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-08-11

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Hawaii, and our “country” is Antarctica 🇦🇶. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post for the week went up just a few minutes ago — and our annual tour of the U.S. states and the countries of the world is coming to an end!)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing — a good time for moon watching, but alas it will wash out some of this weekend’s Perseid meteors. 🌠 You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 11 August) — Today is the 223rd day of 2019; there are 142 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 The annual PERSEID METEOR SHOWER will peak (probably) on the nights of 11–12 and 12–13 August this year. 🌠 The Perseids are debris from Comet Swift–Tuttle. ☄️

Monday (12 August) — Today is the birthday of poet and educator Katharine Lee Bates (1859–1929), the author of the great anthem “America the Beautiful.” 🇺🇸 It’s also the birthday of Austrian physicist and Nobel laureate Erwin Schrödinger (1887–1961), one of the founders of quantum mechanics. ⚛

Tuesday (13 August) — Today is the birthday of American abolitionist and women’s rights advocate Lucy Stone (1818–1893). 👩‍👧‍👧 It’s also the birthday of spooky British-American film director Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980). 🎬 And, it’s International Lefthanders Day! 🎉

Wednesday (14 August) — On this day in the year 1040, Scotland’s King Duncan I was killed by his rival Macbeth — probably in battle, and not in his sleep as depicted in Shakespeare’s play. 🗡

Thursday (15 August) — Today is the birthday of the French general and emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821). 👑 It’s also the birthday of the great British pianist and composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875–1912). 🎵 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, by Helen Hunt Jackson (1830–1885), for the third week of August is “August” for, um, August! Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year. 🖋 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society (riverhouses.org/lunar). 🌕

Friday (16 August) — On this day in 1858, the first transatlantic telegraph cable was put into service with an exchange of messages between U.S. President James Buchanan and Britain’s Queen Victoria. 🇺🇸⌁🇬🇧

Saturday (17 August) — On this day in 1807, the world’s first commercial steamboat service was inaugurated when Robert Fulton’s North River Steamboat departed New York City for Albany, 130 miles up the Hudson River. 🚢

Sunday (18 August) — On this day in 1920, the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, guaranteeing women the right to vote, was ratified. ☑️

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “Here’s wishing us all more friends — and less need of them.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌏 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Antarctica is our “country” of the week, so our Weekly World River is the Beardmore Glacier, one of the world’s largest glaciers and a famous river of ice that guided many early polar explorers. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Beardmore Glacier entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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!

AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Tuesday this month! 🙀

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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-08-04

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Alaska, and our COUNTRIES are Vietnam 🇻🇳, Yemen 🇾🇪, Zambia 🇿🇲, and Zimbabwe 🇿🇼. (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 dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 4 August) — Today is the 216th day of 2019; there are 149 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). 📚 The great English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792. ✒️ It’s also the birthday of the great American trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong (1901–1971). 🎺

Monday (5 August) — Today is an important day in the history of press freedom! On this day in 1735, a jury acquitted John Peter Zenger and his newspaper, the New York Weekly Journal, of seditious libel against the governor of New York on the grounds that what they had published was true. 📰 Today is also the birthday of American astronaut Neil Armstrong (1930–2012), the first man to walk on the moon. 🚀 🌕

Tuesday (6 August) — Today is the birthday of the great Victorian poet Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892). ✒️ It’s also the birthday of the legendary American comedian Lucille Ball (1911–1989). 📺

Wednesday (7 August) — On this day in 1782, George Washington established the first American military decoration, the Badge of Military Merit, for soldiers wounded during the American Revolution. The award is today called the Purple Heart and it bears Washington’s profile. 🎖 Today is also the birthday of famed paleoanthropologist Louis Leakey (1903–1972). 💀

Thursday (8 August) — The wreckage of the Civil War submarine H.L. Hunley, which sank in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina, in 1864, was raised on this day in the year 2000. It contained the remains of eight Confederate sailors who went down with the vessel. ⚓️ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of August is Robert Frost’s “A Star in a Stoneboat,” for this month’s Perseid meteor shower. 🌠 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Friday (9 August) — On this day in the year 1173, construction began on a new bell tower next to the cathedral in Pisa, Italy. Still standing (more or less), we know it now as the Leaning Tower of Pisa. 🔔 And speaking of Italy, today is also the birthday of the Italian scientist Amedeo Avogadro (1776–1856), beloved (or despised) by chemistry students the world over. ⚗️

Saturday (10 August) — On this day in 1519, five ships under the command of Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521) set sail from Seville, Spain. Although Magellan himself died en route, one of the ships, the Victoria, traveling from east to west, successfully completed the first circumnavigation of the globe. 🌍🌎🌏 And on this day in 1990, NASA’s Magellan spacecraft entered orbit around the planet Venus. 🛰 And since this is the second Saturday of the month we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky. This month: Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra the Lyre. 🌟

Sunday (11 August) — The annual PERSEID METEOR SHOWER will peak (probably) on the nights of 11–12 and 12–13 August this year. 🌠 The Perseids are debris from Comet Swift–Tuttle. ☄️

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “Love in every breast, liberty in every heart, and learning in every head.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌏 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Vietnam is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Red River, which flows past the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Red River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-28

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🗓 NEW CALENDARS! As we announced last week, our new calendars of educational events for the coming 2019–2020 school year are now available on our main calendar page! They are all one-page printable (pdf) documents, easy to use and post on your homeschool bulletin board. Print them out today, share them with your homeschool friends, and follow along with us throughout the coming year. 😊

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Arizona, and our COUNTRIES are Uzbekistan 🇺🇿, Vanuatu 🇻🇺, Vatican City 🇻🇦, and Venezuela 🇻🇪. (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, heading toward new on the 31st — a good time for stargazing! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 28 July) — Today is the 209th day of 2019; there are 156 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is the birthday of the great English polymath Robert Hooke (1635–1703). Hooke was one of the pioneers of microscopy and was the first person to apply the world “cell” to the basic structural units of living things. 🔬 And one of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was born on this day in 1844. ✒️

Monday (29 July) — The seven-mile-long Cape Cod Canal first opened on this day in 1914, significantly reducing sailing time between Boston and New York (and markedly increasing safety). 🚢

Tuesday (30 July) — Today is the birthday of the great (and largely homeschooled) English writer Emily Bronte (1818–1848), author of Wuthering Heights. ✒️ It’s also the birthday of the American engineer and industrialist Henry Ford (1863–1947). 🚗

Wednesday (31 July) — On this day in 1964 the Ranger 7 probe transmitted the first close-up images of the moon taken by an American spacecraft, just minutes before it was intentionally crash-landed on the lunar surface. 🚀

Thursday (1 August) — Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great American writer Herman Melville (1819–1891), author of Moby-Dick, Bartleby the Scrivener, and many other works. In his honor, our homeschool poem-of-the-week for this first week of August, and also our weekly toast, is the perfect little toast-poem “To the Master of the Meteor,” appearing below. 🐳 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Friday (2 August) — The first United States census, conducted under Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, commenced on this day in 1790. The total count was 3,929,214. 🇺🇸

Saturday (3 August) — The famous opera house “La Scala” opened on this day in 1778 in Milan, Italy. 🎵 Today is also the birthday of the Pulitzer Prize–winning World War II journalist Ernie Pyle (1900–1945). 🗞 And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can be on the lookout for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (4 August) — The great English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on this day in 1792. ✒️ It’s also the birthday of the great American trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong (1901–1971). 🎺

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: In honor of the bicentennial of the great American writer Herman Melville (1819–1891), our weekly toast and weekly poem are one and the same: Melville’s ringing toast-poem “To the Master of the Meteor.” The Meteor was a sailing ship, and the master (captain) of the Meteor was Herman’s brother Thomas Melville:

Lonesome on earth’s loneliest deep,
Sailor! who dost thy vigil keep —
Off the Cape of Storms dost musing sweep
Over monstrous waves that curl and comb;
Of thee we think when here from brink
We blow the mead in bubbling foam.

Of thee we think, in a ring we link;
To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink,
And the Meteor rolling home.

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌏 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Uzbekistan is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Chirchiq River, a tributary of the Syr Darya River in Uzbekistan. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Chirchiq River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-21

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🗓 NEW CALENDARS! Our new calendars of educational events for the coming 2019–2020 school year are now available on our main calendar page! They are all one-page printable (pdf) documents, easy to use and post on your homeschool bulletin board. Print them out today, share them with your homeschool friends, and follow along with us throughout the coming year. 😊

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is New Mexico, and our COUNTRIES are the United Arab Emirates 🇦🇪, the United Kingdom 🇬🇧, the United States 🇺🇸, and Uruguay 🇺🇾. (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 waning — a great time for moon-walking! 😊 You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 21 July) — Today is the 202nd day of 2019; there are 163 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ The American novelist and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. 🖋 And the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, −128.6 ºF (−89.2 ºC), was measured on this day in 1983 at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica. ❄️

Monday (22 July) — On this day in 1793, the Scottish explorer Alexander Mackenzie (1764–1820) reached the Pacific Ocean, having completed the first transcontinental crossing of North America. 🇨🇦 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of July is Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “As Kingfishers Catch Fire,” for summer, and for Hopkins, born 28 July 1844. 🔔 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Tuesday (23 July) — On this day in 1995, what would become one of the brightest comets of the twentieth century was discovered independently by American astronomers Alan Hale and Thomas Bopp. Comet Hale–Bopp was visible to the naked eye through much of 1996 and 1997, but if you missed it, you’re out of luck, because it won’t be back for another 2500 years. ☄️

Wednesday (24 July) — Fifty years ago today, the Apollo 11 capsule carrying astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins successfully splashed down in the Pacific Ocean about 800 miles southwest of Hawaii. 🌎 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 🚀 🌕 🚀 🌏 And on this day in 1847, a group of Mormon pioneers under the leadership of Brigham Young (1801–1877) arrived in the Salt Lake Valley and established the settlement that became Salt Lake City, Utah. 🏞

Thursday (25 July) — Today is the birthday of the German medical researcher Paul Langerhans (1847–1888), who discovered the insulin-secreting cell clusters of the pancreas, known today as the islets of Langerhans. 🔬 Today is also the birthday of the English biochemist and crystallographer Rosalind Franklin (1920–1958), who played a key role in the discovery of the double-helical structure of DNA. 👩‍🔬

Friday (26 July) — The great painter of the American West, George Catlin, was born on this day in 1796. 🎨 And today is also the birthday of the polemical Irish playwright and Nobel laureate George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950). 🎭

Saturday (27 July) — The inimitable Bugs Bunny made his screen debut on this day in 1940 in a short animated film called A Wild Hare. Elmer Fudd couldn’t catch him then, and hasn’t to this day. 🐰

Sunday (28 July) — Today is the birthday of the great English polymath Robert Hooke (1635–1703). Hooke was one of the pioneers of microscopy and was the first person to apply the world “cell” to the basic structural units of living things. 🔬 And one of the most innovative poets of the nineteenth century, Gerard Manley Hopkins, was born on this day in 1844. 🖋

(And looking ahead to a major literary anniversary: next Thursday, 1 August, will be the 200th birthday of the great American writer Herman Melville. 🐳)

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, wrapping up our Apollo 11 celebration, for the Apollo crew and also the crew of the U.S.S. Hornet, who fished them out of the sea: “A steady heart, a stout ship, and a good captain for every sailor.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Uruguay is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Rosario River (Río Rosario), an important tributary of the Río de la Plata. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Rosario River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-14

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Oklahoma, and our COUNTRIES are Turkmenistan 🇹🇲, Tuvalu 🇹🇻, Uganda 🇺🇬, and Ukraine 🇺🇦. (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, heading toward full on the 16th — a good time for moon watching! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 14 July) — Today is the 195th day of 2019; there are 170 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the celebrated composer Gerald Finzi (1901–1956), known for his musical settings of many classic English lyric poems. 🎵 And on this day in 2015, the interplanetary space probe New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto (less than 8000 miles from the surface). 🚀 ♇

Monday (15 July) — Today is the midpoint of Hercules Term, our summer term in the River Houses — in many old calendrical systems it would be called a cross-quarter day. 🗓 On this day in 1799, near the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in Egypt, a French captain in Napoleon’s army discovered a smooth black stone with a trilingual inscription in Hieroglyphics, Demotic Egyptian, and Greek. The Rosetta Stone, one of the world’s most famous archeological objects, made it possible to translate ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time. 🇪🇬 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of July is an extract from Canto 10 of Lord Byron’s Don Juan, in which he prophesies the first moon landing (and has fun doing it). 🚀 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Tuesday (16 July) — The District of Columbia was established as the capital of the United States on this day in 1790. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (1872–1928), leader of the first expedition to reach the South Pole. 🇦🇶 And, there’s a full moon tonight, so that means we’ll have a report on student research opportunities from the River Houses Lunar Society (riverhouses.org/lunar). 🌕

Wednesday (17 July) — George Frideric Handel’s masterpiece “Water Music” premiered on this day in 1717, played by 50 musicians on a barge floating down the Thames River in London. 🎵 Today is also the birthday of the great Christian hymn writer and educator Isaac Watts (1674–1748). ⛪️ And … it’s World Emoji Day! 😎

Thursday (18 July) — The Great Fire of Rome broke out on this day in the year 64. Over the next six days it destroyed much of the city. Some reports (which may or may not be true) claimed that the Emperor Nero entertained himself by playing the lyre as he watched the city go up in flames. 🔥 On this day in 1863 during the American Civil War, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, a regiment made up almost entirely of African-American soldiers, attempted unsuccessfully to capture Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina. Their story was dramatized in the 1989 film Glory. ⚔️

Friday (19 July) — The first national convention on women’s rights, the two-day Seneca Falls Convention, opened on this day in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. ♀

Saturday (20 July) — Today is the birthday of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), the father of modern genetics. 🌼 And on this day in 1969, the Apollo 11 lunar module set down on the Sea of Tranquility and American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings ever to walk on the moon. 👨‍🚀👨‍🚀👨‍🚀 🚀 🌕

Sunday (21 July) — The American novelist and Nobel laureate Ernest Hemingway was born on this day in 1899. 🖋 And the lowest temperature ever recorded on Earth, −128.6 ºF (−89.2 ºC), was measured on this day in 1983 at the Soviet Vostok Station in Antarctica. ❄️

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST, from Tennyson’s Ulysses, for the astronauts of Apollo 11: “To heroic hearts.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌍 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Uganda is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Kagera River, which flows along the border between Uganda and Tanzania. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Kagera River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-07-07

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Utah, and our COUNTRIES are Tonga 🇹🇴, Trinidad and Tobago 🇹🇹, Tunisia 🇹🇳, and Turkey 🇹🇷. (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 relatively good time for stargazing! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 7 July) — Today is the 188th day of 2019; there are 177 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the great Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). 🎵 And on this day in 1928, sliced bread was sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri — it was the greatest thing since, um, sliced bread! 🍞

Monday (8 July) — Today is the birthday of American businessman and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937), founder of the Standard Oil Company and one of the richest men in the world. 💰 It’s also the birthday of the great English archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans (1851–1941), who rediscovered the ancient Minoan civilization. 🐬 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of July is Phillis Wheatley’s “Liberty and Peace,” for the Independence Day weekend just past. 🇺🇸 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Tuesday (9 July) — On this day in 1755, a British-American force under the command of General Edward Braddock was defeated and almost destroyed as they fought to capture Fort Duquesne (modern-day Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) from its French and Indian defenders. We remember “Braddock’s Defeat” today mainly because of an effective rear-guard defense that saved many lives — a defense led by a 23-year-old colonial colonel named George Washington. ⚔️

Wednesday (10 July) — The highest temperature ever recorded on earth, 134ºF (57ºC), was reached on this day in 1913 in Death Valley, California. 🌡 Today is the birthday of the French-Swiss theologian and religious reformer John Calvin (1509–1564), one of the key figures of the Protestant Reformation. ✝️ And on this day in 1962, the world’s first communications satellite, Telstar, was launched into earth orbit. 🛰

Thursday (11 July) — On this day in 1804, Aaron Burr, Vice President of the United States, mortally wounded Alexander Hamilton, former Secretary of the Treasury, in a pistol duel in Weehawken, New Jersey. Hamilton died the next day. ⚰️ Today is also the birthday of the English physician and home education advocate Thomas Bowdler (1754–1825), whose family editions of Shakespeare, lightly expurgated so they would be suitable for reading aloud to women and children, gave us the English word “bowdlerize.” 🎭 And on this day in 1960, Harper Lee’s popular American novel To Kill a Mockingbird was first published. 📖

Friday (12 July) — Today is the birthday of the great American writer, philosopher, and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862). 🖋 It’s also the birthday of the American artist Andrew Wyeth (1917–2009). 🎨

Saturday (13 July) — Today is the generally accepted birthdate of the ancient Roman politician, general, and dictator Julius Caesar (100–44 B.C.). 🏛 It’s also the birthday of the great English nature poet John Clare (1793–1864). 🏞 And since this is the second Saturday of the month we’ll introduce you to another one of the Great Stars of the northern hemisphere night sky: Arcturus, the brightest star in the constellation Boötes the Herdsman. 🌟

Sunday (14 July) — Today is the birthday of the celebrated composer Gerald Finzi (1901–1956), known for his musical settings of many classic English lyric poems. 🎵 And on this day in 2015, the interplanetary space probe New Horizons made its closest approach to Pluto (less than 8000 miles from the surface). 🚀 ♇

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May we not only read a lesson, but practice the precept it conveys.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌍 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Tunisia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Medjerda River, the longest River in Tunisia. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Medjerda River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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!

AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Saturday this month! 🙀

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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-06-30

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Wyoming, and our COUNTRIES are Tanzania 🇹🇿, Thailand 🇹🇭, Timor-Leste 🇹🇱, and Togo 🇹🇬. (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, heading toward new on the 2nd — a good time for stargazing! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 30 June) — Today is the 181st day of 2019; there are 184 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is also International Asteroid Day, marking the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia. 🌠

Monday (1 July) — Today is the birthday of the great German mathematician and polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). ∭ It’s also the birthday of the German–Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis (1818–1865), “the savior of mothers,” who discovered that deaths from childbed fever could be dramatically reduced by requiring physicians delivering babies to wash their hands. 👨‍⚕️ The devastating World War I Battle of the Somme began on this day in 1916. ⚔️ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of July is William Ralph Emerson’s American anthem “A Nation’s Strength,” for Independence Day. 🇺🇸 Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us throughout the year.

Tuesday (2 July) — Noon today is the mid-point of the year: 182.5 days have passed, and 182.5 days remain. 🗓 On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution, declaring the Thirteen Colonies independent of Great Britain. 🇺🇸 Today is also the birthday of Thurgood Marshall (1908–1993), the first African American appointed to the United States Supreme Court. 👨🏾‍⚖️ And since this is the first Tuesday of the month, today we’ll invite you to browse a new Dewey Decimal class with your students on your next visit to your local library. This month: the Historical (and Geographical) 900s. 📚

Wednesday (3 July) — On this day in 1775, on orders from the Continental Congress and a year before Independence was declared, George Washington took command of the thousands of New England militiamen encamped outside of Boston, and the Continental Army was born. 🇺🇸 Today is the birthday of the early American painter John Singleton Copley (1738–1815), who memorialized many prominent figures of the American Revolutionary period. 🎨 And today is also the birthday of the American songwriter, actor, and Yankee Doodle Dandy George M. Cohan (1872–1942). 🎵

Thursday (4 July) — HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY! 🎆 On this day in 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. 🇺🇸 And on this day in 1802, the United States Military Academy opened at West Point, New York. ⚔️ The great American novelist and short-story writer Nathaniel Hawthorne was born on this day in 1804. 🖋 And on this day in 1826, on the 50th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson died in Virginia and John Adams died in Massachusetts. 🇺🇸

Friday (5 July) — One of the most famous books in the history of science, Isaac Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), was published in London on this day in 1687. 📖 And somewhat less sublime: the canned luncheon meat SPAM was first introduced to the American market on this day in 1937. 🍽

Saturday (6 July) — In one of the great setbacks of the early phase of the Revolution, British General John Burgoyne forced American troops to abandon Fort Ticonderoga on the New York–Vermont border on this day in 1777. ⚔️ And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can be on the lookout for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (7 July) — Today is the birthday of the great Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (1860–1911). 🎵 And on this day in 1928, sliced bread was sold for the first time by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri — it was the greatest thing since, um, sliced bread! 🍞

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is an old and special favorite we offer each year for Independence Day — why not offer it this Thursday in your homeschool also:

To the memory of the man
That owned the land,
That raised the corn,
That fed the goose,
That bore the quill,
That made the pen,
That wrote the Declaration of Independence.

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌏 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Thailand is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Chao Phraya River, the principal river of Thailand. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Chao Phraya River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓

For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-06-23

Quick Freshes are our regular Sunday notes on the homeschool week ahead. Pick one or two (or more) of the items below each week and use them to enrich your homeschooling schedule! Visit our River Houses calendar page (riverhouses.org/calendars) and print your own homeschool calendars for the entire year.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Idaho, and our COUNTRIES are Switzerland 🇨🇭, Syria 🇸🇾, Taiwan 🇹🇼, and Tajikistan 🇹🇯. (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 waning — an increasingly good time for stargazing! You can dial up this week’s constellations and explore the moon’s features with your homeschool star atlas and world atlas, and you can learn many more stellar and lunar facts on pages 342–357 in your almanac (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 23 June) — Today is the 174th day of 2019; there are 191 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 358–364 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ The great English mathematician Alan Turing was born on this day in 1912. His pioneering work in computer science and cryptanalysis was instrumental in the breaking of German codes during World War II. 🖥

Monday (24 June) — On this day in the year 1497, the Italian-English explorer John Cabot (ca. 1450–1500) landed in Newfoundland and became the first European since the Vikings to set foot in North America. ⚓️

Tuesday (25 June) — On this day in 1876, the combined forces of several Plains Indian tribes under the command of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse defeated a U.S. Army regiment under the command of George Armstrong Custer in the Battle of the Little Bighorn, known ever since as “Custer’s Last Stand.” ⚔️ And today is the birthday of American children’s book illustrator Eric Carle (b. 1929), author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and founder of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. 👨‍🎨

Wednesday (26 June) — Today is the birthday of the great French astronomer Charles Messier (1730–1817), who documented and numbered many of the most beautiful objects in the universe. 🔭

Thursday (27 June) — Today is the birthday of the pioneering African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906). ✒️ And it’s also the birthday of the American entertainer Bob Keeshan (1927–2004), much better known as Captain Kangaroo! 📺

Friday (28 June) — On this day in 1914 the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand at Sarajevo set World War I in motion, and on this day in 1919 the Treaty of Versailles brought it to an end. (See pages 370–375 in your homeschool history encyclopedia for an overview of “The Great War.”) 🕊

Saturday (29 June) — The famous French economist Frédéric Bastiat was born on this day in 1801. 💰 And today is the birthday of the French writer and air force pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900–1944), author of The Little Prince. 🐘

Sunday (30 June) — Today is International Asteroid Day, marking the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska Event in Siberia. 🌠

🥂 OUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May the road to happiness be lighted by virtue.”

❡ Toasts can be a fun educational tradition for your family 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 variety in toasting!”). Our current set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called Pocock’s Everlasting Songster (Gravesend, 1804). What will you toast this week?

🌍 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Tajikistan is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Yaghnob River, one of the principal tributaries of the regional Zeravshan River. You can chart its course in your recommended homeschool atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Yaghnob River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Let the river run: 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 your almanac (pages 691–693), 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 (riverhouses.org/newsletter) and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events (riverhouses.org/calendars) and follow along with us. 🗓