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And this our life, exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in everything.

—Shakespeare

Great homeschool teaching ideas and little lessons on books and libraries from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Add your name to our River Houses homeschool mailing list and get these posts delivered right to your mailbox every week! 😊

📚 TUESDAY TEA: Wonderful Libraries on Google Earth

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(Sign up for our free River Houses Newsletter! Get great homeschool teaching ideas in your mailbox each week: riverhouses.org/newsletter.) 😊

You may not think of the geography website Google Earth as a place for you and your students to learn about libraries, but this week Google Earth has a special tour available of some of the world’s most wonderful libraries — you won’t want to miss it.

You’ll want to be at a large screen to explore these many wonderful book places: the Library of Saint Gall in Switzerland and of San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Spain, the State Library of New South Wales in Australia, the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, our own Library of Congress, and more. (Is it wrong that I want to live in all of them?) 😊

Some of the views shown are exterior, some are interior, some are 2D and some are interactive 3D, and all will introduce your students to wonderful places of learning around the world — places they might even visit someday.

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

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find 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. 😊

📚 LIBRARY TUESDAY: A Lesson Plan on Thomas Jefferson’s Library

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

Tuesday is Books & Libraries Day here at the River Houses, and since this Saturday (13 April) is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday, why not spend some time with your students this week on a ready-made lesson plan from the Library of Congress that asks you to evaluate the case for purchasing Thomas Jefferson’s personal library as a resource for the nation:

In the lesson, which uses original sources, students are asked to “examine a letter written by Thomas Jefferson and identify techniques he used to persuade Congress to purchase his personal library. Students consider a selection of Jefferson’s books and then write their own persuasive letters urging the books’ purchase, while considering the question: ‘Why would Congress need this book to shape or govern the nation?’”

The lesson is recommended for grades 6–12, and it includes all the background material needed. I have a feeling it’s just the kind of project that some clever homeschoolers could dive right into. 😊

Jefferson did succeed in persuading Congress to purchase his library, and his books became the core collection of the Library of Congress, our national library. Every American should know the story:

“On April 24, 1800, President John Adams approved an appropriation of $5,000 for the purchase of “such books as may be necessary for the use of [C]ongress.”

“The first books purchased were ordered from London and arrived in 1801. The collection of 740 volumes and three maps was stored in the U.S. Capitol, the Library’s first home. At the time, it was not yet much of a building — only its north wing had been completed.

“From 1802 to 1805, the small collection was located in a room previously occupied by the House of Representatives. It was later moved to various places in the Capitol until August 24, 1814, when the British burned and destroyed the Capitol, including the Library.

“To replace the loss, Thomas Jefferson in 1815 sold his personal library of 6,487 volumes — which was then unrivaled in America — to Congress. Sadly, a second fire on Christmas Eve of 1851 destroyed two-thirds of those volumes. But the Jefferson books nonetheless remain the core from which the Library’s present collections grew.“ (Library of Congress Blog)

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Technological 600s

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For live links, click to: riverhouses.org/2019-dewey-600 😊

Tuesday is our Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your homescholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can “adopt” one major class each month and cover the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for April is the 600s, which covers Technology. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 600s” means the numbers running from 600 to 699.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the 600s:

  • CLASS 600 – TECHNOLOGY
    • 600 – Technology (General)
    • 610 – Medicine & Health
    • 620 – Engineering
    • 630 – Agriculture
    • 640 – Home & Family Management
    • 650 – Management & Public Relations
    • 660 – Chemical Engineering
    • 670 – Manufacturing
    • 680 – Manufacture for Specific Purposes
    • 690 – Construction of Buildings

Each of these divisions is subdivided further of course: in the 630s (Agriculture), for example, you’ll find works on Field Crops (633), Orchards & Forestry (634), Horticulture (635), Animal Husbandry (636), and so on.

If you’ve got a future farmer in your homeschool, then, the 630s is the place to go. A future civil engineer? Head for 624. A future blacksmith? Try 682. A future HVAC technician? Explore 697. (You may want to skip over 662, however, unless your child is really determined to study the manufacture of explosives.) 😮

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, astronomy, you’ll find it in the 520s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. If you have an opportunity to make field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to demonstrate that in practice and get your students accustomed to orienting themselves by reading the numbers aloud as you walk together down the ranges: “505 … 510 … 515 … here it is, 520.”

Learning these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

What delightful decimals have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 600s, one in the 610s, one in the 620s, one in the 630s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 600) and the very last book in the class (the highest 699). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your three favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb and how many skills they will develop without even realizing it. 📚

❡ Looking in the lexicon: The Dewey system attempts to encompass the whole of knowledge, so there’s a good chance it will introduce your students to subjects and terminology they haven’t encountered before. In the 600s, for example, they may come across hydraulics, horticulture, metallurgy, and more (to name just a few). During or after your library visit, then, why not send your students to your family dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) or to any dictionary sitting open in the library reference room and invite them to learn some new Dewey-inspired vocabulary! 📖

❡ Planning ahead: If you’d like to map out a custom year-long Dewey project for your homeschool, here’s the schedule we follow in the River Houses: Introducing Dewey (September); The General 000s (October); The Philosophical 100s (November); The Religious 200s (December); The Social 300s (January); The Linguistic 400s (February); The Scientific 500s (March); The Technological 600s (April); The Artistic 700s (May); The Literary 800s (June); The Historical 900s (July).

❡ Explore more: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

📜 LIBRARY TUESDAY: A Free Course on the Book of Kells

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Tuesday is our regular Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and what better opportunity could present itself on such a day than a free course on one of the most famous books in the world, the Book of Kells.

Illuminated page from the Book of Kells. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

The Book of Kells is a medieval Irish manuscript of the New Testament Gospels, created around the year 800 and kept for centuries in the Abbey of Kells, north of Dublin. Now housed and exhibited at the Trinity College Library, it is one of the great artistic treasures of the European middle ages.

For the next few weeks, Trinity College is offering a free online course on the Book of Kells, and I know there are some talented homeschool history and art students out there who would be delighted by this opportunity. (And maybe some moms and dads, too.) You can read more about the course here:

And here’s a short video introduction to the course:

➔

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, the entire Book of Kells has been digitized at high resolution and made available online by the Trinity College Library. Why not spend some time with your students this week at a large screen and explore its intricate designs:

Fantastical beasts, pious saints, glowing letters, woven knots, and so much more.

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

❡ Explore more: For a quick review of medieval European history, turn to page 188 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history lesson.

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

📜 LIBRARY TUESDAY: Julius Caesar the Author

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Tuesday is Books & Libraries day at the River Houses, and since this our unofficial Julius Caesar Week (Beware the Ides of March!), we’re going to take a look at a magnificent copy of Caesar’s most famous work.

❡ Filling in the background: For a quick homeschool review of the life and times of Julius Caesar, and of his assassination on the Ides of March in 44 B.C., turn to page 108 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books).

Julius Caesar was not only a politician, a general, and a military dictator, he was also an author. Caesar’s account of his military conquest of Gaul (most of modern France and Belgium) is famous not only for its description of the state of Europe at that time, but also because it’s a fine example of simple and clear Latin prose. Tens of thousands of school children — probably millions, in fact, over hundreds of years — have read Caesar’s De bello Gallico (On the Gallic War) in their beginning Latin classes in dozens of countries around the world. Its famous opening sentence — “All Gaul is divided into three parts” — is a stock phrase that has been part of the mental furnishings of educated people in the Western world for centuries.

Here is a magnificent illuminated (colored and decorated) copy of On the Gallic War that is now owed by the Bavarian State Library in Germany; it was produced in 1469:

[All Gaul is divided into three parts]
Illuminated copy of Caesar’s Gallic Wars, from the collections of the Bavarian State Library in Germany (Bayerische Staatsbibliothek). (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Can your students read the printing? The first line in red is the work’s title (this was before the invention of title pages): “C. Iulii Cesaris belli gallici commentarius primus” (“C[aius] Julius Caesar’s first commentary on the Gallic wars”). The second line is the famous opening sentence, with a magnificently illuminated initial “G”: “GAllia est omnis divisa in partes tres” (“All Gaul is divided into three parts”).

So here’s how you make a playful little lesson from this, even with small children. Take the famous phrase “All Gaul is divided into three parts” and turn it into a running family game. Sharing a pie with three children? All pies are divided into three parts. Our whole house is divided into three parts: the kitchen where we eat, the living room where we play, and the bedroom where we sleep. The backyard with the garden, lawn, and dog house? All backyards are divided into three parts. And all books are of course divided into three parts: beginning, middle, and end. And so on.

Cultures and civilizations are built on shared educational experiences, shared ideas, shared languages, even shared jokes. By introducing your students to playful uses classic texts, even in this tiny way, you are sharing with them a small part of the cultural inheritance of the West that can continue to enrich them throughout their lives.

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

❡ 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 (not a phone), and give them a browse. 😊

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Scientific 500s

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Tuesday is our Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your homescholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can “adopt” one major class each month and cover the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for March is the 500s, which covers Science. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 500s” means the numbers running from 500 to 599.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the 500s:

  • CLASS 500 – SCIENCE
    • 500 – Science (General)
    • 510 – Mathematics
    • 520 – Astronomy
    • 530 – Physics
    • 540 – Chemistry
    • 550 – Earth Sciences & Geology
    • 560 – Fossils & Prehistoric Life
    • 570 – Biology
    • 580 – Plants (Botany)
    • 590 – Animals (Zoology)

Each of these divisions is subdivided further of course: in the 510s (Mathematics), for example, you’ll find works on Algebra (512), Arithmetic (513), Topology (514), Geometry (516), and so on.

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, astronomy, you’ll find it in the 520s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. If you have an opportunity to make field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to demonstrate that in practice and get your students accustomed to orienting themselves by reading the numbers aloud as you walk together down the ranges: “505 … 510 … 515 … here it is, 520.”

Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

(And next month: The Technological 600s.)

What delightful decimals have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 500s, one in the 510s, one in the 520s, one in the 530s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 500) and the very last book in the class (the highest 599). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your five favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb without even realizing it. 📚

❡ Explore more: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder will help you find all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

📚 LIBRARY TUESDAY: Black History Month at LC and the National Archives

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Tuesday is Books & Libraries day in the River Houses, and February is Black History Month, so there’s no better time to browse and bookmark the wonderful African American history resources available at both the Library of Congress and the National Archives. There’s a wealth of top-quality educational materials available, not just for this month, but for the entire year.

Here’s a big collection of social media links and pages from the Library of Congress on everything from the Civil Rights Movement, to the history of jazz, to black veterans of the U.S. military, to African American poets and writers, to Harriet Tubman, Jackie Robinson, Frederick Douglass, and more:

And here are a few specific ready-to-use lesson plans for grades 6–9 that are designed around the library’s online resources:

The Library of Congress also publishes a number of great blogs on a variety of subjects. Although there isn’t a specific blog devoted to African American history, many of the posts this month in several different LC blogs have focused on black history themes.

The National Archives — just a few blocks from the Library of Congress in Washington — also has a wide range of African American history materials available online, from documents and records, to photographs, essays, and links to other governmental agencies and departments:

Our national libraries are great resources for Black History Month, and for every month, for every homeschool family. Bookmark them and visit them regularly.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find 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 (not a phone), and give them a browse. 😊

📚 LIBRARY TUESDAY: Copernicus and His Revolutions

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Today is the birthday of one of the most important figures in the history of science: the great Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543). In his honor, why not take a few homeschool minutes to introduce your students to Copernicus’ great work, On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres (De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium), first published in 1543.

[Copernicus' heliocentric system]
The heliocentric model of Copernicus, from De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium (1543). Note the sun (Sol) at the center, and the earth (Terra) in the third orbit, along with earth’s moon. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

“De Rev” (as history of science geeks call it) is one of the most important books ever published because it laid out a comprehensive sun-centered or heliocentric picture of the solar system, replacing the earlier earth-centered or geocentric picture.

Fewer than 300 copies of the original 1543 edition of De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium survive today. But we live in a truly fortunate age, when a young student can sit at home and examine up close some of the rarest and most important books in history — books that just a few years ago would have been accessible only to professional scholars in the world’s largest libraries.

Here is a copy of the “De Rev” that has been scanned and made available by RareBookRoom.org, a wonderful site that provides online access to some of the most important books ever written. The scans are very high resolution so all the pages can be examined one by one in great detail, right down to old handwritten notes in the margins and to the texture of the paper as it was impressed by the metal type. Spend a few homeschool minutes today with your students (at a large screen rather than a phone) exploring this bibliographic treasure:

The text is in Latin — the language of all scientific books written at that time — and the printing is exceptionally fine. Zoom in on a few pages using the −/+ scale at the top of the page to get a full appreciation for this great work, not only of science, but of the printer’s art as well.

If you have curious science students in your homeschool, be sure they know the name of Nicolaus Copernicus and how he changed our understanding of the world.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick review of the Renaissance, the historical period in which Copernicus lived, turn to pages 250–253 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books), and for an overview of the Scientific Revolution that he helped to spark see pages 266–267. It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history lesson.

📚 BOOKS & LIBRARIES TUESDAY: Lincoln and Darwin and Horace

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There are six standard reference books that we recommend for every homeschool library — not children’s books, but family books that can support your teaching in every subject and serve your homeschool for many years. One of these is the comprehensive and beautifully illustrated volume History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present (3rd edition). This book is a favorite of our River Houses mascot Horace the Otter, as you can see.

Our mascot Horace the Otter with his favorite homeschool history encyclopedia.

Horace is spending time with his history encyclopedia today because this is a notable anniversary. Two of the most influential figures of the nineteenth century, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, were both born on this day in the same year: 1809. The history encyclopedia has fully illustrated outlines of the life and times of both Lincoln (page 316) and Darwin (page 340) — just what you need for a quick review this week with your homeschool students.

Horace the Otter reads up on Abraham Lincoln in his history encyclopedia.

Darwin was one of my academic specialties, so this time period is of special interest to me. I taught a basic college writing course for a number of years using original texts from the history of science, including Darwin’s Origin of Species, a work that was first published in London in 1859, the year before Lincoln was first elected president in the United States.

Horace the Otter learns about Charles Darwin and the history of science on Darwin’s birthday.

If you’re looking for a one-volume history encyclopedia that can support your homeschool teaching across any curriculum you may be following, History: From the Dawn of Civilization to the Present is a great choice. Happy birthday, Abe and Charles!

What bibliographic treasures have you discovered and what historical anniversaries have you marked in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ 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 (not a phone) and give them a browse. 😊

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Linguistic 400s

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Tuesday is our Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month we invite you and your homescholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can “adopt” one major class each month and cover the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

The class for February is the 400s, which covers Language. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 400s” means the numbers running from 400 to 499.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the 400s:

  • CLASS 400 – LANGUAGE
    • 400 – Language (General)
    • 410 – Linguistics
    • 420 – English and Old English Languages
    • 430 – German and Related Languages
    • 440 – French and Related Languages
    • 450 – Italian, Romanian, and Related Languages
    • 460 – Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician
    • 470 – Latin and Italic Languages
    • 480 – Classical and Modern Greek Languages
    • 490 – Other Languages

Each of these divisions is subdivided further of course: in the 410s (Linguistics), for example, you’ll find works on Writing Systems (411), Phonology (414), Dialectology (417), and so on.

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, astronomy, you’ll find it in the 520s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. (If you have an opportunity to make field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to demonstrate that in practice.)

Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

(And next month: The Scientific 500s.)

What delightful decimals have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 400s, one in the 410s, one in the 420s, one in the 430s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 400) and the very last book in the class (the highest 499). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your five favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb without even realizing it. 📚

❡ Explore more: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you find all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

🎨 ATTENTION HOMESCHOOL ARTISTS: It’s Color Our Collections Week!

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Calling all homeschool artists, scribblers, painters, colorists, daubers, and illuminators: this week is Color Our Collections Week! Dozens of leading museums and libraries around the world are posting beautiful black-and-white engravings, woodcuts, and illustrations from their collections that you can color to your heart’s content.


Color Our Collections Week is a fun, creative, educational, international project that was started by the library of the New York Academy of Medicine, and it now involves more than a hundred major libraries and museums around the world. These institutions have scanned historic black-and-white images from their collections of rare books and have assembled these images into coloring booklets that you and your students can illuminate as you see fit.

You can find a complete listing of all the available coloring books on the New York Academy of Medicine’s website:

These wonderful free booklets include everything from science to Shakespeare, architecture to medieval art, natural history to engineering, and much more. There are enough pages available for you to download a year’s worth of coloring opportunities for your young artists. And they are not only fun, they are full of educational value as well. Don’t miss this great opportunity for creativity and learning.

What artistic discoveries have you made in your homeschool this week? 😊

📜 ON EXHIBIT: Tolkien – Maker of Middle-Earth

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If you have fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in your homeschool, you’ll want to look into the major Tolkien exhibit that will open this month at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York. Here’s a comprehensive illustrated write-up about the exhibit from the neighboring Metropolitan Museum:

The exhibit will feature many of Tolkien’s own drawings and illustrations of characters and scenes as he envisioned them.

“Conversation with Smaug.” (Image: mymodernmet.com.)

Can’t get to New York? (Me either!) Don’t despair: a beautifully illustrated companion book and exhibit catalog has just been published, and you can order your own or request it at your local library:

The exhibit in New York will run from 25 January to 12 May, and will include a wide range of on-site special events, some of which may be recorded and posted online. Keep an eye on the Morgan Library’s exhibit page for details as they develop.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

📚 LIBRARY TUESDAY: The 116th Congress at the Library of Congress

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The 116th Congress is now in session in Washington, and this is a good time to remind your students that they can find out what’s happening in Congress on any day of the week from one very special library — our national library — the Library of Congress itself:

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world and its holdings encompass all of human endeavor, but its first purpose has always been to serve the operational needs of the United States Congress. At the Library’s Congress.gov website you can find the daily schedule of sessions, meetings, committees, and conferences; you can read the bills that have been introduced, passed, and rejected; you can look up your own senators and representatives and find out what their voting records are; you can even watch congressional debates live as they happen, without the attendant spin and sensationalism of the media.

The Library of Congress also has a wide variety of teaching materials and lesson plans about the work of the Congress — there’s something available for every grade level:

Why not make it a homeschool project this year to follow a particular bill through Congress, or follow the meetings of a particular committee, or the votes of a particular senator or representative. Helping the Congress do its work, and helping We the People to keep an eye on that work, is one of the main functions of the Library of Congress — a library every good homescholar should know.

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

❡ Explore more: Have you visited all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you locate all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you find the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Social 300s

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Here’s a great activity to get you back in the swing of things after the holidays. Tuesday is our Books & Libraries Day in the River Houses, and on the first Tuesday of each month — even when it falls on New Year’s Day — we invite you and your homescholars to explore one of the major Dewey Decimal classes at your local library. If you start at the beginning of the River Houses year in September and run until July, you can “adopt” one major class each month and cover the whole of knowledge (!) in a year.

[Dewey Decimal Classes]

The class for January is the 300s, which covers the Social Sciences. (The Dewey system is grouped into hundreds, so “the 300s” means the numbers running from 300 to 399.)

Here’s what you’ll find at your local library in the 300s:

  • CLASS 300 – Social Sciences
    • 300 – Social Sciences (general), Sociology, & Anthropology
    • 310 – Statistics
    • 320 – Political Science
    • 330 – Economics
    • 340 – Law
    • 350 – Public Administration & Military Science
    • 360 – Social Problems & Social Services
    • 370 – Education
    • 380 – Commerce, Communications, & Transportation
    • 390 – Customs, Etiquette, & Folklore

Each of these divisions is subdivided further of course: in the 340s (Law), for example, you’ll find works on Constitutional Law (342), Criminal Law (345), Courts and Procedures (347), and so on.

When you’re learning the library with your students, be sure they understand that any library collection that uses the Dewey Decimal Classification will be arranged in the same way: the numbers run from 000 to 999 in every Dewey-based library, so if you’re interested in, say, astronomy, you’ll find it in the 520s in both the small-town library near you and in the big-city library across the country. (If you have an opportunity to make special field trips to multiple libraries over the course of the year you’ll be able to really drive that point home.)

Mastering these library basics will help your students become independent life-long learners and will ensure that they’ll feel right at home in any library they visit.

(Next month: The Linguistic 400s.)

What delightful decimals and textual treasures have you found in your library lately? 😊

❡ Make it a tradition: Why not spend a few minutes during your first library visit each month and devise a little Dewey tradition of your own. Read the title page of one book in the 300s, one in the 310s, one in the 320s, one in the 330s, and so on. Find the very first book in the class (the lowest 300) and the very last book in the class (the highest 399). Find the thinnest book and the thickest book in each class. Make a list of your five favorite numbers in each class. If you follow a simple pattern like this over the course of the year you’ll be surprised how much information your students will absorb without even realizing it. 📚

❡ Explore more: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you find all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊

☄️ LIBRARY TUESDAY: Discovering Comets

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Comets are in the news this week with the worldwide apparition of Comet Wirtanen in the evening sky. We’re accustomed to being told about astronomical phenomena in detail these days — when such-and-such an event will occur, where a particular object can be seen, how bright it will appear, and so on. And yet the basic science behind this knowledge took years, and even centuries to work out. Here’s the very moment, in 1705, when mankind first understood that comets really were independent bodies orbiting the sun, each with its own period, and with predictable dates of return:

From Edmon Halley’s A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets (London, 1705). (Image: Smithsonian Institution Libraries.)

Tuesday is Books & Libraries Day at the River Houses, and the wonders of our digital age make it possible for you and your homeschool high-schoolers to encounter and explore some of the great books of the past that even just a few years ago would have been available only in the largest research libraries. The extract above is from a small essay by Edmond Halley (1656–1742) called A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets, published in London in 1705. Your students can examine it today:

Halley collected all the precise observations he could find on historical comets, and using the most advanced mathematics of his day he attempted to calculate their trajectories and orbits. In particular, he concluded that the remarkable comets seen in 1531, and then again in 1607, and again in 1682, were in fact all the same object, returning every 75–76 years:

“The principal Use therefore of this Table of the Elements of their Motions [the numerical table included in the essay], and that which induced me to construct it, is, That whenever a new Comet shall appear, we may be able to know, by comparing together the Elements, whether it be any of those which has appear’d before, and consequently to determine its Period, and the Axis of its Orbit, and to foretell its Return. And, indeed, there are many Things which make me believe that the Comet which Apian observ’d in the Year 1531, was the same with that which Kepler and Longomontanus took Notice of and describ’d in the Year 1607, and which I my self have seen return, and observ’d in the Year 1682.”

That’s the object we know today as Halley’s Comet, scheduled to return to the inner solar system again in the year 2061.

Title page of Halley’s Synopsis (London, 1705).

Somewhere out there in the homeschooling community there is a future astronomer, physicist, or mathematician ready to follow in Halley’s footsteps. By introducing your own students to the great works of the past you make it possible for them to develop their own vision for what they may be able to accomplish in the future.

What treasures have you discovered in your library lately? 😊

❡ Explore more: For a quick review of the Scientific Revolution, in which Edmond Halley played an important part, turn to page 266 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books). It’s just the background you need for a wonderful homeschool history of science lesson.

❡ Books in the running brooks: Have you found all the local libraries in your area? There may be more than you realize! The WorldCat Library Finder (worldcat.org/libraries) will help you find all the libraries near you — public and private, large and small — and the WorldCat catalog itself (worldcat.org) will help you locate the closest copy of almost any book in the world. 😊