REUSABLE POSTS

Our River Houses homeschool mascot, Horace the Otter, remembers the author of the popular American novel “Little Women” (1868) on her birthday.

“How do you like to go up in a swing, / Up in the air so blue? / Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing / Ever a child can do!” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Louis Stevenson, for summer.)

Take a few homeschool minutes this week to learn about William Morris, one of the great artistic polymaths of the Victorian period, on the anniversary of his birth.

“Till all the seas gang dry, my dear, / And the rocks melt wi’ the sun; / I will love thee still, my dear, / While the sands of life shall run.” (Happy birthday to Robert Burns, the national poet of Scotland, born on this day in 1759.)

Get your young astronomers ready to observe a notable celestial event next month: a Great Conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn, the first one in twenty years.

Explore an assortment of educational activities for your homeschool Halloween from the Library of Congress and the Folger Shakespeare Library.

Teach a little homeschool lesson this week about stars and their names, and maybe learn a tiny bit of Latin and Greek (and even Arabic) along the way.

Homeschool tips for finding Comet NEOWISE this week. (It won’t be back for another 6000 years, so see it while you can!)

For a great homeschool biology and natural history lesson, have your students watch this livestream of a Peregrine Falcon nest in Madison, Wisconsin — four fuzzy white chicks just hatched this week!

Happy birthday to the American Red Cross, one of the largest public service organizations in the United States, founded by Clara Barton on this day in 1881.

Free (and live) online education sessions on historic children’s books and primary historical sources from the Library of Congress – the latest in a series of “online office hours” while the Library’s buildings are closed.

Comet ATLAS C2019/Y4 many not turn out to be a “Great Comet” after all. Its nucleus appears to be breaking up and its brightness is fading.

Venus will be as bright as it’s been in a long time this weekend — be sure to take your young astronomers outside at sunset to see!

“Over against the ships he dropped to a knee, let fly a shaft / and a terrifying clash rang out from the great silver bow. / First he went for the mules and circling dogs but then, / launching a piercing shaft at the men themselves, / he cut them down in droves.”

Patrick Stewart — Star Trek’s Captain Picard and also a noted Shakespearean actor — reads Shakespeare’s Sonnets.

There’s a comet coming this spring. It’s called C/2019 Y4 ATLAS, and it may turn out to be a good one. Put it on your homeschool calendars for the end of May.

The National Archives wants you to be a “Citizen Archivist” and help document materials in U.S. presidential libraries (from the comfort of your home computer). This is a great cooperative project for homeschool history students.

Cornell University is hosting a summer program for high school students interested in careers in natural history — it might be just the thing to start a clever homeschool naturalist on a bright future path.

Enjoy some happy celebratory music in your homeschool this week from Cherokee singer-songwriter Michael Jacobs — it’s just the thing for a big family weekend.

This Thursday night (21–22 November 2019) there may be a significant, though brief, meteor storm associated with the annual Alpha Monocerotid meteor shower. Be sure to take your homeschool astronomy students outside for a look!

An otterific round-up of this week’s big astronomical event, the 2019 Transit of Mercury — another one won’t occur until 2032! (And don’t miss the futuristic painting of the Mercury transit of 1914!)

Homeschool tips on how to observe next week’s transit of the planet Mercury across the face of the sun — if you miss it, you’ll have to wait until 2032 to see one again.

Teach a little lesson on geology and plate tectonics this week with some beautiful maps from the collections of the Library of Congress.

If you have comics-mad kids in your homeschool, why not take educational advantage of their interests with some help from the Library of Congress.

Invite your young homeschool astronomers to explore an amazing image of the constellation Cygnus (and our monthly star Deneb) from NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day website.

The Battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. was one of the most consequential battles in the history of the Western world. It’s an event every homeschool student should know.

Help the National Archives tag and document historic NASA film footage of astronauts and the space program — what a great research opportunity for homeschool high schoolers!