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Arts & Music: Happy Birthday Bach!

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Take a few homeschool minutes today to introduce your students to a tiny masterpiece by one of the world’s great composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, born on this day in 1685.

Saturday is Arts & Music Day at the River Houses, and in honor of the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), why not play his famous four-minute “Little Fugue” this week as background music in your little homeschool academy.

Here is the piece performed by Jonathan Scott in what might be called its natural habitat: the organ loft of a church. (Much of Bach’s music was church music written for the pipe organ, “the king of instruments.”) The video does a good job of showing the complex operation of the organ, which requires the the performer to exercise not only both hands, but both feet as well:

And here’s the same piece, Bach’s “Little Fugue,” but arranged in a very different way for a saxophone quartet by Staff Sergeant David Parks of the United States Army Field Band (www.armyfieldband.com):

If either of those performances catch your students’ attention, there’s a whole universe of Bach available online — more than enough to convert today’s little homeschool lesson into a week-long music festival of your own devising.

What artistic discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately?

❡ Explore more: You can find several lists of noted musical composers and performers on pages 214–222 in your recommended world almanac (riverhouses.org/books). Why not use those lists to make up an impromptu homeschool research project: have your students copy out separate lists of composers from different centuries, or from different countries, and find examples of their music online. Can you get a sense for how musical styles changed from century to century? Are there distinct national styles that you can recognize?

Nature Notes: The Spring Bird Migration Season

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The spring bird migration season is underway in much of North America, and this is a good time to introduce your homeschool students to the patterns of bird migration and behavior that can be seen in your backyard and across the continent. One resource you should bookmark for your students to explore this migration season is the BirdCast website sponsored by Cornell University:

BirdCast is like a weather forecasting site, except the weather being reported is the daily (and nightly) migration of North American birds. (Did you know most small birds migrate at night?) The BirdCast website offers daily forecasts of bird migration, along with scientific discussions (ideal for high-school age students) about the influence of winds and weather on migration, the seasonal patterns exhibited by different species, and more:

Since 2012, the BirdCast team has been working toward automatically predicting and analyzing bird migration across the continental US. Our original, lofty goal was to provide these sorts of predictions and analyses for radar, eBird, and acoustic data, fully integrated, for the most complete representation of the largely unseen spectacle of billions of nocturnally migrating birds moving through the United States. Well, today [27 March 2018], the team made a great leap forward — we unveil automated forecast maps and live migration maps, taking advantage of more than two decades worth of radar data to produce these exciting new products. Welcome to the future of migration monitoring, please explore the new visuals and tune in frequently for discussion about movements! (birdcast.info)

BirdCast’s daily maps outline where migration is going to be heaviest, and so where you are more likely to see new spring arrivals on any given day.

[Bird migration forecast map]
Bird migration forecast for the night of 28 March 2018. (Image: birdcast.info.)

You can study the forecast maps as an educational tool, and also use them to support your own homeschool field trips. (“This weekend looks especially good for migrants — let’s take a trip to the local lake tomorrow and see if we can find any new arrivals.”) Bookmark BirdCast.info and share it with your students as the migration season progresses.

What nature notes have you taken in your homeschool lately?

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that is a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just to the backyard.

Wonderful Words: “A Brook in the City”

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It’s Wonderful Words Wednesday at the River Houses, and since Monday was Robert Frost’s birthday, we’re going to make this into a Robert Frost week!

Robert Frost (1874–1963) is an excellent poet to read with young people because his writing is often simple and accessible on the surface (and so easy for beginners), while remaining complex and philosophical underneath (and so rewarding for more advanced readers).

Why not read this little gem to your students this week — or have them read it to you — and discuss its structure and ideas. It’s about a farm that was taken over by urban development: the once-isolated farmhouse is now surrounded by new construction, and the brook that was once beside it is now buried in a pipe. But is it really gone? (Could there be a brook like this near you?)

A Brook in the City

Robert Frost

The farmhouse lingers, though averse to square
With the new city street it has to wear
A number in. But what about the brook
That held the house as in an elbow-crook?
I ask as one who knew the brook, its strength
And impulse, having dipped a finger length
And made it leap my knuckle, having tossed
A flower to try its currents where they crossed.
The meadow grass could be cemented down
From growing under pavements of a town;
The apple trees be sent to hearth-stone flame.
Is water wood to serve a brook the same?
How else dispose of an immortal force
No longer needed? Staunch it at its source
With cinder loads dumped down? The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run —
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps.
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water. But I wonder
If from its being kept forever under,
The thoughts may not have risen that so keep
This new-built city from both work and sleep.

❡ Count and map: When you introduce your students to a new poem, especially one in a traditional form, don’t start with abstract meaning or symbolism; the first thing to do is just count the syllables and map the rhyme scheme. How many syllables in each line in this poem? Ten throughout — a perfect pattern. What about the rhyme scheme? Each pair of lines rhymes — they are couplets — so we would describe the rhyme scheme as AABBCCDD, etc. Uncovering these structural details teaches your students that a poem of this kind is not the result of some sort of spontaneous imaginative outburst on the part of the poet; it is instead an intricately crafted piece of literary labor.

What wonderful words have you found and what literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately?

❡ Explore more: The American Literature website (americanliterature.com) includes biographies and examples of the work of many major poets, including Robert Frost, suitable for homeschool students and teachers.

Library Tuesday: Jerome and His Latin Bible

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Suppose you had put together a book that people were still using and copying a thousand years later. That would be quite an achievement! So it was for Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus and his Latin translation of the Bible, the “Vulgate” or common translation.

Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus is better known today as Jerome, the Anglicized version of Hieronymus, and as Saint Jerome in several different Christian denominations. Tuesday is our regular Books & Libraries Day at the River Houses, and tradition says that this Tuesday (27 March) is Jerome’s birthday, so why not spend a few homeschool minutes introducing your students to one of the most influential texts in Western history, Jerome’s Vulgate Bible.

Jerome was a fourth-century scholar of Classical (Greek and Latin) literature who converted to Christianity and took up the study of the original Hebrew and Greek texts of the Old and New Testaments. As Christianity spread through the Roman empire, Jerome’s Latin translation of the Hebrew and Greek originals became the standard version of the Bible used in most Western churches for more than a thousand years.

Jerome’s Vulgate Bible was copied and read for centuries before the invention of the printing press, and it was the underlying Latin text used for many of the most beautiful illuminated manuscripts produced during the Middle Ages, such as the Codex Amiatinus (“the Amiata Book” from the Amiata monastery in Italy), the oldest complete copy of Jerome’s Vulgate translation. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, you and your students can browse priceless volumes like this online today in your own homeschool:

“The Codex Amiatinus is the earliest surviving manuscript of the complete Bible in the Latin Vulgate. It is considered the most accurate copy of Saint Jerome’s original translation and was used in the revision of the Vulgate by Pope Sixtus V in 1585–90. Preserved in the Medicea Laurenziana Library in Florence, it is one of the world’s most important manuscripts.” (wdl.org)

[Codex Amiatinus]
The opening lines of Genesis from Jerome’s Vulgate (common Latin) translation of the Bible, as seen in the seventh-century Codex Amiatinus. (Image: World Digital Library.)

Do you have Latin students in your homeschool? See if they can make out the opening lines of the Codex Amiatinus, written in red (rubricated): “In principio creavit d[eu]s caelum et terram” (“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”). Follow the link to the full text above and see how far, with a little practice, they can get.

Your local library may not have rare medieval manuscripts on its shelves, but it has plenty of treasures nonetheless. What bibliographic discoveries have you made lately in your homeschool? 😊

❡ Looking in the lexicon: There’s some wonderful vocabulary for your students to investigate in today’s post: manuscript, codex, denomination, Vulgate, illuminate, rubricate, Anglicize. Let your recommended River Houses dictionary (riverhouses.org/books) be your guide! 😊

The Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation

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Yesterday (25 March) was the birthday of the most important person in history that you may never have heard of: Dr. Norman Borlaug, born 25 March 1914 in the little town of Cresco, Iowa. Borlaug was an American agronomist who developed important new strains of wheat and helped distribute them to impoverished regions of the world in what has been called the “Green Revolution” of the mid-twentieth century. By some estimates, Borlaug’s work saved a billion people from starvation. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work in 1970.

This is our weekly museums post for the River Houses, and we invite you to pay a virtual homeschool visit this week to the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation (and museum) in Cresco, Iowa:

The Borlaug Foundation has restored some of the original farm buildings in which Borlaug first worked, and has also developed an excellent set of free educational resources for children, including a short curriculum and an activity book — just the thing to download for your homeschool:

Take a few homeschool minutes this week to introduce your students to Norman Borlaug, one of history’s greatest humanitarians.

[Borlaug Medal]
Congressional Gold Medal awarded to Norman Borlaug in 2006. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What museum or historical monument have you visited with your homeschool students lately?

Happy Birthday to Robert Frost (1874–1963)

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Happy Birthday to the great American poet Robert Frost, born on this day in San Francisco in 1874.

The Pasture

I’m going out to clean the pasture spring;
I’ll only stop to rake the leaves away
(And wait to watch the water clear, I may):
I sha’n’t be gone long. — You come too.

I’m going out to fetch the little calf
That’s standing by the mother. It’s so young,
It totters when she licks it with her tongue.
I sha’n’t be gone long. — You come too.

❡ Explore more: The Simple English Wikipedia article on Robert Frost (simple.wikipedia.org) is a fine account to read your homescholars today — or to ask them to read to you!

What holidays or anniversaries are you marking in your homeschool this week?

Sunday States: Wisconsin, Mongolia, Mozambique, and More

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Tour the United States and travel the countries of the world each week with the River Houses. Our Sunday States & Countries posts will point the way.

Many homeschoolers like to review the U.S. states and the nations of the world each year, and your River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. We go through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 422), so this week’s state is:

  • 🇺🇸
    [Seal of Wisconsin]
    Seal of Wisconsin
    WISCONSIN (the 30th state, 29 May 1848) — The Badger State. Capital: Madison. Wisconsin can be found on page 591 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Indian name, spelled Ouisconsin or Mesconsing by early chroniclers, believed to mean ‘grassy place’ in Chippewa. Congress made it Wisconsin” (almanac page 423). State bird: American Robin. Website: www.wisconsin.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas. Look up the state bird in your bird guide. Read the almanac’s one-paragraph history aloud each week. Using each state’s official website (above), find and copy the preamble to that state’s constitution into a commonplace book over the course of the year. Practice math skills by graphing each state’s population and area. Look up the famous state residents listed in your almanac either online or at your local library. The possibilities are endless and they can be easily adapted to each student’s age and interests. Pick a simple pattern to follow for a few minutes each week, and by the end of the year, without even realizing it, your students will have absorbed a world of new geographical and historical information.

❡ Explore more: If you’re planning a comprehensive study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the excellent collection of primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress (loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/primarysourcesets/states). And the delightful State Symbols USA site (statesymbolsusa.org) has everything you and your students will want to know about flags, seals, mottos, state birds, and much more.

This week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

  • 🇲🇳 MONGOLIA, in Central Asia. Population: 3,068,243. Capital: Ulaanbaatar. Website (in Mongolian and English): www.president.mn.
  • 🇲🇪 MONTENEGRO, in southeastern Europe. Population: 642,550. Capital: Podgorica. Website: www.gov.me.
  • 🇲🇦 MOROCCO, on the north coast of Africa. Population: 33,986,665. Capital: Rabat. Website (in Arabic and several other languages): www.maroc.ma.
  • 🇲🇿 MOZAMBIQUE, on the southeast coast of Africa. Population: 26,573,706. Capital: Maputo. Website (in Portuguese): www.portaldogoverno.gov.mz.

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. For example, you’ll find the main entries for Mongolia on almanac page 806, atlas plates 88 and 136, and history encyclopedia page 589, with illustrations, flags, and other mentions available through the indexes in each volume.

❡ Read and think critically: The country links above go to official websites, which are not always in English and which may well be propagandistic in one form or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their critical reading and thinking skills.

What geographical discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately?

Quick Freshes for Homeschool Families – Week of 25 March 2018

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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!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Wisconsin, and our COUNTRIES are Mongolia, Montenegro, Morocco, and Mozambique. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post will be up shortly.)

❡ Little lessons: “Did you know that the vast empire assembled by the twelfth-century Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan extended from Iran in the west all the way to the Sea of Japan in the east?” You can find a helpful homeschool review of this important period in the history of Asia on pages 164–165 in your River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books).

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing, heading toward full on the last day of the month. Track the moon’s phases each month at timeanddate.com/moon/phases, and dial up this week’s constellations with your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 25 March) — Today is the 84th day of 2018; there are 281 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 351–357 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is also the birthday of the American agronomist Norman Ernest Borlaug (1914–2009), who saved more human beings from starvation than any person in history.

Monday (26 March) — Monday is Museums & Monuments Day at the River Houses. In honor of Norman Borlaug’s birthday week, we’re going to pay a virtual visit to the Norman Borlaug Heritage Foundation in Cresco, Iowa. ⬩ Monday is also the birthday of two famous poets, the Englishman A.E. Housman (1859–1936) and the American Robert Frost (1874–1963) ⬩ On this day in 1812 a Boston political cartoonist coined the word “Gerrymander” by merging future Vice President Elbridge Gerry with a salamander.

Tuesday (27 March) — Join us for Tuesday Tea at the Library and some notes on books, libraries, and history. Since today is the birthday of the early Christian saint and scholar Jerome (A.D. 347–420), we’re going to spend a few homeschool minutes learning about his Latin translation of the Bible — the Vulgate or common translation — which served as the standard text of scripture throughout much of Christendom for more than a thousand years.

Wednesday (28 March) — Today is the birthday of the Czech scholar and educator John Amos Comenius (1592–1670), who is often credited with having written the first picture book for children, Orbis Pictus (1658).

Thursday (29 March) — On this day in 1867, the territory of Alaska was purchased from Russia for $7.2 million (about two cents an acre) at the initiative of Secretary of State William H. Seward. The purchase was widely ridiculed as “Seward’s Folly.”

Friday (30 March) — Our regular Friday Field & Nature Notes will take a look at the ongoing spring migration. ⬩ Today also is the birthday of the famous Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890).

Saturday (31 March) — Saturday is Arts & Music Day at the River Houses, so we will spend some time with two of the world’s great composers, both born on this day: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) and Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809).

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May our love be ever young and our charity ever vigorous.”

❡ Toasts are a fun 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 examples are adapted from two old collections: Marchant’s “Toasts and sentiments” (1888) and the anonymous Social and Convivial Toast-Master (1841). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Mongolia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Orkhon River, which rises in Mongolia’s Khangai Mountains and flows northward to the Russian border. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read much more about it in the comprehensive Orkhon River entry in Wikipedia or on your next visit to your local library.

[Orkhon River, Mongolia]
The Orkhon River in Mongolia. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

❡ 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 691–692), 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 the homeschool week ahead?

Saturday Arts: Introducing William Morris (1834–1896)

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William Morris (1834–1896) was one of the most gifted and prolific artists of the Victorian period in British history, and on this anniversary of his birth, why not spend a few homeschool minutes introducing your students to his beautiful designs.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has an extensive collection of Morris productions — it’s a perfect place to visit with your artistically or historically inclined students:

Morris was a polymath who wrote novels and poetry, designed textiles and stained glass windows, and established a press that produced some of the most beautiful books of the nineteenth century. His designs for fabrics, carpets, and wallpaper continue to be popular more than a century after his death.

One of the 19th century’s most famous names, William Morris is still renowned today as the designer of patterns such as ‘Willow Bough’ and ‘Strawberry Thief’. But his wallpapers and textiles are only part of the story. Through developing many other products and working on interiors schemes (including one for the V&A’s own café), Morris also mastered many other areas of design – as well as finding time to be a social activist and celebrated author. (vam.ac.uk)

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful,” Morris wrote. That’s a worthy aspiration for us all. And if you want something in your house that is both educationally useful and beautiful, what could be better than a William Morris coloring book!

[Morris wallpaper]
The beautiful Acanthus wallpaper designs of William Morris. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

What artistic discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately?

❡ Explore more: For a brief homeschool overview of the Victorian period in British history, to which William Morris belongs, turn to pages 348–349 in your recommended River Houses history encyclopedia (riverhouses.org/books).

Nature Notes: Start Your eBird List Today!

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We love natural history at the River Houses, and one of the simplest and most educational ways to introduce your homeschool students to natural history is by keeping a simple bird list for your backyard or local area. Spring is on its way, so this is the perfect time to start.

The eBird service sponsored by Cornell University is a great place to keep track of all your bird sightings. I use eBird, and you and your students should sign up and give it a try:

eBird allows you to specify a location (your backyard, for example, or a local natural area), and then add regular lists of birds seen at that location. To build up an effective list (the most useful for educational purposes) you should set aside a small block of time — 15 minutes or 30 minutes, say — and count all the birds you see during that time. It may be only five birds, or it may be fifty, but by keeping a total count for a specific period of time every week, eBird can automatically build up a profile of your location, showing when different species arrive, when they depart, and how frequent they are. That’s a valuable picture of the natural world that your students can learn from.

Here’s a small local park I’m watching — if you come back to this page week after week you’ll see the annual picture begin to develop as more and more species arrive this spring:

If you and your students get really ambitious you can even add pictures and sounds to your eBird records.

[Mimus polyglottos]
Northern Mockingbird at Riverfront Park, Fitchburg, Mass. (Image: eBird database.)

What nature notes have you taken in your homeschool lately?

❡ Books in the running brooks: Our recommended River Houses reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your homeschool well. Many other similar guides are also available — find one that is a good fit for your family and take it with you on all your outings, whether far afield or just to the backyard.