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🔔 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Sounds): Ring Out, Wild Bells!

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One of the most famous New Year poems in the English language is Alfred Tennyson’s “Ring Out, Wild Bells” (1850). What was the inspiration for that poem? It was something like this traditional New Year’s bell-ringing at Eckington Church in Derbyshire, England, shown here in a fine five-minute documentary you can share with your students tonight:

In this traditional New Year’s performance, the ringers start by ringing out the old year right up to midnight, and then they all stop as a single bell rings the twelve o’clock hour — and then all the bells begin again, more joyously, ringing in the New Year.

This performance is an example of “full-circle” ringing, with the bells turning through a complete 360º arc from upside-down on one side, to upside-down on the other. This makes it easier to control the full set or “ring” of bells as though it were a single instrument played by eight people.

Tennyson’s “Ring Out, Wild Bells” took this English tradition of church-bell ringing on New Year’s Eve and, through language, converted it into both an earthly wish for better times and also a Christian wish for the heavenly kingdom that will do away with all suffering. Tennyson was one of the greatest poets of the nineteenth century, and this finely crafted piece (eight syllables per line) is one of his best known and most accessible works — a great one to read and analyze with your students:

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
  The flying cloud, the frosty light:
  The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
  Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
  The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
  For those that here we see no more;
  Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
  And ancient forms of party strife;
  Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
  The faithless coldness of the times;
  Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
  The civic slander and the spite;
  Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
  Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
  Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
  The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
  Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Here’s wishing you and your family a peaceful, prosperous, healthy, and happy homeschool new year. 😊

❡ Ring out the thousand wars of old: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life.

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Tennyson) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole school year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 30 December 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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Louisiana, and our COUNTRIES are Guinea 🇬🇳, Guinea-Bissau 🇬🇼, Guyana 🇬🇾, and Haiti 🇭🇹. (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 — an increasingly good time for stargazing! Track the moon’s phases each month at timeanddate.com, and dial up this week’s constellations with your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 30 December) — Today is the 364th day of 2018; there is only one day 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 the birthday of the Indian-English author and Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).

MONDAY (31 December) — It’s New Year’s Eve! Ring Out, Wild Bells! ⬩ It’s also the birthday of the great French artist Henri Matisse (1869–1954).

TUESDAY (1 January 2019!) — HAPPY NEW YEAR! 🎉 The Julian Calendar came into effect on this day in the year 45 BC. It was the principal calendar system used in the Western world for more than 1500 years (before it was largely replaced by the Gregorian Calendar). ⬩ Today is the birthday of Betsy Ross (1752–1836), who, tradition says, sewed the first American flag. 🇺🇸 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for first week of January is Ralph Waldo Emerson’s frosty “Snow-Storm.” Print your own River Houses poetry calendar at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us throughout the year.

WEDNESDAY (2 January) — On this day in 1860, French mathematician and astronomer Urbain Le Verrier announced the discovery of Vulcan, a planet orbiting the sun inside the orbit of Mercury. No subsequent research has been able to confirm the existence of this planet. ⬩ Perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps not, today is also the birthday of the great science fiction writer Isaac Asimov (1920–1992).

THURSDAY (3 January) — Today is the birthday of the great Roman writer and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC). ⬩ It’s also the birthday of English writer J.R.R. Tolkein (1892–1973), author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

FRIDAY (4 January) — Today is the birthday of French educator Louis Braille (1809–1852), the inventor of the famous tactile writing system for the blind. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of James Bond.

SATURDAY (5 January) — Today is the Twelfth Day of Christmas and the end of our Holiday Music Month, and you know what song we’ll be going out with. 🍐 🌳

SUNDAY (6 January) — Today is the birthday of the American poet Carl Sandburg (1878–1967).

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST, for the New Year, is commonly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but as Abraham Lincoln famously said, you can’t always believe what you read on the Internet. Nevertheless, whatever it’s source, it’s a fine sentiment and a fine toast as the calendar changes: “May you always be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and may each New Year find you a better man.”

❡ 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 The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Guinea-Bissau in western Africa is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Cacheu River, one of the longest rivers of Guinea-Bissau. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Cacheu River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

Cacheu River near São Vicente, Guinea-Bissau. (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 691–693), 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 and in the grand new year? 😊

🇺🇸 🌎 SUNDAY STATES: Louisiana, Guinea, Haiti, 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 family 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Louisiana State Quarter
    LOUISIANA (the 18th state, 30 April 1812) — The Pelican State. Capital: Baton Rouge. Louisiana can be found on page 573 in your almanac and on plates 40 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Part of territory called Louisiana by René-Robert Cavelier Sieur de La Salle for French King Louis XIV” (almanac page 423). State bird: Brown Pelican (bird guide page 256). Website: louisiana.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your family reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. 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 your little lesson is done. 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 unit study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress.

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

  • 🇬🇳 GUINEA on the west coast of Africa. Population: 12,413,867. Capital: Conakry. Website: gouvernement.gov.gn (in French).
  • 🇬🇼 GUINEA-BISSAU on the west coast of Africa. Population: 1,792,338. Capital: Bissau. Website: state.gov/p/af/ci/pu (U.S. State Department page, in English).
  • 🇬🇾 GUYANA in northern South America. Population: 737,718. Capital: Georgetown. Website: parliament.gov.gy (in English).
  • 🇭🇹 HAITI in the West Indies. Population: 10,646,714. Capital: Port-au-Prince. Website: primature.gouv.ht (in French).

These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

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

❡ 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 way or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their critical reading and thinking skills.

❡ Plan an imaginary vacation: Here’s a fun exercise for your students: take one of the countries that we list each week and write out a family travel plan. How would you get there? How much will it cost? Where will you stay? Will you have to exchange your currency? How do you say hello the local language? What cities and attractions and landmarks will you visit? What foods will you eat? How will you get around (car, train, boat, mule)? Make a simple worksheet with blank spaces for the answers, have your students do the research, and start planning your world tour. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 😊

🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Sussex Mummers Carol

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You’ve probably had a busy week. Ready to wind down? There’s no better way than with Percy Grainger’s beautiful piano arrangement of this old English carol:

December is Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of our seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a variety of educational notes that will help you teach little homeschool lessons all along the way.

The Australian-born British and American composer Percy Grainger (1882–1961) was a key figure in the folk-music revival movement in the early 20th century, and he produced modern professional arrangements of many traditional melodies that folklorists had collected all through the British Isles. This piano composition is based on a folk carol known to have been sung in the county of Sussex at least as far back as the early 1800s, and probably much earlier.

Granger’s refined and peaceful arrangement is rather far removed from the original setting in which a carol like this would have been performed. All across Europe there are a great variety of carnival-like Christmas and New Year traditions that stretch back into the Middle Ages and beyond, and one of these is the British tradition of “Mummery.” In many villages around the New Year it was customary for the townsfolk to dress up in harlequin-like costumes and go from door to door acting out traditional pantomimes and begging for money and food. These troops of “Mummers” — a bit like rowdy Christmas trick-or-treaters — would sing carols and other songs to inspire generosity on the part of their hosts.

Here’s a grand and slightly irregular (i.e., realistic) performance of the original Sussex Mummer’s Carol by a winter festival group called the California Revels — it offers a glimpse of how such a performance might have once looked in the wild:

You can perhaps see why we at the River Houses have a special fondness for the lyrics:

God bless the master of this house
   With happiness beside;
Where e’re his body rides or walks,
   His God must be his guide,
   His God must be his guide.

God bless the mistress of this house
   With gold chain round her breast;
Where e’re her body sleeps or wakes,
   Lord, send her soul to rest,
   Lord, send her soul to rest.

God bless your house, your children too,
   Your cattle and your store;
The Lord increase you day by day
   And send you more and more,
   And send you more and more.

What artistic creations and musical discoveries are you making in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds this month, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music station in New York City. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on almost all day. Won’t you join me? 😊 🎶 🎄

🦆 NATURE NOTES: If You Don’t Look, You Won’t See

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It was raining all day today in the Nashua River valley and it was close to freezing so the streets and sidewalks were icy. I almost didn’t go for my daily bird-count at the local park, but by 3:30 the rain had tapered off a bit and I headed out. And I’m glad I did, because if I had stayed in I wouldn’t have had the pleasure of seeing a pair of Hooded Mergansers, one of the most spectacular birds in North America. I only had a pocket camera with me, but it was enough to get a recognizable documentary photo:

It’s an old adage of research that if you don’t look, you won’t see. In science or scholarship of any kind, if we know in advance what we’ll find, then we’re not really investigating. One of the pleasures of natural history as a basic subject is that you never know what you’re going to discover. But you won’t discover anything unless you go out and look — even if it’s cold and raining — and that’s an important little lesson for your students.

Adult male Hooded Merganser. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Hooded Mergansers (Lophodytes cucullatus) are small fresh-water diving ducks with serrated bills that help them catch fish and other aquatic prey. They occur over most of North America in lakes, ponds, and rivers, but they tend to be somewhat reclusive and usually avoid populated areas. You’ll find them on page 46 in your recommended River Houses bird guide (riverhouses.org/books). The adult males are boldly pattered and have a striking black and white crest that, when raised, makes their heads look almost completely circular. The two birds I saw were both adult males, and even in my distant pocket-camera photo you can clearly see their mostly folded crests as well as their striking golden eyes.

So even if it’s raining, or snowing, or hot, or windy — go out and look. If you don’t, there may be wonderful things that you’ll never see.

What natural discoveries have you made in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Homeschool birds: We think bird study is one of the best subjects you can take up in a homeschool environment. It’s suitable for all ages, it can be made as elementary or as advanced as you wish, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations on the free eBird website (eBird.org) sponsored by Cornell University. It’s a great way to learn more about what’s in your local area and about how bird populations change from season to season. 🐦

🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Shepherd’s Carol

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One last carol for Christmas night. 😊 Not all great carols of the Christmas season are old and traditional. Some are new, and one of the greatest new carols, written in 2001, is “The Shepherd’s Carol” by British composer and choir-master Bob Chilcott (b. 1955), with words from Australian poet Clive Sansom (1910–1981):

December is Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of our seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a variety of educational notes that will help you teach little homeschool lessons all along the way.

This performance of “The Shepherd’s Carol” is from the choir of King’s College at Cambridge University in England, one of the world’s most famous choirs, and a group that Chilcott himself sang in as a boy and as a university student. Sansom’s words tell the Christian Nativity story from the point of view of the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night:

We stood on the hills, Lady,
Our day’s work done,
Watching the frosted meadows
That winter had won.

The evening was calm, Lady,
The air so still,
Silence more lovely than music
Folded the hill.

There was a star, Lady,
Shone in the night,
Larger than Venus it was
And bright, so bright.

Oh, a voice from the sky, Lady,
It seemed to us then
Telling of God being born
In the world of men.

And so we have come, Lady,
Our day’s work done,
Our love, our hopes, ourselves,
We give to your son.

Here’s hoping you and your family have had a wonderful and joyous Christmas. 😊

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds this month, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music station in New York. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on almost all day. Won’t you join me? 🎵 🎄

❄️ “IT WAS a short, cold Christmas”

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Not everyone gets to spend Christmas Day sitting around a cozy fire with family and friends. On this holiday, why not invite your students to remember all the hard working people who might like to be at home and warm, but who are instead out keeping our world running — police officers, fire fighters, hospital workers, snow plow drivers, and many others, including sailors at sea.

Herman Melville reminds us in Moby-Dick (1851) that somewhere in the world, even on Christmas Day, ships are leaving port and heading out onto the freezing ocean:

At last the anchor was up, the sails were set, and off we glided. It was a short, cold Christmas; and as the short northern day merged into night, we found ourselves almost broad upon the wintry ocean, whose freezing spray cased us in ice, as in polished armor. The long rows of teeth on the bulwarks glistened in the moonlight; and like the white ivory tusks of some huge elephant, vast curving icicles depended from the bows.

Lank Bildad, as pilot, headed the first watch, and ever and anon, as the old craft deep dived into the green seas, and sent the shivering frost all over her, and the winds howled, and the cordage rang, his steady notes were heard, —

Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood,
Stand dressed in living green.
So to the Jews old Canaan stood,
While Jordan rolled between.

Never did those sweet words sound more sweetly to me than then. They were full of hope and fruition. Spite of this frigid winter night in the boisterous Atlantic, spite of my wet feet and wetter jacket, there was yet, it then seemed to me, many a pleasant haven in store; and meads and glades so eternally vernal, that the grass shot up by the spring, untrodden, unwilted, remains at midsummer.

Can you hear Bildad’s “steady notes” through the howling wind? Most of Melville’s contemporaries would have been able to as they read along: Bildad was singing the great hymn tune “Jordan” by the early American composer William Billings (1746–1800), written to accompany the verses of Isaac Watts (1674–1748):

Melville’s fictional account is full of foreshadowing that hints at the ultimate fate of the novel’s characters. But today we can read it as a straightforward reminder that even on Christmas, there are people out working in the ice and snow.

The Pequod at sea. (Image: Barry Moser via Pinterest.)

So here’s a little homeschool lesson for today, to furnish your students’ minds with a nugget of knowledge to reflect upon: “You know in Herman Melville’s famous sailing adventure Moby-Dick — a story you’ll read some day — the ship sets sail on Christmas Day. Even today, on Christmas, somewhere in the world there are sailors going to sea.”

What holiday traditions are you observing in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Looking in the lexicon: Today’s little extract has some good vocabulary that your students can look up in your family dictionary (riverhouses.org/books): bulwarks, lank, cordage, fruition, boisterous, meads — wonderful words, every one. And what about “So to the Jews old Canaan stood, / While Jordan rolled between”? That’s from the Book of Deuteronomy in the Hebrew Bible — your dictionary will identify those proper names as well, and your atlas will help you locate the storied River Jordan in the Middle East.

🎅 ’TWAS the Night Before Christmas

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Merry Christmas to all! Is this the most popular poem in the world? Some people think so. (It’s our homeschool poem-of-the-week, so that’s means something.) Why not make an annual reading of it a tradition in your homeschool (if it isn’t already) — you can join millions of others who read it every year all around the world.

A Visit from St. Nicholas

Clement Clarke Moore

’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds;
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;

And mamma in her ’kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow,
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below,
When what to my wondering eyes did appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny rein-deer,
With a little old driver so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment he must be St. Nick.

More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:
“Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on, Cupid! on, Donner and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!”

As leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky;
So up to the housetop the coursers they flew
With the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too —
And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a pedler just opening his pack.

His eyes, how they twinkled! his dimples, how merry!
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow;
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath;

He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread;

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose;
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle.

But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight —
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night!”

Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863) was a professor of ancient languages and divinity at the Protestant Episcopal seminary in New York City. (Probably not what you expected, huh?) He wrote “A Visit from Saint Nicholas” for his own children, little expecting that it would become a national and now an international favorite. It was first published anonymously in the local newspaper of Troy, New York, in 1823, and it has since gone on to become a Christmas standard, responsible in many ways for our modern conception of who “Santa Claus” is. 🎅

Readings and performances of “A Visit from St. Nicholas” take place all around the world every December. Here’s a wonderful version from the grand old singer Perry Como:

In Washington, the Librarian of Congress — first James Billington and now Carla Hayden — has given a public reading of the poem in the Library’s Great Hall nearly every year for the last two decades.

“Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden reads ‘A Visit from St. Nicholas’ at the Library’s holiday celebration on December 13, 2017, in the Great Hall. (Image: Library of Congress.)

Maybe the librarian of your little home academy will also be giving an annual reading, this year and for many years to come. 😊

❡ Not a creature was stirring: If a special line or turn of phrase happens to strike you in one of our weekly poems, just copy it onto your homeschool bulletin board for a few days and invite your students to speak it aloud — that’s all it takes to begin a new poetical friendship and learn a few lovely words that will stay with you for life.

❡ Little literary lessons: It’s Christmas Eve and this is just a poem to have fun with today, so there’s really no need to point out that it’s a lovely example of anapestic tetrameter, is there? 😊 And look at that magnificent simile in stanza five: “As leaves that before the wild hurricane … So … the coursers they flew.” It’s so natural and extended you could almost call it a Homeric simile — if you wanted to be technical, that is. 😊

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!

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Out of a deep concern for your children’s education this month, I certainly hope you will introduce them to one of the most profound pieces of seasonal music ever written, to wit, Walt Kelly’s “Deck Us All With Boston Charlie”:

December is Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’re sharing an assortment of our seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a variety of educational notes that will help you teach little lessons all along the way. In case you haven’t guessed, this post falls into the “silly” category.

Walt Kelly (1913–1973) was the creator of the long-running and much-loved “Pogo” comic stip. (“We have met the enemy, and he is us!”) And he was quite a poet, as “Deck Us All” will attest:

Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!

Don’t we know archaic barrel
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don’t love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Polly wolly cracker ’n’ too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol,
Antelope Cantaloupe, ’lope with you!

Hunky Dory’s pop is lolly,
Gaggin’ on the wagon, Willy, folly go through!
Chollie’s collie barks at Barrow,
Harum scarum five alarm bung-a-loo!

Dunk us all in bowls of barley,
Hinky dinky dink an’ polly voo!
Chilly Filly’s name is Chollie,
Chollie Filly’s jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly,
Double-bubble, toyland trouble! Woof, woof, woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie!
Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble! Goof, goof, goof!

This is one of the very best sing-a-long songs of the holiday season. For classroom credit in music this week (yeah, that’s the ticket!), why not have your students learn a verse or two and then entertain the whole family. Woof, woof, woof! 🎅

What artistic creations and musical discoveries are you making in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Musical memories: If you’d like to fill your homeschool with some beautiful background sounds this month, why not tune in to the 24-hour Holiday Channel from WQXR, the famous classical music station in New York. “Enjoy the sounds of orchestras, choirs, brass ensembles and more as we celebrate the sacred and secular sounds of the season.” I have it on almost all day. Won’t you join me? 🎄

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 23 December 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! Print your own River Houses calendar for the year at riverhouses.org/calendars.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Ohio, and our COUNTRIES are Ghana 🇬🇭, Greece 🇬🇷, Grenada 🇬🇩, and Guatemala 🇬🇹. (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 good time for moon watching! Track the moon’s phases each month at timeanddate.com, and dial up this week’s constellations with your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 23 December) — Today is the 357th day of 2018; there are only eight 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). ⬩ On this day in 1783, George Washington, the American Cincinnatus, surrendered his sword to Congress and resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army.

MONDAY (24 December) — It’s Christmas Eve! 🎅 On this day in 1968, fifty years ago, Apollo 8 entered orbit around the moon, and its crew of three — Frank Borman, James Lovell, and William Anders — became the first humans ever to see the earth rise over another world.

TUESDAY (25 December) — Merry Christmas to all friends of the River Houses! 🎄 Isaac Newton was born on this day in 1642. 🇺🇸 And on this night in 1776, George Washington led the cold and demoralized soldiers of the Continental Army across the freezing Delaware River to secure a decisive victory over Britain’s Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Trenton.

WEDNESDAY (26 December) — Today is Boxing Day in many Commonwealth countries 🎁, and St. Stephen’s Day in many others, and Wren Day in Ireland. ⬩ It’s also the birthday of the English inventor and polymath Charles Babbage (1791–1871), whose “difference engine” is widely regarded as the first mechanical computer.

THURSDAY (27 December) — Today is the birthday of two of history’s great scientists: the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571–1630), and the French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822–1895).

FRIDAY (28 December) — On this day in 1895, the German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen reported the discovery of a new type of radiation never before encountered. Today we call Röntgen’s new radiation X-rays.

SATURDAY (29 December) — On this day in the year 1170, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II. ⬩ And on this day in 1890, soldiers of the 7th U.S. Cavalry massacred 300 Lakota men, women, and children at Wounded Knee Creek, South Dakota.

SUNDAY (30 December) — Today is the birthday of Indian-English author and Nobel laureate Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST, for Christmas: “Here’s to friends we’ve yet to meet, / Here’s to those here: all here I greet; / Here’s to childhood, youth, old age, / Here’s to prophet, bard, and sage, / Here’s to your health — may all be bright / On this so special Christmas night.”

❡ 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 set of toasts are mostly taken from an old anthology called The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (London, 1816). What will you toast this week?

🌎 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Guatemala is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Suchiate River, which forms part of the border between Guatemala and Mexico. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Suchiate River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Suchiate River on the border between Guatemala and Mexico. (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 your homeschool this week? 😊

🇺🇸 🌎 SUNDAY STATES: Ohio, Ghana, Guatemala, 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 family 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Ohio State Quarter
    OHIO (the 17th state, 1 March 1803) — The Buckeye State. Capital: Columbus. Ohio can be found on page 583 in your almanac and on plates 41 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Iroquois word for ‘fine or good river’” (almanac page 423). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: ohio.gov.

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with the state-of-the-week, using your family reference library (riverhouses.org/books) as a starting point. Find the location of the state capital in your atlas each week. 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 your little lesson is done. 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 unit study of one or more of the U.S. states, be sure to investigate the primary source materials for teachers available from the Library of Congress. And anything you and your students want to know about state flags, seals, mottos, birds, and much more, can be found at the helpful State Symbols USA website.

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

  • 🇬🇭 GHANA in southwestern Africa. Population: 27,499,924. Capital: Accra. Website: ghana.gov.gh (in English).
  • 🇬🇷 GREECE in southeastern Europe. Population: 10,768,477. Capital: Athens. Website: primeminister.gov.gr (in Greek and English).
  • 🇬🇩 GRENADA in the West Indies. Population: 111,724. Capital: St. George’s. Website: www.gov.gd (in English).
  • 🇬🇹 GUATEMALA in Central America. Population: 15,460,732. Capital: Guatemala City. Website: www.guatemala.gob.gt (in Spanish).

These countries all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well (riverhouses.org/books). The almanac, for example, has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 745–852; the endpapers of the atlas are index maps that will show you where each of the individual national and regional maps can be found; the history encyclopedia includes individual national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes.

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

❡ 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 way or another, thus offering older students a good opportunity to practice their critical reading and thinking skills.

❡ Plan an imaginary vacation: Here’s a fun exercise for your students: take one of the countries that we list each week and write out a family travel plan. How would you get there? How much will it cost? Where will you stay? Will you have to exchange your currency? How do you say hello the local language? What cities and attractions and landmarks will you visit? What foods will you eat? How will you get around (car, train, boat, mule)? Make a simple worksheet with blank spaces for the answers, have your students do the research, and start planning your world tour. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 😊

🌕 RESEARCH PROJECTS for Homeschool Students – December 2018

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Tonight is the night of the full moon, and that means it’s time for a report from the River Houses Lunar Society.

The Lunar Society is one of our big and wonderful long-term plans to encourage homeschoolers to participate in real online research projects and share their results with other homeschool families. Here’s an outline of the idea, along with a list of some of the great projects that homeschool students (and their parents) can join and contribute to, from history to geography to physics to natural history to mathematics to meteorology to literature to galactic exploration:

Browse through that project list and find one that would be a good fit for your family. Before you know it, your students will be learning a host of valuable skills and your little home academy will be on its way to becoming an international research powerhouse. 🔬 🔭 🖥 🦋 🔍 ⚗️ ⛏ 📖 🌲 😊

Over time, it’s my hope that these monthly reports about the Lunar Society will become something like a forum where homeschoolers participating in online research can share their achievements. As a simple example, here’s my own personal report for the past month on two of the projects I participate in, eBird and SETI@Home:

On the eBird site (eBird.org), sponsored by Cornell University, I’ve been mainly tracking the birds in a small riverside park near me (eBird hotspot L6926932), and since our last Lunar Society report I’ve added 27 new checklists (daily observation reports), bringing my eBird total to 335. When all the checklists are combined you can really see the seasonal distribution and migration chart for the year develop.

You can start keeping a similar list for a location near you — your backyard, or a local park or other natural area. (Helping to track a local park or eBird “hotspot” will let you generate more interesting results.) You can even add photos and sound recordings to your reports if you wish. Just pay a visit to the eBird website (ebird.org) and start exploring.

The SETI@Home project (setiathome.ssl.berkeley.edu), sponsored by the University of California, uses idle time on your computer to perform complex calculations on radio telescope data, looking for extraterrestrial signals. (Really!) I’ve been participating in this project with my computers for a long time and I recently created a River Houses team page for future development. Once your computer is signed up to participate, you can print “certificates of computation” that shows how much data you’ve individually analyzed and how much your team has analyzed.

The River Houses team (of which I’m the only current member) is up to 5834 “cobblestones” (units) of contributed computation for SETI@Home so far. You can participate and get a regular certificate of your own — it’s just the thing for your homeschool bulletin board. 😊

And here’s another level of skill development for your high-school (or even advanced middle-school) students: once you have a few weeks or months of data, you can start graphing your contributions. Using Google Sheets, I’m setting up a simple interactive chart of the current SETI contributions for the River Houses team. It’s just a test at the moment — something that we can refine, develop, and expand in the future.

The Internet provides exceptional opportunities for homeschool students to participate in real research projects like these in a variety of scientific and scholarly fields, something that would have been impossible only a few years ago. Pay a visit to our Lunar Society page to see many more projects your family can join.

What scholarly and scientific discoveries have you made in your homeschool this month? 😊

❡ Calling all photographers: If you’ve got a budding photographer in your homeschool, one group project you can participate in is the Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge. A different theme is chosen each month; just sign up and follow the instructions to submit your own entries. Once you’re a registered participant you can also vote for each month’s winners. 😊 📸

❡ Books in the running brooks: If you decide to participate in eBird, our recommended homeschool reference library (riverhouses.org/books) includes an excellent bird guide that would serve your family well. And for any astronomical projects you may join, our recommended star atlas will help you orient yourself to the objects you are studying in the starry vault above. 🦉

❄️ THE DECEMBER SOLSTICE is Here!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

🖋 WONDERFUL WORDS: In the Bleak Midwinter

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It’s rare for a poem written by one author to be successfully set to music at a later date by an unrelated composer, but that was happily the case with our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the third week of December, “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), beautifully converted into one of the most lovely religious carols of the season by English composer Gustav Holst (1874–1934). Here it is performed by the choir and congregation of Gloucester Cathedral:

Tomorrow is the winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere — the official astronomical beginning of the season of winter. But because the solstice is the shortest day of the year, it’s also traditionally called “midwinter”: the day of the least light and the greatest darkness. (Send your students to your family dictionary to confirm this special meaning.) In your homeschool this midwinter week, why not spend a few minutes introducing your students to Rossetti’s poem, which tells the Christian Nativity story, and to Holst’s magnificent musical setting.

[Christina Rossetti]
Christina Rossetti (1830–1894), by her brother, the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

Holst’s music has been arranged for many different combinations of singers and instruments. Here’s an appropriately frosty instrumental performance of “In the Bleak Midwinter” by Norwegian trumpet virtuosa Tine Thing Helseth (pronounced Tina Ting Helsett) and her accompanists Elise Båtnes on violin and Birgitte Volan Håvik on harp:

See if you can follow along in Rossetti’s text and figure out how to sing it with that musical accompaniment:

In the Bleak Midwinter

Christina Rossetti

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,
A breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;
Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,
The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;
But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,
Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

What musico-literary traditions will you be observing in your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Explore more: The Poetry Foundation’s website (poetryfoundation.org) includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Christina Rossetti) that are suitable for high school students and homeschool teachers.

❡ Here, said the year: This post is one of our regular homeschool poems-of-the-week. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar for the whole year at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us as we visit forty-eight of our favorite friends.

☄️ 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. 😊