Archives for November 2021

📖 🦦 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Gets a Visit From Horace the Otter

29 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Today is the birthday of the American writer Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), author of the enduringly popular young-adult novel Little Women (1868). If you have Alcott fans in your homeschool, they should know that they are not alone. Our River Houses mascot, Horace the Otter, is also an Alcott fan and has paid his respects at the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts, where Louisa and her famous literary family are buried.

Our mascot, Horace the River Otter, visits the grave of Louisa May Alcott in Concord, Massachusetts.

Old cemeteries are wonderful places to explore and learn about history and culture. The Find-A-Grave website (findagrave.com) will help you locate the final resting places of all kinds of notable people — writers, artists, scientists, politicians — as well as millions of other regular folks all around the world. If your students have a favorite historical figure that they like to read about, why not look that person up on Find-A-Grave and add some additional historical perspective to their understanding.

What literary anniversaries did you mark in your homeschool this past Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Stay up to date: This is one of our occasional Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries posts. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 28 November 2021

28 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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. Add your name to our free mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox each week. Visit our River Houses calendar page to print your own homeschool calendars and planners for the entire year.

🗓 🗡 ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses, begins this Wednesday! (And that means this is going to be a busy posting week!)

🎵 🎄 🎅 DECEMBER is also Holiday Music Month in the River Houses, and throughout the month we’ll be sharing an assortment of seasonal favorites — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — along with a collection of easy educational notes that will help you teach little musical lessons all along the way. Watch for them starting Wednesday!

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is Rhode Island, and our COUNTRIES are Dominica 🇩🇲, the Dominican Republic 🇩🇴, Ecuador 🇪🇨, and Egypt 🇪🇬. (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 — a good time for stargazing! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (28 November 2021) — Today is the 332nd day of 2021; there are 33 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 Today is (probably) the birthday of the Puritan preacher and sometime prisoner John Bunyan (1628–1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the second most widely printed book in history (after the Bible). 🚶 Today is also the birthday of the great English mystical poet William Blake (1757–1827). 🐯 On this day in 1972, the first successful arcade video game, Pong, was released. (Does anyone remember arcade games?) 🏓 And, the annual Jewish festival of Hanukkah, commemorating the rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 165 B.C., begins tonight at sundown. 🕎

Monday (29 November 2021) — Today is the birthday of the American novelist Louisa May Alcott (1832–1888), author of Little Women and Little Men. 👧 👦

Tuesday (30 November 2021) — Today is the birthday of another American novelist, Samuel Langhorne Clemens, better known as Mark Twain (1835–1910). 🐸 It’s also the birthday of British statesman and Nobel laureate Winston Churchill (1874–1965). 🇬🇧 And on this day in 1954, a meteorite smashed through the roof of a house in Sylacauga, Alabama, and struck a woman named Ann Hodges, who was taking a nap. The Sylacauga meteorite, as it is now called, is the only known meteorite in the Western Hemisphere ever to have struck a person. (Hodges was bruised, but sustained no permanent injuries.) 🌠 🤕

🗓 🗡 Orion Term 2021–2022 Begins

Wednesday (1 December 2021) — Today is the first day of ORION TERM, our winter term in the River Houses, named for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. 🗡 And December in the River Houses is Holiday Music Month! Keep your eyes and ears open for many musical delights throughout the month. 🎵 🎄 🎅 On this day in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights activist Rosa Parks (1913–2005) was arrested for refusing to give up her bus seat to a white man, an event that led to the Montgomery bus boycott and the growth of the American civil rights movement. 🚌 Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the first week of December is “R.L.S.,” a gem-like homage to Robert Louis Stevenson written by A.E. Housman (1859–1936), for all homeschool hunters, literary and celestial. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🗡 And our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador. 🇪🇨

Thursday (2 December 2021) — The Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, the oldest Jewish synagogue building in the United States, was dedicated on this day in 1763. 🕍

Friday (3 December 2021) — Today is the birthday of Gilbert Stuart (1755–1828), the famous portrait-painter of early America. 🎨 It’s also the birthday of Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad (1857–1924), author of The Heart of Darkness and other staples of English literature courses worldwide. 🖋 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will introduce you to the maritime Skuas, Jaegers, Auks, Murres, and Puffins! Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (4 December 2021) — Today is the birthday of Scottish historian and essayist Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881), one of the most prominent writers of the Victorian era. 🖋 And since this is the first Saturday of the month, we’ll post our regular monthly preview today of some of the astronomical events you and your students can watch for over the next few weeks. 🔭

Sunday (5 December 2021) — On this day in 1775, in one of the great engineering feats of the American Revolution, Henry Knox began transporting sixty tons of artillery captured from the British at Fort Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain all the way to Boston, a wagon journey of 300 miles through snow-filled forests and over frozen swamps and rivers. ⚔️ Today is also the birthday of the American journalist and political theorist Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968). 🇺🇸 And it’s also the birthday of the great German physicist and Nobel laureate Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976), the father of quantum mechanics. ⚛️

🥂 🗡 OUR TOAST THIS WEEK is our traditional offering for the beginning of Orion Term and for the Great Hunter of the Heavens. The host says: “Not the laurel, but the race.” And the guests respond: “Not the quarry, but the chase.”

❡ 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 unpredictability in toasting!”). What will you toast in your homeschool this week? 🥂

🌎 🇪🇨 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Ecuador in western South America is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Mache River, which flows into the Cojimies Estuary on Ecuador’s northwest coast. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Mache River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

❡ Children of Ocean: 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 699–701), and make it a project to look them all up in your atlas, or in a handy encyclopedia either online or on a weekly visit to your local library. A whole world of geographical learning awaits you. 🌎

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? 😊

❡ Lively springs: This is one of our regular “Quick Freshes” posts looking at the homeschool week ahead. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list and get these weekly messages delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. You can also print your own River Houses calendars of educational events and follow along with us. 🗓

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Rhode Island, Dominica, Egypt, and More

28 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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 our recommended homeschool reference library includes a current world almanac, a world atlas, and a history encyclopedia that make these reviews fun and easy. Our own annual review begins at the start of the River Houses year in September and goes through the states in the traditional order of admission to the Union (almanac page 458), so this week’s state is:

🇺🇸
Rhode Island State Seal
RHODE ISLAND (the 13th state, 29 May 1790) — The Ocean State. Capital: Providence. Rhode Island can be found on page 591 in your almanac and on plates 44 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “Origin unknown. One theory notes that Giovanni de Verrazano recorded observing an island about the size of the Greek island of Rhodes in 1524. Another theory is that Dutch explorer Adriaen Block named the state Roode Eylandt for its red clay” (almanac page 459). State bird: Rhode Island Red Hen. Website: www.ri.gov.

Rhode Island’s state bird is one of the few you won’t find in your bird guide because it’s a domestic species, not a wild one. All the varieties of domestic chickens are descendants of the Red Junglefowl of southern Asia, a member of the Phasianidae, which also includes the pheasants and turkeys (bird guide page 58). 🐔

❡ Little lessons: You can teach a hundred little lessons with our state-of-the-week posts, using your reference library 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 just 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 wealth of new geographical and historical information, as well as a host of valuable reading and research skills. 🔍

❡ Maps to color: National Geographic has a large blank United States map and a blank world map, complete with flags, printable in sections and ready to receive the colored pencils of your students. Why not give them a try this week. 🖍

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇩🇲 DOMINICA in the West Indies. Population: 74,243. Capital: Roseau. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: dominica.gov.dm (in English).
🇩🇴 THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC in the West Indies. Population: 10,499,707. Capital: Santo Domingo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: presidencia.gob.do (in Spanish).
🇪🇨 ECUADOR in northwestern South America. Population: 16,904,867. Capital: Quito. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.presidencia.gob.ec (in Spanish).
🇪🇬 EGYPT in northeastern Africa. Population: 104,124,440. Capital: Cairo. Government: Presidential republic. Website: egypt.gov.eg (in Arabic and English).

These all appear in your current almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia as well. The almanac, for example, has profiles of the nations of the world on pages 752–859; 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 grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) did you make in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ 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 exercise their critical reading and thinking skills. 🔍

❡ Come, here’s the map: Teaching your students to be fluent with high-quality maps — not just basically competent, but fluent — is one of the best educational gifts you can give them. Why not look up any one of our selected states or countries each week in your recommended homeschool atlas and show your students how to locate rivers, lakes, marshes, water depths, mountains and their elevations, highway numbers, airports, oil fields, railroads, ruins, battle sites, small towns, big cities, regional capitals, national capitals, parks, deserts, glaciers, borders, grid references, lines of longitude and latitude, and much more. There is so much information packed into professional maps of this kind that a magnifying glass is always helpful, even for young folks with good eyesight. The endpapers of the atlas and the technical map-reading information on Plate 2 (10th and 11th eds.) will guide you in your voyages of discovery. 🗺

❡ 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? Will you need a passport? 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 🐎 😊

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Sunday States & Countries posts. Print your own River Houses States & Countries Calendar and follow along with us as we take an educational tour of the United States and the whole world over the course of the homeschool year. And don’t forget to add your name to our free mailing list to get more great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox every week. 🇺🇸 🌎

🦅 FRIDAY BIRD FAMILIES: Sandpipers (Part II)

26 November 2021 by Horace the Otter 🦦

Every Friday we invite you and your homeschool students to learn about a different group of North American birds in your recommended bird guide. It’s a great way to add a few minutes of informal science, geography, natural history, and imagination to your homeschool schedule throughout the year.

This week’s birds are (once again) the Sandpipers (pages 124–161). Usually we cover one or two different families each week, but we’re spreading the Sandpipers out over two weeks because there are so many of them: about 94 species around the world and 66 in North America.

If you’re teaching younger children, the way to use these posts is just to treat your bird guide as a picture book and spend a few minutes each week looking at all the interesting birds they may see one day. With that, your little lesson is done.

If you have older students, one of your objectives should be to help them become fluent with a technical reference book that’s packed with information, the kind of book they will encounter in many different fields of study. Here again is how your bird guide introduces this week’s birds:

SANDPIPERS — Family Scolopacidae. The majority of these shorebirds have three distinct plumages. Most begin molting to winter plumage as they near or reach their winter grounds. Species: 94 World, 66 N.A. [North America]

Although some members of the Sandpiper family are large or strikingly patterned, like the Curlews and Turnstones we looked at last week, many more are small, inconspicuous, and difficult to distinguish from one another. (Difficult for us, that is. The birds themselves have no trouble telling each other apart.)

The small species collectively known as “Peeps” (page 134) are not much more than six inches long, and it takes a fair bit of experience to identify them, especially in the fall when their plumage is more dull-colored. As examples this week, why not compare the Least Sandpiper and the Semipalmated Sandpiper, both common across much of North America, but notoriously difficult to identify.

Biologists call species like these “sibling species.” The birds themselves likely use calls, or behavior, or habitat preference to identify their conspecifics — or in the case of these two species, a small detail like the color of the legs. (Did you notice?)

While many of the smaller members of the Sandpiper family are difficult to identify, there are a few that are unmistakable, such as the breeding-plumage Spotted Sandpiper (page 148), a small freshwater bird that lives along streams, rivers, lakes, and ponds all across the continent — and almost certainly somewhere near you.

Even after their breeding-plumage spots disappear in the late summer, Spotted Sandpipers are still easy to identify by their distinctive behavior: they bob their tails up and down almost constantly as they walk.

You can do little ten-minute lessons of this kind with any of the species in your bird guide that catch your interest. Pick one that lives near you, or that looks striking, or that has a strange name, and explore.

In all these Friday Bird Families posts, our aim is not to present a specific set of facts to memorize. We hope instead to provide examples and starting points that you and your students can branch away from in many different directions. We also hope to show how you can help your students develop the kind of careful skills in reading, observation, and interpretation that they will need in all their future academic work.

What ornithological observations and naturalistical notes have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ 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, it can be made solitary or social, and birds can be found just about anywhere at any season of the year. Why not track your own homeschool bird observations using the free eBird website 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. 🐦

❡ Vade mecum: The front matter in your bird guide (pages 6–13) explains a little bit about basic bird biology and about some of the technical terminology used throughout the book — why not have your students study it as a special project. Have them note particularly the diagrams showing the parts of a bird (pages 10–11) so they’ll be able to tell primaries from secondaries and flanks from lores. 🦉

❡ Words for birds: You may not think of your homeschool dictionary as a nature reference, but a comprehensive dictionary will define and explain many of the standard scientific terms you will encounter in biology and natural history, although it will not generally contain the proper names of species or other taxonomic groups that aren’t part of ordinary English. (In other words, you’ll find “flamingo” but not Phoenicopterus, the flamingo genus.) One of the most important things students should be taught to look for in the dictionary is the information on word origins: knowing the roots of scientific terms makes it much easier to understand them and remember their meaning. 📖

❡ Come, here’s the map: Natural history and geography are deeply interconnected. One of the first questions you should teach your students to ask about any kind of animal or plant is, “What is its range? Where (in the world) does it occur?” Our recommended homeschool reference library includes an excellent world atlas that will help your students appreciate many aspects of biogeography, the science of the geographical distribution of living things. 🌎

❡ Nature notes: This is one of our regular Friday Bird Families posts for homeschool naturalists. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow along with us! You can also add your name to our free weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🐦 🦉 🦆 🦃 🦅

🎵 🍽 HOMESCHOOL THANKSGIVING: We Gather Together

25 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Take just a few minutes this week to introduce your homeschool students to a beautiful piano performance of a four hundred year old Dutch tune that is now a Thanksgiving classic.

Like many seasonal songs, “We Gather Together” has a complex history. The music is based on a Dutch folk melody that was arranged and given verses by poet and composer Adriaen Valerius (1575–1625) to commemorate the Dutch victory in the Battle of Turnhout in 1597, an engagement in the long Dutch War of Independence (from Spain). The modified arrangement that is best known today is properly called Kremser, after Viennese musicologist Eduard Kremser (1838–1914) who built upon Valerius’ earlier work.

Because the tune is so beautiful it has drawn the attention of many verse-writers over the years. The most common lyrics used in the United States — “We gather together to ask the Lord’s blessing” — are those of American musicologist Theodore Baker (1851–1934). In the Netherlands, Valerius’ original Dutch verses “Wilt heden nu treden” are still commonly sung. And of course the tune by itself is now a Thanksgiving staple on radio stations and in shopping venues across the United States. Learning something about its history will enrich and deepen your students’ understanding of the musical world around them.

What musical memories have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Arts & Music and Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🦃

🌍 🇩🇰 WEEKLY WORLD HERITAGE: Kronborg Castle in Denmark

24 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Denmark in western Europe is one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week, so why not spend a few minutes today learning about one of Denmark’s World Heritage Sites: Kronborg Castle, the castle “Elsinore” of Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.

Kronborg Castle, like the ancient city of Troy, overlooks a narrow strait that is the main point of access to a vast inland sea. It is one of the most important strategic sites in northern Europe, and so provided an ideal setting for Shakespeare’s tale of royal intrigue, Hamlet, Prince of Denmark:

Kronborg Castle is located north of Elsinore on a strategically important site commanding the Sound (Øresund), a narrow stretch of water between Denmark and Sweden. From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, Kronborg Castle played a key role in the history of Northern Europe.

The Sound is the gateway to the Baltic Sea and from 1429 to 1857, Denmark controlled this passage thanks to Kronborg Castle, positioned at the narrowest part of the Sound, which is only four kilometres wide. Around 1.8 million ships passed through the Sound during this period and all of them had to pay a toll at Kronborg Castle. For this reason Kronborg Castle and its fortress became a symbol of Denmark’s power. The Sound toll was not just a source of income; it was also a political instrument. By favouring the shipping trade of selected nations or by allowing their navies free passage, Denmark was in a position to create important alliances. The control of the Sound was essential and it became an important issue in the motives and courses of several wars. For this reason Kronborg Castle was of great significance, not just for Denmark, but for all major seafaring nations.

In the 1420s, Eric of Pomerania built the first castle, the ”Krogen,” on this unique site. Remnants of the old walls can still be seen at the castle today. In 1574 King Frederik II began the construction of the outstanding Renaissance castle and the surrounding fortifications, which would eventually be known as Kronborg Castle. Following the disastrous fire of 1629 the castle was reconstructed almost exactly as it was before. The Chapel, which was the only building not to have been ravaged by the fire, has preserved its original altar, gallery, and pews, with fine carvings and painted panels.

The castle itself is a Renaissance building with four wings surrounding a spacious courtyard. The bright sandstone facades are characterized by horizontal bands and the front walls are balanced by towers and spires. The castle is extensively and richly decorated with sandstone ornaments in unique and imaginative designs. The Great Hall (the banqueting hall) is one of the most exquisite rooms from this time — and the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. Kronborg Castle is also world famous as the setting of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

Kronborg Castle was admired for its beauty as a castle and feared for its strength as a fortress. The castle was protected by tall ramparts and strong angular bastions. The overall impression of Kronborg Castle is closely associated with its architecture and location, which stress the castle’s symbolic, commercial, and strategic importance. (World Heritage Centre #696)

You can find a gallery of additional photos of Kronborg Castle on the World Heritage Centre’s website.

World Heritage Sites are cultural or natural landmarks of international significance, selected for recognition by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. More than 1000 such sites have been recognized in over 160 countries, and we feature one every Wednesday, drawn from one of our homeschool countries-of-the-week. You can find a complete list of World Heritage Sites online at the World Heritage Centre and in Wikipedia.

The World Heritage Centre also has a free and comprehensive World Heritage education kit for teachers, as well as a wonderful full-color wall map of World Heritage Sites, available for the cost of shipping. Why not add them both to your own homeschool library. 🗺

What world treasures have you been exploring in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Books in the running brooks: You can always turn to your River Houses almanac, atlas, and history encyclopedia for more information about any of our countries-of-the-week. The almanac has profiles of all the nations of the world on pages 752–859; the endpapers of the atlas are indexes that will show you where all of the individual national and regional maps may be found; the history encyclopedia includes national histories on pages 489–599; and you can find additional illustrations, flags, and other mentions through the indexes in each of these volumes. For an ideal little lesson, just write the name of the Weekly World Heritage Site on your homeschool bulletin board, find its location in your atlas, read the WHC’s brief description aloud, look at a picture or two, and you’re done. Over the course of the year, without even realizing it, your students will absorb a wealth of new historical, geographical, and cultural information. 🇩🇰

❡ The great globe itself: This is one of our regular Homeschool States & Countries posts featuring historical and natural sites of international importance. Download a copy of our River Houses World Heritage Calendar and follow along with us as we tour the planet, and add your name to our weekly mailing list to get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🌍

🎵 MUSICAL INTRODUCTIONS: Thomas Tallis, Master of Polyphony

23 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Take ten minutes this week for a lovely homeschool lesson in music history.

[Thomas Tallis historical marker] — Thomas Tallis “blue plaque” historical marker. (Image: The Dover Historian.)

If you’re looking for something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving week beyond the custom of family, friends, and turkey dinner, why not invite your students to give thanks for the life of Thomas Tallis, the grand master of early polyphonic music, who died on this November day in 1585. (He was born about 1505 on a date unknown.)

Poly-phonic music is the music of many voices. Unlike earlier styles of Western music such as Gregorian Chant, where all the singers follow the same vocal line, polyphonic music assigns different vocal lines to different singers — it’s composed of “two or more independent melodic parts sounded together,” as your River Houses dictionary says.

Here are three versions of Thomas Tallis’s ethereal two-minute polyphonic anthem “If Ye Love Me,” a religious work based on a text from the New Testament (John 14:15–17) in which Jesus tells his disciples: “If ye love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth.” In Tallis’ composition, note how the voices are aligned together at the beginning, and then move apart and circle around each other like dancers, and then come back again into perfect alignment at the end.

First, a version by the professional choral group The Cambridge Singers, with the musical score showing the four vocal lines (clicking in the lower right will open the video up to full screen and make it easier to follow along):

Second, a version by the group New York Polyphony (performing in Sweden) with the minimal complement of four singers, making it easy for students to understand how each person is following a different vocal line — and to see how amazing it is that such a complex sound can be made by just four people with no instruments:

Finally, a version of the piece sung in its “natural habitat” by a full choir, at a 2010 ecumenical service in Westminster Abbey in London, featuring Pope Benedict XVI and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams:

So during this Thanksgiving week, why not turn up the volume on Thomas Tallis for your students and invite them to be thankful that we live in a world that has had such people in it.

What musical discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Little lessons: A hundred little educational lessons are possible with a magnificent piece of music like this. If you have a musical household, you can get the sheet music directly from ChoralWiki. If you have a budding musicologist, polyphony is a very rich and complex subject that music historians have written about extensively — it’s a perfect topic to research on your next visit to the library. And if you are in the midst of studying grammar or poetry, you can point out how Tallis employs special poetic contractions in the text — ’bide (abide), e’en (even), and the unusual monosyllabic spir’t (spirit) — to align the words with the meter of his music. 🎵

❡ Explore more: Your River Houses history encyclopedia has a beautifully illustrated overview of the Elizabethan period, within which Tallis did much of his work, on pages 260–261. It’s just the background you need to teach a quick homeschool history lesson. 📚

❡ Lift every voice: This is one of our occasional posts on Homeschool Arts & Music. Add your name to our weekly mailing list and get great homeschool teaching ideas delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 🗞

🖋 🦃 WONDERFUL WORDS: Delicious “Thanksgiving Magic”

22 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

Happy Thanksgiving to all our readers and friends! During this delicious holiday week, why not invite your homescholars to recite this poem of clever cookery by Rowena Bastin Bennett (1896–1981). It’s our just-for-fun River Houses homeschool poem-of-the-week for the fourth week of November, and it may even be about you!

Thanksgiving Magic

Thanksgiving Day I like to see
Our cook perform her witchery.
She turns a pumpkin into pie
As easily as you or I
Can wave a hand or wink an eye.
She takes leftover bread and muffin
And changes them to turkey stuffin’.
She changes cranberries to sauce
And meats to stews and stews to broths;
And when she mixes gingerbread
It turns into a man instead
With frosting collar ’round his throat
And raisin buttons down his coat.

Oh, some like magic made by wands,
And some read magic out of books,
And some like fairy spells and charms
But I like magic made by cooks!

Here’s hoping you and your family have a warm and happy Thanksgiving week. 🍽

What wonderful words have you found and what delicious literary discoveries have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

❡ Oh, some like magic made by wands: Would it be pedantic to point out on Thanksgiving Day that the final quatrain is a lovely example of iambic tetrameter (iambics march from short to long) with a rhyme scheme of ABAB (wands–books–charms–cooks)? Yes, probably. But it is a lovely little piece to teach some basic poetic principles. Maybe wait until next week. 🥧

❡ But I like magic made by cooks: 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. 🦃

❡ Literary lives: The website of the Poetry Foundation includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Rowena Bastin Bennett) 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. Add your name to our River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox, and print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar to follow along with us as we visit fifty of our favorite friends over the course of the year. 📖

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 21 November 2021

21 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

🗓 🦢 This is the last full week of CYGNUS TERM, our fall term in the River Houses. Orion Term, our winter term, begins on Wednesday the first of December.

🇺🇸 OUR STATE-OF-THE-WEEK is North Carolina, and our COUNTRIES are Cyprus 🇨🇾, Czechia (Czech Republic) 🇨🇿, Denmark 🇩🇰, and Djibouti 🇩🇯. (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! You can explore the night sky and the features of the moon in your recommended backyard astronomy guide and your homeschool world atlas, and you can learn a host of stellar and lunar facts on pages 371–386 in your almanac. Browse through our many astronomy posts for even more.

🗓 TODAY, Sunday (21 November 2021) — Today is the 325th day of 2021; there are 40 days remaining in this common year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 387–393 in your River Houses almanac. 📚 On this day in 1905, a technical paper titled “Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?” was published in the German science journal Annalen der Physik (Annals of Physics). The author was a 26-year-old patent clerk named Albert Einstein and the paper established that E = mc². ⚛️️

Monday (22 November 2021) — Today is the birthday of the great Victorian writer Mary Ann Evans (1819–1880), better known under her pen name, George Eliot. 🖋 And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the last week of November is Rowena Bastin Bennett’s “Thanksgiving Magic,” for all Thanksgiving Day cooks from sea to shining sea. Print your own River Houses Poetry Calendar and follow along with us throughout the year. 🍽

Tuesday (23 November 2021) — One of the great early masters of polyphonic music, Thomas Tallis, died on this day in 1583. (He was born about 1505 on a date unknown.) Tallis wrote, and his themes inspired, some of the most ethereal music in the world. 🎼

Wednesday (24 November 2021) — One of the most influential books ever written, Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, was published on this day in 1859. 🦋 And the much loved novel Black Beauty was published on this day in 1877. 🐴 Our Wednesday tour of World Heritage Sites this week will take you to Kronborg Castle in Denmark. 🇩🇰

Thursday (25 November 2021) — HAPPY THANKSGIVING! 🦃 🦃 (That’s emoji for “gobble gobble.”) We’ll have some lovely music to share with you today. Thank you all for following us here at the River Houses! 😊 On this day in 1783, at the end of the American Revolution, the final negotiated evacuation of British troops from New York City was completed. The last toast offered at the ceremonial dinner held that evening was, “May the Remembrance of This Day be a Lesson to Princes.” 🇺🇸 Today is the birthday of the great Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), who planted beautiful public libraries all around the world. (Thank you!) 📚

Friday (26 November 2021) — The first lighthouse on the deadly Eddystone rocks off the southwest coast of England was destroyed on the night of 26/27 November in the Great Storm of 1703. No trace of the six occupants of the lighthouse was ever found. ⛈ The classic movie Casablanca, starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, premiered on this day in 1942. 🎥 And today is the birthday of Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000), creator of the beloved Peanuts comic strip. 🐶 Our Friday Bird Families post this week will again explore the diverse Sandpipers (Part II). Print your own River Houses Calendar of American Birds and follow the flyways with us throughout the year. 🦅

Saturday (27 November 2021) — Today is the birthday of the Swedish astronomer and physicist Anders Celsius (1701–1744), a man of degrees. 🌡 The first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade was held in New York City on this day in 1924. 🏬

Sunday (28 November 2021) — Today is (probably) the birthday of the Puritan preacher and sometime prisoner John Bunyan (1628–1688), author of The Pilgrim’s Progress, the second most widely printed book in history (after the Bible). 🚶 Today is also the birthday of the great English mystical poet William Blake (1757–1827). 🐯 And on this day in 1972, the first successful arcade video game, Pong, was released. (Does anyone remember arcade games?) 🏓

🥂 🦅 🦃 OUR WEEKLY TOAST is a Thanksgiving traditional that makes a traditional American comparison: “To our two national fowls, the American Eagle and the Thanksgiving Turkey: may the one give peace to all our states, and the other a piece for all our plates.”

🌍 🇨🇿 EVERYTHING FLOWS: Czechia (the Czech Republic) in central Europe is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Bečva River, a tributary of the important Morava River. You can find its location in your recommended homeschool atlas, and you can read more about it in the Bečva River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

What do you have planned for your homeschool this week? 😊

🌎 🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: North Carolina, Cyprus, Djibouti, and More

21 November 2021 by Bob O'Hara

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.

🇺🇸
North Carolina State Seal
NORTH CAROLINA (the 12th state, 21 November 1789) — The Old North State. Capital: Raleigh. North Carolina can be found on page 587 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas (10th and 11th eds.). Name origin: “In 1619, Charles I gave patent to Sir Robert Heath for Province of Carolana, from Carolus, Latin name for Charles. Charles II granted a new patent to Earl of Clarendon and others. Divided into North and South Carolina in 1710″ (almanac page 459). State bird: Northern Cardinal (bird guide page 522). Website: www.nc.gov.

We go through the countries of the world in alphabetical order, so this week’s countries, with their official websites, are:

🇨🇾 CYPRUS in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Population: 1,266,676. Capital: Nicosia. Government: Presidential democracy. Website: www.cyprus.gov.cy (in Greek and English).
🇨🇿 CZECHIA (Czech Republic) in central Europe. Population: 10,702,498. Capital: Prague. Government: Parliamentary republic. Website: www.vlada.cz (in Czech and English).
🇩🇰 DENMARK in northern Europe. Population: 5,869,410. Capital: Copenhagen. Government: Parliamentary constitutional republic. Website: denmark.dk (in English).
🇩🇯 DJIBOUTI in eastern Africa. Population: 921,804. Capital: Djibouti. Government: Presidential republic. Website: www.presidence.dj (in French).

What grand global geographical excursions (real or virtual) have you made in your homeschool this Cygnus Term? 😊

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