![[The River Houses]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/arms-icon-100x100.png "The River Houses"){kind=icon}
“If I had a thing to give you, / I would tell you one more time / That the world is always turning / Toward the morning.” (Our reassuring homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Gordon Bok, for late October.)
🎵 🎨 Homeschool Arts & Music: Little Lessons for the Whole Year
Great homeschool teaching tips and easy little lessons on arts and music from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Subscribe to our free homeschool newsletter to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫
❡ Holiday Music Month: This Arts & Music collection includes our special series of December Homeschool Holiday Music Month lessons. 🎵 🎄 🎅
🏹 🧵 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: 1066 and All That
Today is the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1066: the beginning of the Norman Conquest of England. Why not use this occasion to introduce your homeschool students to one of the most famous objects that has survived from the Middle Ages: the Bayeux Tapestry.
🎵 🍎 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): My Orchard in Linden Lea
“I be free to go abroad / Or take again my homeward road / To where for me the apple tree / Do lean down low in Linden Lea.” (An extra pomological homeschool poem-of-the-week, from William Barnes and Ralph Vaughan Williams, for apple season and Vaughan Williams’ birthday.)
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for October: “Blue & Yellow” and “Recycling”
![[Homeschool Photography Icon]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/camera-flash-emoji-150x150.png)
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Blue & Yellow” and “Recycling.” Take a look!
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for September: “Roof” and “Accessibility”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes (to begin the new homeschool year) are “Roof” and “Accessibility.” Take a look!
🏡 🎉 A NEW HOMESCHOOL YEAR BEGINS: Let the River Run!
Welcome to a beautiful brand new homeschool year in the River Houses! Let all the dreamers wake the nation.
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for August: “Dust” and “Spices”
![[Homeschool Photography Icon]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/emoji-camera-flash-2-150x143.png)
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes (to wrap up the current homeschool year) are “Dust” and “Spices.” Take a look!
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for July: “Bread” and “Manhole Covers”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Bread” and “Manhole Covers.” Take a look!
🪙 FREE HOMESCHOOL TEACHING MATERIALS from the U.S. Mint!
![[U.S. Mint]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/mint-logo-150x150.png){kind=logo}
The U.S. Mint has a wide variety of free printable educational materials that you can easily drop into your homeschooling schedule this summer. Why not look them over and expand your students’ numismatical horizons.
📺 HISTORICAL DOCUMENTARIES for Your Homeschool Summer
Twelve multi-part masterpieces of the documentarian’s art that you and your homeschool students can watch together and discuss over the summer. (Or at any other time of year!)
🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “O! say can you see?”
“Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, / In full glory reflected now shines on the stream — / ‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave / O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” (Our American homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Francis Scott Key, for Flag Day, the 14th of June.)
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for June: “Mushroooms” and “Construction Sites”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Mushrooms” and “Construction Sites.” Take a look!
🖋 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “Sumer is i-cumin in”
“Loudly sing, cuckoo!” (Our ancient homeschool poem-of-the-week, anonymously, for the beginning of our summer term.)
🎓 🎉 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC & HISTORY: Let Us Rejoice!
Invite your homeschoolers to learn a few lines this week from the most famous of all medieval student songs – it’s an educational inheritance they can carry with them all around the world.
🇺🇸 🕊 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Memorial Day
![[US Flag Stamp 2019]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/us-flag-stamp-2019-150x132.jpg)
“Rest, comrades, rest and sleep! / The thoughts of men shall be / As sentinels to keep / Your rest from danger free.” (Little homeschool lessons in literature, history, geography, and music, for the Memorial Day weekend.)
🖋 🎓 GRADUATION SEASON: “Set me free to find my calling”
“Bind me not to the pasture, chain me not to the plow, / Set me free to find my calling and I’ll return to you somehow.” (Our promising late May poem-of-the-week, from Marta Keen, for homeschool graduation season and the coming summer.)
🇨🇦 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC & HISTORY: “To find the hand of Franklin”
To understand a complex and beautiful piece of art or music, your students must first learn a great deal about the world — names, places, people, and events that may seem at first to be unrelated.
📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Artistic 700s
![[Dewey Decimal Classes]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/dewey-decimal-classes-2-150x90.jpg)
Explore your local library and the whole universe of knowledge with our homeschool tour of the Dewey Decimal System. This month: the Artistic 700s.
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for May: “Waves” and “Pets”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Waves” and “Pets.” Take a look!
🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Relax With Randall Thompson’s “Alleluia”
Feeling cooped up and stressed out? Calm your homeschool down with the peaceful “Alleluia” of American composer Randall Thompson, born on this day in 1899.
🇺🇸 AMERICAN ICON: The Concord Minute Man
Teach your homeschool students to recognize one of the most famous artistic symbols of the American Revolution this week: Daniel Chester French’s “Minute Man” (1874).
🖋 🎨 HOMESCHOOL ARTS & LITERATURE: William Wordsworth’s Lake District
![[William Wordsworth Commemorative Stamp (1970)]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/wordsworth-stamp-1970-89x150.jpg)
On William Wordsworth’s birthday, why not introduce your homeschool students to the famous Lake District of England, a region that has inspired writers and visual artists for more than 200 years.
🖖 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: Happy First Contact Day!
“Sure on this shining night / I weep for wonder wand’ring far alone / Of shadows on the stars.” (On this day in the year 2063, in a remote area near Bozeman, Montana, a Vulcan survey ship will make first contact with the human race. Perhaps some of today’s homeschoolers will be there to see it.)
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for April: “Vertical Lines” and “Flame”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their skills and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Vertical Lines” and “Flame.” Take a look!
🎨 HOMESCHOOL ARTS: Introducing William Morris (1834–1896)
![[William Morris Stamp (2011)]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/william-morris-stamp-2011-150x142.jpg)
Take a few homeschool minutes this week to learn about William Morris, one of the great artistic polymaths of the nineteenth century, on the anniversary of his birth.
🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Happy Birthday Bach!
![[Bach Stamp (2000)]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/bach-stamp-2000-147x150.jpg)
Take a few homeschool minutes to introduce your students to a tiny musical masterpiece by one of the world’s great composers, Johann Sebastian Bach, born on this day in 1685.
🎭 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY & LITERATURE: “Lend Me Your Ears!”
![[Comedy & Tragedy]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/comedy-tragedy-masks-emoji-150x150.png)
Why not wrap up this special Julius Caesar Week in your homeschool by viewing and discussing several versions of a famous Shakespearean speech with your students.
