![[The River Houses]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/arms-icon-100x100.png "The River Houses"){kind=icon}
“I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, / And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.” (Our commemorative homeschool poem-of-the-week, from John Masefield, for the Challenger Seven of 1986.)
🗓 Homeschool Holidays & History: Little Lessons for the Whole Year
Great homeschool teaching tips and wonderful little lessons on history, holidays, anniversaries, and notable events from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Use these regular posts to enrich your homeschool history curriculum all through the year. Print your own homeschool calendars and planners on our main River Houses calendar page, and subscribe to our free homeschool newsletter to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week. 📫
🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): Lift Every Voice and Sing
“Let our rejoicing rise / High as the listening skies, / Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.” (Our patriotic homeschool poem-of-the-week, from James Weldon Johnson, for the Martin Luther King holiday.)
🎵 🎭 TWELFTH NIGHT and the End of Homeschool Holiday Music Month
“Long long ago the world begun, / With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain. / But that’s all one, our play is done, / And we’ll strive to please you every day.” (Shakespeare helps us bring the Christmas Season, and our own Homeschool Holiday Music Month, to a close.)
🎵 🎉 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Old Year Now Away is Fled
“Let’s merry be this day, / And let us now both sport and play, / Hang grief, cast care away, / God send you a happy new year!” (An ancient new-year carol sung to the tune “Greensleeves,” by the great countertenor Alfred Deller, for Homeschool Holiday Music Month.)
🖋 🔔 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Sounds!): Ring Out, Wild Bells!
“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.” (Join Tennyson and some skillful bell-ringers to ring in the new year in your homeschool.)
🗡♗ HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Murder in the Cathedral
Take five minutes today to teach your students the story of Archbishop Thomas Becket, whose murder on this day in the year 1170 has loomed large in the Western imagination for nearly a thousand years.
🖋 🍻 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): Auld Lang Syne
“We two once ran along the hills and picked the daisies fine; / But we’ve wandered many a weary foot since those days of long ago.” (Our celebratory homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Burns, for auld lang syne.)
🌊 WONDERFUL WORDS: “It was a short, cold Christmas”
Herman Melville reminds us that even on Christmas Day, somewhere in the world there are ships and sailors heading out to sea.
🌎 HOMESCHOOL SCIENCE & HISTORY: Earthrise
![[Earthrise, 24 December 1968]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise-150x150.jpg)
Every smart homeschool student should be able to recognize one of the most famous photographs in history, taken from lunar orbit on this day in 1968.
🖋 🎅 WONDERFUL WORDS: ’Twas the Night Before Christmas
“The children were nestled all snug in their beds; / While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.” (Our festive homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Clement Clarke Moore, for Christmas Eve of course!)
🎵 🎄 A CHRISTMAS EVE INVITATION: Carols from King’s College
The beautiful Festival of Lessons and Carols from King’s College at Cambridge University is broadcast every year on Christmas Eve to millions of people around the world. You and your homeschool students can join them.
📡 🎅 🦌 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: NORAD’s Santa Tracker is Up!
Want to know when Santa will deliver your Christmas presents? Don’t ask Amazon, ask the North American Air Defense Command! (And maybe even learn a little world geography along the way.)
🎵 MARVELOUS MUSIC: It’s Beethoven’s Birthday!
Take a few minutes out of your homeschool schedule today to celebrate an annual international musical milestone, to wit, Beethoven’s Birthday!
🖋 📖 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Birthday to Emily Dickinson!
“He ate and drank the precious Words — / His Spirit grew robust.” (Our literary homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for her birthday.)
📖 🦦 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Gets a Visit From Horace the Otter
![[Alcott Stamp 1993]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/alcott-stamp-1993-118x150.jpg)
Our River Houses homeschool mascot, Horace the Otter, remembers the author of the popular American novel Little Women (1868) on the anniversary of her birth.
🎵 🏡 THANKSGIVING MUSIC: “Rise up, follow me, I will lead you home”
“Through the air there’s a calling from far away, / There’s a voice I can hear that will lead me home.” (Some lovely music and words from Stephen Paulus and Michael Dennis Browne, for homeschool Thanksgiving.)
🎵 🍽 HOMESCHOOL THANKSGIVING: We Gather Together
Take a minute this week to introduce your homeschool students to a beautiful four-hundred-year-old Dutch folk tune that has become an American Thanksgiving classic.
