The River Houses

A National Network of Local Homeschool Societies

🦆 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. 🐦

❡ Find all our Birds & Natural History posts on Facebook at #RHnature.

🎄 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? 🎵 🎄

❡ Find all our Arts & Music posts on Facebook at #RHartists.

❄️ “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):

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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.

❡ Find all our Language & Literature posts on Facebook at #RHwords.

🎅 ’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:

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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.

❡ Find all our Language & Literature posts on Facebook at #RHwords.

🎄 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”:

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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? 🎄

❡ Find all our Arts & Music posts on Facebook at #RHartists.

🗓 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? 😊

❡ Find all our weekly “Quick Freshes” posts on Facebook at #RHfreshes.

🇺🇸 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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 😊

❡ Find all our weekly States & Countries posts on Facebook at #RHstates.

🌕 LUNAR SOCIETY REPORT: Research Projects for Homeschool Students

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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. 🦉

❡ Find all our Lunar Society research-project posts on Facebook at #RHlunar.

❄️ 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? 😊

❡ Find all our astronomical “Watchers of the Skies” posts on Facebook at #RHastronomy.

🖋 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. 😊

❡ Find all our Books & Libraries posts on Facebook at #RHlibraries.

🎵 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: I Wonder as I Wander

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We sometimes think of traditional Christmas carols as being largely European in origin, but the United States has contributed several that are now internationally sung, and one of the most beautiful is the Appalachian folk carol “I Wonder as I Wander,” performed here by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson:

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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.

“I Wonder as I Wander” is a religious carol that tells the Christian Nativity story, but in colloquial language and an Appalachian regional dialect. The version of the carol that is sung today was written in 1934 by the American folklorist and musician John Jacob Niles (1892–1980). Niles was traveling though the North Carolina mountains in the early 1930s collecting local folk music, and when passing through the town of Murphy he encountered a little girl named Annie Morgan singing fragments of an unfamiliar tune. He paid the girl to sing it several times until he had copied the music and words down — reportedly only two or three lines, not a complete piece — and then Niles himself worked that fragment into the complete song that we know.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor ornery people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus, ’twas in a cow stall,
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all;
But high from God’s heaven a star’s light did fall,
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing:
A star in the sky, or a bird on the wing,
Or all of God’s angels in heaven for to sing,
He surely could have had it, ’cause He was the King!

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,
How Jesus the Savior did come for to die
For poor ornery people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

Here’s a fine little five-minute documentary on the carol’s history, featuring its birthplace of Murphy, North Carolina:

🎶

One simple educational idea to get across to your beginning students is that a given piece of music can be performed under a number of different arrangements — settings that differ in tempo, accompaniment, number of singers, and general style. In contrast to the gospel-style performance of Mahalia Jackson, for example, here’s a beautiful choral arrangement of “I Wonder as I Wander” by John Rutter and The Cambridge Singers:

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From a little girl in a mountain town to the cathedral churches of Europe — that quite a course of history for an simple American tune.

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? 😊 🎵

❡ Find all our Arts & Music posts on Facebook at #RHartists.

Welcome! (Pinned post)

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First time visitor? We post a rich assortment of educational ideas and informal “little lessons” that will help you enrich your homeschooling schedule all through the year. We’d be delighted to have you bookmark us or add your name to our mailing list (just one message a week, and no spam). 😊

The materials we’re developing are going to become the foundation for a new type of homeschool network made up of friendly local groups called “houses” (just like in Harry Potter). There’s lots of wonderful material here on our website — take a look around and make yourself at home. 😊

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 16 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 Tennessee, and our COUNTRIES are Gabon 🇬🇦, The Gambia 🇬🇲, Georgia 🇬🇪, and Germany 🇩🇪. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌔 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is gibbous and waxing, heading toward full on the 23rd. Track the moon’s phases at timeanddate.com, and dial up this week’s constellations with your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books).

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 16 December) — Today is the 350th day of 2018; there are 15 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). ⬩ It’s Beethoven’s birthday! (Well, probably.) ⬩ It’s also the birthday of the English novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817). ⬩ And Comet 46P/Wirtanen, the closest-approaching comet of 2018, may be bright enough to see with the naked eye this evening.

MONDAY (17 December) — Monday is the birthday of the American poet and abolitionist John Greenleaf Whittier (1807–1892). ⬩ And on this day in 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful heavier-than-air flight in their prototype airplane at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and the rest is aviation history. ✈︎

TUESDAY (18 December) — The premiere performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s much-loved seasonal classic “The Nutcracker” took place on this day in 1892 in St. Petersburg, Russia.

WEDNESDAY (19 December) — “These are the times that try men’s souls.” The first of a series of pamphlets by Thomas Paine called “The American Crisis” was published on this this day in 1776 in Philadelphia. ⬩ And today is the birthday of the pioneering African-American historian Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950).

THURSDAY (20 December) — Today is the birthday of the American physicist Robert J. Van de Graaff (1901–1967), known for making people’s hair stand on end. ⬩ The storied Christmas movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” premiered on this day in 1946 in New York City. ⬩ And this is the last full day of fall.

FRIDAY (21 December) — Today is the December solstice, the first day of winter in the northern hemisphere (and the first day of summer in the southern hemisphere). ⬩ On this day in 1620, the Mayflower Pilgrims came ashore at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts (and they maybe stepped on Plymouth Rock, or maybe didn’t). ⬩ And on this day in 1913, the first modern crossword puzzle was published in the New York World newspaper.

SATURDAY (22 December) — Today is the birthday of the Italian opera composer Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). ⬩ And our homeschool poem-of-the-week for last week of December will be a double feature: “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement Moore (for Christmas Eve) and “Ring Out, Wild Bells!” by Alfred Tennyson (for New Year’s Eve). Print out your own River Houses poetry calendar at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us throughout the year.

SUNDAY (23 December) — On this day in 1783, George Washington resigned his commission as commander of the Continental Army and surrendered his sword to Congress in Annapolis, Maryland. ⬩ And today is the birthday of Joseph Smith (1805–1844), the founder of the Mormon Church.

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May the hinges of friendship never rust, nor the wings of love lose a feather.”

❡ 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: The Gambia is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the Gambia River, which is the principal geographical feature of that country. You can chart the Gambia River’s course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the comprehensive Gambia River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

Satellite image of the Gambia River, and the country of the same name, in western Africa. (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? 😊

❡ Find all our weekly “Quick Freshes” posts on Facebook at #RHfreshes.

🇺🇸 SUNDAY STATES: Tennessee, Gabon, Germany, 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:

  • 🇺🇸
    Tennessee State Quarter
    TENNESSEE (the 16th state, 1 June 1796) — The Volunteer State. Capital: Nashville. Tennessee can be found on page 587 in your almanac and on plates 42 and 142 in your atlas. Name origin: “Tanasi was the name of Cherokee villages on the Little Tennessee River. From 1784 to 1788, this was the State of Franklin, or Frankland” (almanac page 423). State bird: Northern Mockingbird (bird guide page 416). Website: tennessee.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:

  • 🇬🇦 GABON in western Africa. Population: 1,772,255. Capital: Libreville. Website: www.gouvernement.ga (in French).
  • 🇬🇲 THE GAMBIA in western Africa. Population: 2,051,363. Capital: Banjul. Website: statehouse.gov.gm (in English).
  • 🇬🇪 GEORGIA in southwestern Asia. Population: 4,926,330. Capital: Tblisi. Website: www.gov.ge (in Georgian, Russian, and English).
  • 🇩🇪 GERMANY in central Europe. Population: 80,594,017. Capital: Berlin. Website: www.deutschland.de (in German, English, and several other languages).

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. ✈️ 🚞 🚗 🛳 😊

❡ Find all our weekly States & Countries posts on Facebook at #RHstates.

📚 BOOKS: A New World Almanac for the New Year

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Here at the River Houses we recommend six standard reference books for every homeschooling family — not children’s books, but family books that can serve both parents and students, that can support any curriculum you choose to follow, and that can help to make you a better teacher. Five of these books are permanent additions to your library that should last for many years, but the sixth is one that needs to be periodically renewed: the annual World Almanac and Book of Facts, available shortly in its 2019 edition:

The annual World Almanac, published for more than 150 years, makes an ideal Christmas or New Year’s gift for your students. I just ordered my copy yesterday and it’s expected to arrive right before the holidays.

Modern almanacs are really one-volume desk encyclopedias, packed with information about everything from science and technology (page 277; did you know the top speed of a reindeer is 32 miles per hour?), to world history and geography (page 647; did you know the average depth of the Indian Ocean is 12,800 feet?), to artists, entertainers, and notable personalities (page 173; did you know Robert Penn Warren was the first Poet Laureate of the United States?), and much, much more.

If you have a fact-devouring student — and many students go through a fact-devouring stage — there’s no better entertainment than the annual World Almanac. (Did you know the island-nation of Tuvalu has a population of only 11,052?) And for general reference questions on almost any subject, the World Almanac is usually the best place to start.

To get the most out of your almanac, notice that the major sections are marked with black tabs along the book’s fore-edge, and that these tabs are labeled on the back cover: “Special Features, Year in Review,” “Economy, Business, Energy,” “Health & Vital Statistics,” and so on. (That’s from the 2018 edition.) And while open-ended browsing of the almanac can be endlessly interesting, be sure that your students also know how to use the comprehensive alphabetical index at the end of the volume when they are trying to locate a specific piece of information.

We regularly refer to material from the World Almanac and Book of Facts in our River Houses postings, and starting in January our page references will change over from the 2018 edition to the 2019 edition. Add a new 2019 almanac to your homeschool library and join us as we teach and learn our way through the new year.

❡ Note that the World Almanac and Book of Facts is available in both paperback and hardcover editions. The paperback is less expensive, but it’s also reduced in size making the type exceedingly small for grownup eyes, although your young scholars may have no trouble with it. I always use the hardcover edition.

❡ Find all our Books & Libraries posts on Facebook at #RHlibraries.

☄️ THE CHRISTMAS COMET: 46P/Wirtanen 2018

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“The Christmas Comet of 2018,” prosaically known as Comet 46P/Wirtanen, is paying a visit to the inner solar system this week. Have you seen it? Here’s the best resource to help you locate it:

You’ll want to be in as dark a location as you can find and then look to the south in the constellation Taurus, to the upper-right of Orion — quite fitting, since we’re in the middle of Orion Term! (Keep your River Houses sky maps handy for reference.) You may be able to see it with the naked eye this weekend, but if it’s not quite bright enough or your sky isn’t dark enough, binoculars should bring it into view.

Comet 46P/Wirtanen 2018. (Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

A little homeschool lesson: “Did you know that comets are named after their discoverers?” Comet Wirtanen was first identified in 1948 by American astronomer Carl Wirtanen (1910–1990) of the Lick Observatory in California. (He discovered several asteroids during his career as well.) Comet Wirtanen orbits the sun once every 5.4 years, but its brightness for earth-bound observers is variable so it isn’t always easily seen. The comet’s body is estimated to be about 1.2 kilometers in diameter (about three-fourths of a mile).

I’ve been frustrated by clouds for the last few days here in the Nashua River valley, but I still hope to see it before it departs. Naked-eye comets are rare, so you’ll want to be sure to make some educational observations if you can.

What celestial sights have you seen in your homeschool lately? 😊

❡ Watchers of the skies: Teaching your students to recognize the constellations is one of the simplest and most enduring gifts you can give them. The planisphere on the front of your River Houses star atlas (riverhouses.org/books) will let you dial up the northern hemisphere sky for any night of the year, and the descriptions and maps of each constellation will point out the highlights. Find a dark-sky spot near you this month and spend some quality homeschool time beneath the starry vault. 🌠 🔭 ☄️ 🌌

❡ Find all our “Watchers of the Skies” posts on Facebook at #RHastronomy.

🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Introducing Vince Guaraldi

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The origins of some seasonal classics are lost in the mists of time, but for others, we know just when and where they arrived on the scene. That’s the case for Vince Guaraldi’s instant American classic “Christmas Time is Here,” one of the musical favorites from the 1965 TV special “A Charlie Brown Christmas”:

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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.

The American composer and jazz musician Vince Guaraldi (1928–1976) was born in San Francisco and achieved early success in the west coast music scene in the 1950s. Producer Lee Mendelson, who was developing the first Peanuts holiday specials in the early 1960s, heard Guaraldi’s music on the radio and invited him to write the score for “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” and the rest is musical history.

Most of Guaraldi’s compositions were intended to be purely instrumental, but for the best-known piece, “Christmas Time is Here,” Mendelson himself wrote lyrics:

Christmas Time is Here

Christmas time is here,
Happiness and cheer,
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of year.
Snowflakes in the air,
Carols everywhere,
Olden times and ancient rhymes
Of love and dreams to share.
Sleigh bells in the air,
Beauty everywhere,
Yuletide by the fireside
And joyful memories there.
Christmas time is here,
Families drawing near,
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year.
Sleigh bells in the air,
Beauty everywhere,
Yuletide by the fireside,
And joyful memories there.
Christmas time is here,
Families drawing near,
Oh, that we could always see
Such spirit through the year.

Jazz is a distinctly American genre of music, although it is now played all over the world. Guaraldi’s work for the Peanuts specials included not only fully original jazz pieces, but also new jazz arrangements of traditional Christmas carols such as the old German classic “O Tannenbaum”:

🎶

Why not introduce your students to some of Guaraldi’s wonderful works this month and invite them to learn more about jazz and its rich musical history.

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 holiday season, 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? 😊 🎵

❡ Find all our Arts & Music posts on Facebook at #RHartists.

🖋 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Birthday to Emily Dickinson!

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Today is the birthday of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), so she provides us with our homeschool poem-of-the-week for the second week of December — a poem for all lovers of books and language:

He ate and drank the precious Words —
His Spirit grew robust —
He knew no more that he was poor,
Nor that his frame was Dust —

He danced along the dingy Days
And this Bequest of Wings
Was but a Book — What Liberty
A loosened spirit brings —

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Amherst, Massachusetts, a small farming town in the Connecticut River valley. Her father was a town lawyer, and she grew up with an older brother and a younger sister who were the focal points of her home life. (“Mother does not care for thought,” she sadly reported.) Dickinson’s poetry came to be appreciated only in the twentieth century — almost none of it was published during her lifetime — and she is now regarded as one of the most important writers in American history.

Most of Dickinson’s poems are written in a traditional form, although they often employ striking and innovative imagery. “He ate and drank the precious Words,” for example, uses the same meter found in hundreds of Protestant hymns, the so-called eights-and-sixes arrangement. For a little lesson, have your students count the syllables: they will find a perfect 8-6-8-6 pattern throughout. The rhyme scheme in this poem is also regular, but not so heavy as to produce a sing-songy result — I make it out to be ABCB DFGF, with the second and fourth lines rhyming in each stanza.

Introduce your homescholars to Emily Dickinson this week on the occasion of her birthday and they’ll have a new friend for life.

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

❡ His Spirit grew robust: 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 (poetryfoundation.org) includes biographical notes and examples of the work of many important poets (including Emily Dickinson) 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.

❡ Find all our Language & Literature posts on Facebook at #RHwords.

🗓 QUICK FRESHES for Homeschool Families – Week of 9 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 Kentucky, and our COUNTRIES are Ethiopia 🇪🇹, Fiji 🇫🇯, Finland 🇫🇮, and France 🇫🇷. (Our separate Sunday States & Countries post went up just a few minutes ago.)

🌒 THE MOON at the beginning of this week is a waxing crescent — a 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).

(Have you noticed that we use the correct symbol for the phase of the moon each week? We do! Here’s the complete sequence from New to First Quarter to Full to Third Quarter to New again: 🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑.)

🗓 TODAY (Sunday, 9 December) — Today is the 343rd day of 2018; there are 22 days remaining in the year. Learn more about different kinds of modern and historical calendars on pages 351–357 in your River Houses almanac (riverhouses.org/books). ⬩ Today is the birthday of the great English poet and political revolutionary John Milton (1608–1674), one of the towering figures in the history of the English language. ⬩ And on this day in 1965, the much-loved special “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” with music by Vince Guaraldi, premiered on CBS television.

MONDAY (10 December) — Today is the birthday Augusta Ada (Byron) King, Countess of Lovelace (1815–1852), a pioneer of computer science (long before the field even existed). ⬩ It’s also the birthday of the great American poet Emily Dickinson (1830–1886).

TUESDAY (11 December) — Today is the birthday of two very different Nobel laureates: the German microbiologist Robert Koch (1843–1910), and the Russian novelist and historian Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008).

WEDNESDAY (12 December) — On this day in 1901 at St. John’s, Newfoundland, engineer and inventor Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937) successfully received the first trans-Atlantic radio transmission (sent from Cornwall in the U.K.).

THURSDAY (13 December) — The annual Geminid meteor shower is expected to peak tonight.

FRIDAY (14 December) — Today is the birthday of the great Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601). ⬩ And on this day in 1911, Roald Amundson, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting became the first men ever to reach the South Pole.

SATURDAY (15 December) — The famous film Gone With the Wind, starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh, premiered in Atlanta, Georgia, on this day in 1939. ⬩ And on this day in 1970, the Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 made the first-ever soft landing on another planet (Venus). ⬩ Our homeschool poem-of-the-week for third week of December is Christina Rossetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter,” for the upcoming winter solstice and the Christmas holiday. Print your own River Houses poetry calendar at riverhouses.org/calendars and follow along with us throughout the year.

SUNDAY (16 December) — It’s Beethoven’s birthday! ⬩ It’s also the birthday of the English novelist Jane Austen (1775–1817). ⬩ And on this day in 1773, a group of disgruntled Bostonians disguised as Mohawk Indians dumped hundreds of pounds of tea into Boston Harbor — and “the Boston Tea Party” has been a part of American history ever since. ⬩ Also, Comet 46P/Wirtanen, the closest-approaching comet of 2018, may be bright enough to see with the naked eye this evening.

🥂 YOUR WEEKLY TOAST: “May we never envy those who are happy, but always strive to imitate them.”

❡ 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: France is one of our countries-of-the-week, so our Weekly World River is the storied Seine, which flows through the French capital of Paris. You can chart its course in your River Houses atlas (riverhouses.org/books), and you can read more about it in the Seine River entry in Wikipedia or perhaps on your next visit to your local library.

The Seine River in central Paris. (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!

AND DON’T FORGET: Friday the 13th comes on a Thursday this month! 😲

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

❡ Find all our weekly “Quick Freshes” posts on Facebook at #RHfreshes.