🇺🇸 🥂 HOMESCHOOL TOASTING TRADITIONS the Whole Year Round

Have you noticed that we offer a toast each week in our regular Sunday Quick Freshes posts? We do! Some of them are serious and some are silly. Nearly all of them are tied to the calendar in some way and mark a holiday, or a famous birthday, or a seasonal event in the natural world.

We think toasting can be a rich and delightful educational tradition for your family table all through the year. Why not begin this very week with a wonderfully clever toast for Independence Day, a toast that goes back 170 years.

A toast like this can involve the whole family — and kids love to participate! The first person raises a glass and says, A toast: To the memory of the man… And the next person says, That owned the land… And the next person says, That raised the corn…. And so on around the table until the last person says, That wrote the Declaration of Independence! Then all shout Cheers! or Hurrah! or (if you want to be properly Revolutionary) Huzzah! And then glasses clink all around. 🥂 🍻

You can begin your homeschool toasting tradition this week with the example above and then continue on throughout the year with the examples we post each Sunday. As time goes on you can have a different member of the family come up with an original toast each week. Before you know it, you’ll have a whole house-full of expert toastmasters and toastmistresses who will be in demand at all the finest family gatherings, spring, summer, fall, and winter. 😊

What happy holidays and historical anniversaries will you and your students be toasting in your homeschool this Hercules Term? 🥂

❡ Explore more: Many of the toasts we offer each week in our Quick Freshes posts are taken from various old anthologies that you and your students can browse on your own if you wish. They include: Roach’s The Royal Toast Master Containing Many Thousands of the Best Toasts Old and New (1793); Jacques’ The Pic-Nic, a Collection of Recitations, and Comic Songs, Toasts, Sentiments, &c. (1816); Marchant’s “Toasts and Sentiments” (1888); and Pittenger’s Toasts and Forms of Public Address (1897). Needless to say, many of the toasts included in these old works are now either out of date (“May the game laws be reformed or repealed”) or out of favor (“To gipsy joys without gipsy license”). But many others are just as fresh today as they were when they were first proposed (“To long life, pure love, and boundless liberty”). 🥂

❡ Here, said the year: This is one of our regular posts about Homeschool Holidays & History. Add your name to our weekly River Houses mailing list to get more great homeschool history lessons delivered right to your mailbox all through the year. 📫

❡ Homeschool calendars: We have a whole collection of free, printable, educational homeschool calendars and planners available on our main River Houses calendar page. They will help you create a light and easy structure for your homeschool year. Give them a try today! 🗓

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❡ Join us! The aim of the River Houses project is to create a network of friendly local homeschool support groups — local chapters that we call “Houses.” Our first at-large chapter, Headwaters House, is now forming and is open to homeschoolers everywhere. Find out how to become one of our founding members on the Headwaters House membership page. 🏡