“Loudly sing, cuckoo!” (Our ancient homeschool poem-of-the-week, anonymously, for the beginning of our summer term.)
🎵 🎨 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. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list and get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week! 😊
❡ Holiday Music Month: This Homeschool Arts & Music collection also includes our special series of December Holiday Music Month posts. 🎵 🎄 🎅
🇺🇸 🕊 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Memorial Day
“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.)
🎓 🎉 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: 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 inheritance they can carry with them around the world.
🖋 🎓 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 homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Marta Keen, for 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.
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for May: “Macro Photography” and “Feathers”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their talents and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Macro Photography” and “Feathers.” Take a look!
📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Artistic 700s
Explore your local library and the whole universe of knowledge with our homeschool tour of the Dewey Decimal System. This month: The Artistic 700s.
🎵 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 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: “Baby Farm Animals” and “Looking Up”
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 “Baby Farm Animals” and “Looking Up.” Take a look!
🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Happy Birthday Bach!
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!”
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.
🎻 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Introducing Barber’s Adagio and Agnus Dei
Today is the birthday of the great American classical composer Samuel Barber (1910–1981). Introduce your homeschool students to one of his most famous works this week and give them a new treasure for life.
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for March: “Laundering” and “Hotels”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their talents and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Laundering” and “Hotels & Motels.” Take a look!
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for February: “Handles” and “Cruise Ships”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their talents and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Handles” and “Passenger Ships.” Take a look!
🖍 HOMESCHOOL ARTS: Color Our Collections Week!
Download a whole year’s worth of free educational coloring booklets from major libraries and museums all around the world. It’s one of the easiest educational art opportunities you can find for your homeschool.
🎵 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Happy Birthday Mozart!
Happy birthday to one of the greatest musical composers of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, born on this day in 1756 in Salzburg, Austria. Here are some little Mozart lessons that you can share with your homeschool students this 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 Martin Luther King’s birthday.)
🎵 🎭 TWELFTH NIGHT and the End of Holiday Music Month 2022–2023
“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: A Partridge in a 🍐🌳
One of the deepest purposes of a liberal education is to enable people to get jokes. David Chase’s brilliant arrangement of “The Twelve Days of Christmas” illustrates that happy principle for us as we approach the end of our Homeschool Holiday Music Month.
📸 PHOTO CHALLENGE for January: “Ice” and “Hospitals”
Calling all homeschool photographers! The Wikimedia Commons Photo Challenge is a great way for enthusiastic homeschool photography students to develop their talents and gain some recognition for their work. This month’s themes are “Ice” and “Hospitals.” Take a look!
🎵 🌟 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Star in the East
For Homeschool Holiday Music Month, introduce your students to the early American shape-note tradition by way of the beautiful carol “Star in the East,” first published in the Southern Harmony collection in 1835.
🎵 🎉 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.)
🖋 🍻 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.)
🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Sussex Mummers’ Carol
“God bless your house, your children too, / Your cattle and your store; / The Lord increase you day by day / And send you more and more.” (The Sussex Mummers’ Carol, from Percy Grainger and others, for Homeschool Holiday Music Month.)
