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 Arts & Music
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 & 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 – March 2023: “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 – February 2023: “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 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 – January 2023: “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 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.)
🎵 🌹 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming
“It came, a flow’ret bright, / Amid the cold of winter, / When half spent was the night.” (An ancient German carol that has been translated into many languages, for Homeschool Holiday Music Month.)
🎵 🌟 🐑 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: The Shepherd’s Carol
“We stood on the hills, Lady, / Our day’s work done, / Watching the frosted meadows / That winter had won.” (A Christmas night carol, from Bob Chilcott and Clive Sansom, for Homeschool Holiday Music Month.)
🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Hallelujah!
Introduce your homescholars (in just ten minutes) to one of the world’s most famous pieces of classical music, from George Frideric Handel, for Homeschool Holiday Music Month.
🎵 ❄️ HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: In the Bleak Midwinter
“Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; / Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, / In the bleak midwinter, long ago.” (A frosty carol from Christina Rossetti and Gustav Holst, for Homeschool Holiday Music Month and the winter solstice.)
🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: I Wonder as I Wander
Introduce your homeschool students to an American folk tune that has now become an internationally famous Christmas carol, and invite them to think about how different the same piece of music can sound under a variety of vocal and instrumental arrangements.
🎵 🎄 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 homescholars can join them.
🎵 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!
🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Christmas with William Billings
“Methinks I see an heavenly host / Of angels on the wing; / Methinks I hear their cheerful notes, / So merrily they sing.” (Discover what Christmas sounded like at the time of the American Revolution.)
🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: O Little Town of Bethlehem
Invite your students to listen to a number of different performances of this popular American carol in a variety of different styles this week, and help them think through their preferences. It’s a great way to encourage their intellectual and artistic development.
🎵 📚 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Olden Times and Ancient Rhymes
What did Christmas in America sound like a hundred years ago? The National Jukebox at the Library of Congress has the answer for you and your homeschool students.
🎵 🚋 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: Walla Walla, Wash., an’ Kalamazoo!
“Antelope cantaloupe, ’lope with you!” (A happy homeschool family sing-a-long from Walt Kelly, for Holiday Music Month.)
