“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 2021–2022 Christmas Season, and our own Homeschool Holiday Music Month, to a close.)
🎵 🎄 🎅 Homeschool Holiday Music Month (Recent Posts)
A collection of great homeschool teaching ideas, resources, and little lessons on an assortment of seasonal musical favorites in a great variety of styles and genres — classical and modern, sacred and secular, serious and silly — posted every December for the River Houses Homeschool Network. Print your own copy of our River Houses Calendar to follow all of our educational events throughout the year, and add your name to our free River Houses homeschool mailing list to get more posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week! 😊
🎵 🎄 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 “Twelve Days of Christmas” illustrates that happy principle for us as we approach the end of our Homeschool Holiday Music Month.
🎵 🌟 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 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.)
