“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.)
🗓 Homeschool Holidays & Anniversaries (Recent Posts)
A collection of great homeschool teaching ideas, resources, and little lessons on history, holidays, anniversaries, and notable events from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Print your own homeschool calendar for the whole year on our main River Houses calendar page and follow along with us, and add your name to our free River Houses mailing list to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week! 😊
🎵 🎭 TWELFTH NIGHT and the End of Holiday Music Month 2021–2022
“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.)
🎵 🎉 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.)
🗡♗ HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Murder in the Cathedral
Take five minutes today to teach your students the story of Archbishop Thomas Becket, whose murder on this day in the year 1170 has loomed large in the Western imagination for nearly a thousand years.
🌊 WONDERFUL WORDS: “It was a short, cold Christmas”
Herman Melville reminds us that even on Christmas Day, somewhere in the world there are ships and sailors heading out to sea.
🖋 🎅 WONDERFUL WORDS: ’Twas the Night Before Christmas
“The children were nestled all snug in their beds; / While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Clement Clarke Moore, for Christmas Eve of course!)
🎵 🎄 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.
📡 🎅 🦌 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: NORAD’s Santa Tracker is Up!
Want to know when Santa will deliver your Christmas presents? Don’t ask Amazon, ask the North American Air Defense Command! (And maybe even learn a little world geography along the way.)
