![[The River Houses]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/arms-icon-100x100.png "The River Houses"){kind=icon}
“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 the Martin Luther King holiday.)
📖 Homeschool Language & Literature: Easy Lessons for the Whole Year
Thou hast taught me, Silent River!
Many a lesson, deep and long;
Thou hast been a generous giver;
I can give thee but a song.
Great homeschool teaching tips and easy little lessons on language, literature, and poetry from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Subscribe to our free homeschool newsletter to get posts like these delivered right to your mailbox every week, and print your own homeschool poetry calendar for the whole year on our main River Houses calendar page. 😊
❡ Here, said the year: This collection of Language & Literature posts also includes our regular series of Homeschool Poems-of-the-Week. 🖋
🖋 ⛸ WONDERFUL WORDS: A Winter Poem for Homeschool Dads
“She thinks she’ll never / be so happy, for who else will find her graceful, / find her perfect, skate with her / in circles outside the emptied rink forever?” (Our paternal homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Gail Mazur, for all homeschool fathers.)
🎵 🎭 TWELFTH NIGHT and the End of Homeschool Holiday Music Month
![[Twelfth Night]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/twelfth-night-stamp-2016-150x100.jpg)
“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.)
🖋 ❄️ WONDERFUL WORDS: “What so soon will wake and grow”
“They could not grasp it if they knew, / What so soon will wake and grow / Utterly unlike the snow.” (Our hopeful homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Philip Larkin, for all things born in January.)
🖋 🔔 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 in your homeschool.)
🖋 🍻 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.)
🗡♗ HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Murder in the Cathedral
Take ten minutes today to teach your students the story of Archbishop Thomas Becket, whose murder on the 29th of December 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
![[Santa]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/santa-stamp-1972-96x150.jpg)
“The children were nestled all snug in their beds; / While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.” (Our festive homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Clement Clarke Moore, for Christmas Eve of course!)
🎵 ❄️ HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: In the Bleak Midwinter
![[Holiday Music]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/holiday-music-150x100.jpg)
“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.)
🖋 🍂 WONDERFUL WORDS: The End of a Season
“The leaves are all dead on the ground, / Save those that the oak is keeping / To ravel them one by one / And let them go scraping and creeping / Out over the crusted snow, / When others are sleeping.” (Our pensive homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Frost, for the end of fall.)
🖋 📖 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Birthday to Emily Dickinson!
![[Emily Dickinson]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/dickinson-stamp-1971-96x150.jpg)
“He ate and drank the precious Words — / His Spirit grew robust.” (Our literary homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for her upcoming birthday.)
🎵 🎄 HOLIDAY MUSIC MONTH: What Sweeter Music
“Dark and dull night, fly hence away, / And give the honor to this day, / That sees December turned to May.” (A modern Christmas masterpiece, with ancient words by Robert Herrick and new music by John Rutter, for Homeschool Holiday Music Month.)
🖋 🗡 WONDERFUL WORDS: The Hunter Home From the Hill
“’Tis evening on the moorland free, / The starlit wave is still: / Home is the sailor from the sea, / The hunter from the hill.” (Our peaceful homeschool poem-of-the-week, from A.E. Housman, for the beginning of Orion Term.)
📖 🦦 LOUISA MAY ALCOTT Gets a Visit From Horace the Otter
![[Alcott Stamp 1993]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/alcott-stamp-1993-118x150.jpg)
Our River Houses homeschool mascot, Horace the Otter, remembers the author of the popular American novel Little Women (1868) on the anniversary of her birth.
🖋 🦃 WONDERFUL WORDS: Delicious “Thanksgiving Magic”
“Oh, some like magic made by wands, / And some read magic out of books, / And some like fairy spells and charms / But I like magic made by cooks!” (Our delicious homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Rowena Bastin Bennett, for Thanksgiving!)
🇺🇸 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Eight Score and One Year Ago
![[Gettysburg Stamp 1948]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/gettysburg-stamp-1948-150x95.jpg)
“What place is this? Where are we now?” (Marking the anniversary of the Gettysburg Address, with help from Ken Burns and Carl Sandburg.)
🖋 🌠 WONDERFUL WORDS: Of Poems and Meteors
“Stars, I have seen them fall, / But when they drop and die / No star is lost at all / From all the star-sown sky.” (Our sublunary homeschool poem-of-the-week, from A.E. Housman, for the annual Leonid meteor shower.)
🖋 🕊 THE ELEVENTH DAY of the Eleventh Month: We Will Remember Them
![[For the Fallen]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/binyon-stamp-150x150.jpg)
“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: / Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. / At the going down of the sun and in the morning / We will remember them.” (Our commemorative homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Laurence Binyon, for Veterans Day and Armistice Day.)
🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS: America’s Choosing Day
“These stormy gusts and winds waft precious ships.” (Our electoral homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Walt Whitman, for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.)
👻 HOMESCHOOL SPOOKYDAYS: Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore”
![[Edgar Allan Poe Stamp 2019]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/poe-stamp-2009-95x150.jpg)
Light a candle, turn out the lights, and let Edgar Allan Poe entertain you and your homeschool students this Halloween.
👑 “FROM THIS DAY to the ending of the world”
“This day is call’d the feast of Crispian.” (Celebrate some Shakespearean history in your home academy on this St. Crispin’s Day.)
⚔️ “THIS STORY shall the good man teach his son“
“He that shall live this day and see old age, will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours, and say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispin’s.’” (A homeschool toast to offer from this day to the ending of the world.)
🖋 🌅 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): Turning Toward the Morning
“If I had a thing to give you, / I would tell you one more time / That the world is always turning / Toward the morning.” (Our reassuring homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Gordon Bok, for late October.)
🖋 🍏 🍎 WONDERFUL WORDS: After Apple-Picking
![[Apple Barrels]](https://riverhouses.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/apple-picking-150x100.jpg)
“I am overtired / Of the great harvest I myself desired.” (Our dreamy homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Frost, for apple season.)
🎵 🍎 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): My Orchard in Linden Lea
“I be free to go abroad / Or take again my homeward road / To where for me the apple tree / Do lean down low in Linden Lea.” (An extra pomological homeschool poem-of-the-week, from William Barnes and Ralph Vaughan Williams, for apple season and Vaughan Williams’ birthday.)
🐚 WONDERFUL WORDS: “The Frosts were her condition”
“The Tyrian would not come / Until the North — invoke it.” (Our imperial homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for all late bloomers.)
