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You are here: Home > Homeschool Language & Literature

📖 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.

— Longfellow, “To the River Charles”

Great homeschool teaching tips and easy little lessons on language, literature, and poetry from the River Houses Homeschool Network. Add your name to our free River Houses mailing list 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. 🖋

🗓 HOMESCHOOL CALENDARS: Thirty days hath September . . .

28 September 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“. . . April, June, and November.” (There’s no better week than this to teach your students the ancient calendrical verse that every young homeschooler should know.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, The Homeschool Year

🖋 🍃 WONDERFUL WORDS: “Our Summer made her light escape”

22 September 2023 by Bob O'Hara

[Emily Dickinson Homestead]

“And thus, without a Wing / Or service of a Keel / Our Summer made her light escape / Into the Beautiful.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for the end of summer.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week, The Homeschool Year

🖋 🦋 WONDERFUL WORDS: The Tuft of Flowers

15 September 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“‘Men work together,’ I told him from the heart, / ‘Whether they work together or apart.’” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Frost, for late-summer mowing, the Monarch butterfly migration, and all of us working together, whether we work together or apart.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🍁 WONDERFUL WORDS: Song at the Beginning of Autumn

8 September 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“But I am carried back against / My will into a childhood where / Autumn is bonfires, marbles, smoke; / I lean against my window fenced / From evocations in the air. / When I said autumn, autumn broke.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Elizabeth Jennings, for the coming fall.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🏡 “A HANDSOME HOUSE to lodge a friend” (For a New Homeschool Year)

1 September 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“I’ve often wished that I had clear, / For life, six hundred pounds a year, / A handsome house to lodge a friend, / A river at my garden’s end.” (Introducing our first homeschool poem-of-the-week for the new school year, from Horace via Jonathan Swift — and it’s our official River Houses motto, too!)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🏡 ENVOY: A Living River by the Door (To Close the Homeschool Year)

22 August 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Go, little book, and wish to all / Flowers in the garden, meat in the hall, / A living river by the door, / A nightingale in the sycamore.” (Our farewell poem-of-the-week, from Robert Louis Stevenson, for the end of the River Houses homeschool year.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week, The Homeschool Year

🖋 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS: “Poor, middle-agèd summer!”

15 August 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Poor, middle-agèd summer! Vain this show! / Whole fields of golden-rod cannot offset / One meadow with a single violet.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Helen Hunt Jackson, for late summer.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🌠 WONDERFUL WORDS: A Star in a Stoneboat

8 August 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“From following walls I never lift my eye, / Except at night to places in the sky / Where showers of charted meteors let fly.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Robert Frost, for this month’s Perseid meteor shower.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Astronomy, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🍻 WONDERFUL WORDS: To the Meteor Rolling Home

1 August 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Of thee we think, in a ring we link; / To the shearer of ocean’s fleece we drink, / And the Meteor rolling home.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Herman Melville, for his birthday and for this month’s Perseid meteor shower.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🔔 WONDERFUL WORDS: As Kingfishers Catch Fire

22 July 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s / Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Gerard Manley Hopkins, for his birthday and for the halcyon days of summer.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🐝 WONDERFUL WORDS: “Answer, July”

15 July 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Where is the Bee — / Where is the Blush — / Where is the Hay?” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for July.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

📖 🖋 THOREAU’S BIRTHDAY and Homeschool Journaling

12 July 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” (Happy birthday to the great American writer Henry David Thoreau, born on this day in 1817. Check him out at your local library this week.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Books & Libraries, Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature

🖋 🕊 WONDERFUL WORDS: Liberty and Peace

8 July 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“As from the East th’ illustrious King of Day, / With rising Radiance drives the Shades away, / So Freedom comes array’d with Charms divine, / And in her Train Commerce and Plenty shine.” (Our hopeful homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Phillis Wheatley, for independent America.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🇺🇸 🥂 HOMESCHOOL TOASTING TRADITIONS the Whole Year Round

3 July 2023 by Bob O'Hara

Why not begin the delightful tradition of offering a toast around your family table each week. This classic Independence Day toast is a perfect way to get started.

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature

🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS: William Emerson on “A Nation’s Strength”

1 July 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Not gold but only men can make / A people great and strong.” (Our patriotic homeschool poem-of-the-week, from William Ralph Emerson, for Independence Day.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🚂 WONDERFUL WORDS: “It was late June”

22 June 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“And for that minute a blackbird sang / Close by, and round him, mistier, / Farther and farther, all the birds / Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.” (Our homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Edward Thomas, for late June and the birds of summer.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Language & Literature, Homeschool Natural History, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🏰 HAPPY FATHER’S DAY WEEK from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

15 June 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“A whisper, and then a silence: / Yet I know by their merry eyes / They are plotting and planning together / To take me by surprise.” (Our paternal homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, for Father’s Day, the third Sunday in June.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🇺🇸 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “O! say can you see?”

8 June 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam, / In full glory reflected now shines on the stream — / ‘Tis the star-spangled banner, O! long may it wave / O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave.” (Our American homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Francis Scott Key, for Flag Day, the 14th of June.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Arts & Music, Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

📚 LEARNING THE LIBRARY: The Literary 800s

6 June 2023 by Bob O'Hara

Explore your local library and the whole universe of knowledge with our homeschool tour of the Dewey Decimal System. This month: The Literary 800s.

Filed Under: Discovering Dewey, Homeschool Books & Libraries, Homeschool Language & Literature

🖋 🌞 WONDERFUL WORDS (and Music!): “Sumer is i-cumin in”

1 June 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Loudly sing, cuckoo!” (Our ancient homeschool poem-of-the-week, anonymously, for the beginning of our summer term.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Arts & Music, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🖋 🎂 WONDERFUL WORDS: Happy Birthday to Walt Whitman

31 May 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich, / Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love, / A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother, / Chair’d in the adamant of Time.” (Happy birthday to the great American poet Walt Whitman, born on this day in 1819.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature

🇺🇸 🖋 “AFTER A HUNDRED YEARS / Nobody knows the Place”

27 May 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“Weeds triumphant ranged / Strangers strolled and spelled / At the lone Orthography / Of the Elder Dead.” (An extra homeschool poem-of-the-week, from Emily Dickinson, for Memorial Day.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week

🇺🇸 🕊 HOMESCHOOL HISTORY: Memorial Day

26 May 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“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.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Arts & Music, Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature

🎓 🎉 HOMESCHOOL MUSIC: Let Us Rejoice!

25 May 2023 by Bob O'Hara

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.

Filed Under: Homeschool Arts & Music, Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature

🎂 HOMESCHOOL HOLIDAYS: Happy Birthday, Ralph! (Emerson, that is)

25 May 2023 by Bob O'Hara

Invite your homeschool students to discover the work of the great American essayist, poet, and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, born this day in 1803.

Filed Under: Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature

🖋 🎓 GRADUATION SEASON: “Set me free to find my calling”

22 May 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“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.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Arts & Music, Homeschool Holidays & History, Homeschool Language & Literature, Poems-of-the-Week, The Homeschool Year

🖋 🌟 WONDERFUL WORDS: Hymn to the North Star

20 May 2023 by Bob O'Hara

“A beauteous type of that unchanging good, / That bright eternal beacon, by whose ray / The voyager of time should shape his heedful way.” (An extra astronomical homeschool poem-of-the-week, from William Cullen Bryant, for Polaris, our Great Star for the month of May.)

Filed Under: Homeschool Astronomy, Homeschool Language & Literature, Monthly Great Stars, Poems-of-the-Week

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