Circles

Round and round the earth is turning, 
Turning always round to morning,
And from morning round to night.

Enki Kindergarten Songs :: Traditional

I've been thinking a lot about our educational choices lately. The Enki materials talk about Spring being a challenging time for schoolwork, since the warm (and unpredictable) weather pulls our attention elsewhere.  I have certainly seen that in practice!  This is the time to really hold firm to our choices and boundaries, while also adding in some flexibility.  Homeschooling, as we do it, is holistic.  The whole of life brings the chance to learn and grow.  We do have set lessons times, every morning at 9:00 AM, but we also recognize the life presents us with many options that fit together.  We (myself very much included) are learning to balance whimsy and structure.

Things have been so funny lately, so much going on around us in the greater world and on our little street, that it has been easy to be distracted.  The more distracted I grow, the more challenging things become, and the less certain I feel about things.  It's a chain reaction that is also self-feeding.  It has been easy to feel like I am not doing so well at my work as a mother and a teacher.  I'll be honest--I've felt terrible about things in the past few weeks.

I've been working hard at trying to shift both things and thoughts since then.   In addition to working on improving our home to make it more useful and pleasant, I've simply kept going with what needed to be done.  Willow has been learning place value and working on reading the stories in Hay for My Ox.  Roan and Laurel have been listening to kindergarten fairy tales.  I've made an extra effort to encourage puppet plays, which we had let fall by the wayside.  We've all kept moving together and resting together.  The rest is just as important as the moving, I think. 

But circles.  This was about circles, wasn't it?  See, I am going off track again.  Perhaps it is fitting that I do!  I feel something so special when we all join hands and sing "Round and Round" on weekday mornings.  It stirs something within me that is so healing and comforting.  We need to know, over and over, that the world keeps turning and beginning again.  We grownups need filters from this overwhelming, information-saturated world just as much as our children do!  It may sound selfish to say so, but it is very true for me, being a sensitive person.  There are times that I really wish I could just turn off my feelings.

This video, in particular, captures why our family made the choice for Waldorf Education.  It helps to think of a spiraling curriculum that spans the years.  I am really looking forward to it!  Little things like this renew me and offer me some refreshment when I am feeling worn.  They give me focus when the picture is blurry and emotional.  I also turn to my bookshelf when I am at a loss for motivation or in a particularly frustrating tangle.  I guess the energy has been building for a time and the fever broke this past week and I now I am working on putting all the pieces back together, in addition to finding nourishing ways and spaces once more.

I wanted to share this sweet photo of Roan and Laurel together, reading the Alfie Out of Doors book.  Have you seen these?  The little fellow is younger than Roan, probably, but so dear with his little sister, Annie Rose.  They play so creatively, with boxes and little found bits, in their lush backyard garden and the English countryside.  As Willow has left early childhood, Roan and Laurel are often in their own world of play.  It is so sweet to see, even though it also means then end of a very special time of only very young children.

Well, another morning has come.  Heavy rain and floods are in the forecast.  I guess that will make it easy to focus here at home, though I think walks with umbrellas are certainly in order.  The children were saying just last night how they loved the smell of rain.  Wait until they see the giant pond that has shown up in our neighborhood!