Sea Change

We read "Snow-White and Rose-Red" this past week for Roan's studies, introducing the letters R and B. I really enjoy the Grimm's tales and it was nice to have these sweet postcards on hand.  I want to live with those girls and their mother in their cozy little home!  This was the end of his first letters block and now we'll move to number qualities.  With this move, we're also switching over to Enki.

I'm not one to change horses mid-stream, but I really missed the depth and spirit that the Enki curriculum provides.  I've now seen many of the other Waldorf-inspired options available: Waldorf Essentials, Live Education, Christopherus, and Lavender's Blue.  I feel, more strongly than ever, that Enki is the most complete program (formerly) available.  It's a teacher training in a very full, very heavy box.  DVDs to show painting, movement, copper rods, recorder, drawing, handwork, and work with language arts, CDs of songs, and lots of explanations of the pedagogy.

The Lavender's Blue Homeschool materials are great if you are looking for ease of use and planning.  They're very complete for drawing, painting, songs, and extra verses.  The container story does well with introducing form drawing.  But.  I really felt like we needed something more.  I needed four or five days of work instead of three.  I was continually going to my Enki binders to find little extras.  Circles were based on the Enki materials after the others fell flat.  I really missed all the wonderful seasonal songs and verses.

I guess I would say that I love the mood of the Enki experience.  It feels like we are going into a time out of time, reaching in all directions.  It is similar to what Padraic Colum wrote in an introduction to the Pantheon version of Grimm's Fairy Tales:

In the place where the storyteller was, the coming of night was marked as it was not in towns or in modern houses.  It was so marked that it created in the mind a different rhythm.  There had been a rhythm of the day and now there was a rhythm of the night. . .

So yesterday, I had a couple hours to myself and I planned new blocks for Roan.  Two years ago, that would have been a very intimidating task, but it was simple and fun this time around.  I really, really like the alliterative verses provided in the Enki rewrites of the global fairy tales.  For me, I think that really helps with taking hold of the letter sound.  I'm excited to hear the stories again and get back to a familiar rhythm with stories that reach back through the pages of time.