b - Enki Materials for Older Children
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The Enki approach is focused on the life of the child and so is applicable from early childhood through all the grades - and into adulthood; there is an overall description of curricular content and methodology through high school on the web site (homeschools/the grades). However, because Enki is a developmental approach, it is extremely important to keep in mind that moving into the higher grades is not a matter of taking what is done in Grades One and Two and expanding it or using different content.
As described on the web site, growth is a process of metamorphosis and, therefore, teaching developmentally is a matter of shifting both method and content to meet each new developmental stage. The Enki approach shifts significantly in grades three to five, again in junior, and yet again in senior high school. Each builds on but is quite different from what has gone before - and very different from Waldorf. The same is true for early childhood - kindergarten is very different from Grade One and preschool is very different from kindergarten.
At this time we have full materials through Grade Three, and are in the process materials of completing the guides for Grades four and Five. Over the next few years we hope to have the Resource Libraries through Grade Five completed. However, because life has its own plans and timetables - we have no way to project or promise completion dates.
All the Enki Guides are structured to help you see how a given outlook translates into activity/learning. Our goal is to help you understand the ins and outs of learning sufficiently well that you can draw from any curriculum materials and your own experience and still have an integrated, whole experience, and not a scattered hodgepodge. Our intent is to open doors to the world around, not to close them.
Since we do not yet have Resource Material for the older grades (4 and up) once you have studied the guides and are clear about the type of material and how to present it, you have to do the research and gathering of actual stories, songs, activities, practice sheets, and so on.
Anyone choosing to use Enki in the younger Grades should do so because they want the base of a thorough, broad and deep Global Cultures program. This program is unique and we know of no one who wished they had started with another approach simply because they needed to switch or become part of the research team in the older grades.
However, it is important that people decide what curriculum they want with full knowledge that, while we are working on materials for the upper grades as quickly as possible, they may need to do their own research and supplementation as the children reach Grade Four and up.
If one does not wish to work with our “in process” birthing process, one can easily move from Enki Grade Three to a Waldorf program - your child will have a broader base in cultural studies and may be a bit ahead academically, but there should be no real difficulties.