d - What We Offer

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We have been receiving many questions about materials and I would like to be as clear as I can about how Enki works and what you can expect. In the following pages we describe what we currently offer in full, what we currently offer, and what we hope to offer in the future. It is important to realize that we are a small company working on a unique and innovative program. Basically, we have to roll with the punches life “offers,” and we cannot promise completion or release dates. We do our best to release one new Grade in full each year or two, however, life has its own plans an this is not always possible.

What is most important is to know that for whatever years you are with us, both you and your child will receive an opportunity to explore a broad, deep, and integrated approach to learning that is not available elsewhere. That will serve as an experiential and conceptual guide for all your work in the future. And it will provide a solid base for any other program you may go on to use. Basically, there is a lot to gain by working with Enki while you can, and nothing to lose.

Teaching Guides

We currently have Teaching Guides through Grade Three available to the public. We hope and expect to have the new Grades Four and Five available to all before long.

The Guides for all ages are helpful to gaining a deeper understanding of the “how,” what,” and “why,” You get a great deal of information on what the curricular content is, how all the parts weave together, and why we have made the choices we have. As a result, parents and classroom teachers do use the Guides for all grades as an anchor in choosing what to teach and how to approach it, whether or not Resource Materials for those grades are available. Because the Guides are so detailed, the user has the information they need to draw from the many resources available in the world - including one’s own life experience. Details on the older grades can be found in these files in section, folder 5, What Children is Enki For?; article b: Enki in the Older Grades.

We do understand that it may seem as though it is a waste to have the younger grades’ Guides when your child is older. However, the way the Guides are structured, the older books will be meaningless and frustrating without the earlier ones. The older ones are full of references to principles, studies, methods, and schedules that are thoroughly described in the early years - we do not repeat those basics, although they are needed to understand the older materials.

There will be people who do not need or want the kind of support offered in the Guides and for them it may be wiser to skip the Guides and just get Resource Books; that is why we will soon be selling them separately in our Enki Crafts and Creations store (do keep an eye out for the package price break because at some point in any set of Grade Level Resource books you will have spent enough to have the whole package). However, if you want or need the Guidance, the older set would be useless without the younger. Therefore, the Guides can only be purchased in sequence.

Along with the structure of the Guides making it necessary to view them as a set, any given child will have aspects of all the earlier years alive within him - we are one being. As someone who has taught the full range of grades for 41 years (preschool through Jr. High), I feel very strongly that a deep understanding of what came before is vital to really meeting the child where he is. When I have taught Middle and Jr. High-schoolers I have found that my knowledge of the younger child’s development and of how the material itself builds on each preceding year, was critical. I often drew from and adapted earlier learning techniques and materials when I spotted a hole in learning or development of the older child. As a result, when teachers do the full Enki training ALL of them get an in-depth course in all the ages. All Early Childhood teachers are expected do a short internship in the Grades, and all Grades teachers are expected to do an internship in the Kindergarten - such is a holistic approach. So, while I do understand that it looks like a waste, the real waste would be to buy the older grade guides without the younger ones; you would be rightfully angry, so it is not something we offer.

Resource Libraries:

The Guides do not include the Resource materials (actual songs, stories, activities, worksheets, etc.) for any grade. We have complete Resource Packages for Kindergarten, Grade One, Grade Two, and Grade Three.

We will continue on through the grades, hopefully with one grade per year or two. The Resource Libraries include an enormous amount of original and innovative material to use with the child; we provide far more than could be used in any given year so that you, the parent in the trenches, can pick and choose from the developmentally appropriate, multicultural material just what will best serve your particular child and family - that is why these books are called Libraries; the point is to choose, not to use it all! Have a look at tables of contents and sample pages form each book at our main website (www.enkieducation.org).

And when the children outgrow the materials?

What is probably of most importance as one considers jumping in with Enki, is that you can work with Enki for whatever grades we have and then shift to Live Education or a like curriculum, or create your own, should we be unable to keep ahead of you. It will mean that for all the years you are with us, you will have a more in-depth understanding of the why’s and wherefore’s, and, for the years for which we do have Resource Libraries, you will have a lot more resource material. You will also have a far broader array of multicultural material and material for music and movement work than you would get anywhere else. We also offer opportunities for more skills work somewhat earlier than Waldorf, but what you use is a matter of what the child is ready for.

Basically, if Enki falls behind your children and you need to seek elsewhere, you as the parent will notice the shift in that you will have to gather and create more material (covering all subject areas, including skill worksheets and the like), and you will notice the lack of multicultural studies available out there. But, depending on what you are able to gather, the children will not feel major differences. It is not hard to shift to some of the Waldorf programs, and the alternative is to start with the gathering and creating now.

No other curriculum provider offers either the amount or the variety we do; Live Education starts you on many areas (not all) but there is a great deal of gathering and writing for you to do all the way along, and the multiculturalism is brought through the lens of Anthroposophy (see EE files: Philosophy/Underlying Philosophical Differences: Enki and Waldorf).

From our perspective and that of most of our users, there is no loss in using Enki for the grades it is available - only gain.