Our Pagan Curriculum this year

I recognize that this doesn’t apply for most people but I do have a handful of Pagan homeschooling friends that are interested so feel free to skip this if you are not one of them.

The choices for Pagan spiritual education vary widely because there are so many traditions and “flavors” of Paganism to choose from. In my house I am an eclectic Wiccan while my husband is a Druid. I am not knowledgeable enough to teach Druidry so that will be up to my husband.

My goal of teaching this is not to indoctrinate my children but rather to give them an understanding of what their parents’ believe and celebrate. If they choose that it’s not a good fit for them and they wish to study a different religion I will support that. As they get older I plan to teach comparative religions to give them an introduction to what’s out there but I think that they are too young to do that right now.

Since Paganism is nature based, for the most part there is no formal instruction. General nature communing and basic grounding techniques is enough at this age. I don’t formally practice magick on a regular basis so I won’t be teaching that anytime soon. We do have a formal “lesson” on Fridays just to introduce them to the history, the wheel of the year and mythology components. For that we use:

Circle Round: Raising Children in Goddess Traditions– I actually had this book for many years before I even became a parent and have had the companion CD memorized for over a decade. The songs are catchy appealing to kids and we read one of the stories at each Sabbat.  Unfortunately the CD has been out of print for years so it can be hard to find but it’s not necessary to use the book.

D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths
This is rather advanced for my son’s level and even Shammy says it’s too hard but the stories are very good. This was my husband’s introduction to Paganism as a child so he wanted Shammy to read it and gave it to him for his birthday last year. We cover one deity (1-3 pages) per week and I read it to him so he won’t get frustrated with the advanced vocabulary. This is a great intro to mythology better suited for slightly older children.

Growing Up Pagan:  A Workbook for Wiccan Families
I don’t like this workbook. It’s printed on high quality/glossy paper and has some cool graphics but the editing and layout are very amateurish and the content is incomplete (for example, while it lists all 8 sabbats, it doesn’t include information on all of them). I plan to try something else next year including the Rupert’s Tales books.

 

 

Supplemental Sources:
Pooka Pages– this is a free printable available for each of the Sabbats. It includes stories, crafts, a herbalism section, coloring pages and more. It is very versatile and you only have to use the parts that you want. My kids are anti crafts and like their mother, don’t have herbalist inclinations so we use the stories and coloring pages.

Little Pagan Acorns– they have some nice general printables suitable for elementary students.