Imagine a world where elementary school children grow herbs in a school garden, harvest them and drink herbal tea together mindfully every day.

These children understand the plant cycle from seed to warm belly because they care for the plants at every stage.

Essential Question: While utilizing mindfulness practices, how do we invite our students to form a culture of herbal knowledge from seed to belly?

Purpose: Through a series of weekly lessons, videos, readings, explorations, group conversations and one-on-one consultations, students will familiarize with how to: 

• Incorporate herbal tea + mindfulness practices as a daily practice in the classroom
• Utilize sensory integration as a primary part of their learning process.
• Develop a personal daily mindfulness routine 
• Identify local wild and cultivated medicinal tea plants
• Harvest, dry and formulate tea plants for the whole class community
• Utilize a botanical and herbal action vocabulary to describe and identify specific plants which impart specific actions to the physiology
• Gain an understanding of human physiology and anatomy of the body systems through the lens of the herbal actions in the body. 

Goals, Scope & Sequence

NGSS Standards: The student is engaged in developing a mini-unit to adapt one set of standards, explored during this course, to the appropriate grade level rigor. One-on-one mentoring is provided by the course instructors as an effort to support students in adapting the lessons with acumen.

The Tea Project addresses the following NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas

• LS1A Structure and Function
• LS1B Growth and Development of Organisms
• LS2A Interdependent Relationships in Ecosystems
• LS2B Cycles of Matter and Energy Transfer in Ecosystems
• LS3A Inheritance and Variation of Traits
• LS4B Natural Selection
• LS4C Adaptation
• ESS2D Weather and Climate
• ESS3A Natural Resources

Social Emotional Learning: The Tea Project curriculum is based in nature, awareness of the body, and NGSS standards. The Tea Project provides a framework for a daily routine of 

• Climate Building Activities and Initiatives
• Social Emotional Learning 
• Character Building Education 

Teachers engaged in The Tea Project with their class community provide Social Emotional Learning opportunities through the following practices, as defined by CASEL to address SEL Core Competencies:

Mindful embodiment: Breath, Mindfulness, Body Awareness

Sensory-Integrated Awareness: Tea Preparation and Drinking, Sensory Activities

Conversational Practice: Listening, Sharing, Taking Turns, and Reflection

Immersion in Nature: Literacy of the Landscape through Wild & Cultivated Plant Identification and Harvest