Our Curriculum & Approach

  • Curiosity and imagination are students' innate & powerful learning tools.

    • By engaging curiosity and imagination through LLE Curriculum & Programming, students can become empowered to be environmental stewards and build healthy relationships with themselves through interacting with nature.

    • Mindfulness catalyzes students’ abilities to become fully present with nature and themselves, regardless of their environment.

    • Supporting teachers creates a supportive & sustainable environment. Working to educate students requires that we provide support to their primary instructors.

    Lauren Little Edutainment works directly with teachers and instructional coaches to best integrate environmental topics with hands-on learning that directly ties into existing curriculum.

  • The curriculum framework ultimately conceives of a collaboratively designed system that views a client’s school community as an ecology within itself. The goal is to create self-sufficient, sustainable student driven programming that garners community support.

    Lessons are structured to mimic the principles of scientific inquiry and investigation. Topics are covered through focusing attention on multiple intelligences, interactive development of critical thinking, and channeling the inherent creativity of play.

    Each session begins with an engaging phenomenon meant to introduce the topic for the day and mindfully set the intention for the remainder of time.

    Lessons incorporate characters as a means to introduce youth to environmental concepts as anthropomorphized and relatable beings. Chants and storytelling serve as tools for retention of essential knowledge within each topic.

    For individual sessions, Guiding Questions will lead the discussion and serve as the “hypothesis” within each topic.

    These questions provide a lens through which to approach the information and for youth to examine their interpretations fully.

  • What does it mean to be a Gaia’s Guide? It is to have a deep compassion for our mother earth and recognize the pressing need to use that compassion to live in harmony and appreciation of the living world around us. Each day we must be aware of our surroundings and wake up to the interconnection of our choices and actions.

    This Lauren Little Edutainment, Urban Agriculture program, teaches students about agriculture and encourages them to have a personal relationship with our earth.

    The topics covered for any given Gaia’s Guides group will vary depending on group size, how many sessions will be taking place, age, and time of year. However, a series of core topics will be integrated into any group’s experiences:

    ● Growing Food

    ● Tree Tenders

    ● Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose

    ● Pollinators Powers

    ● What to Eat to Feel Complete

    ● Preserving Food

    ● Healthy Herbs

    Groups that participate for four or more total sessions will have a Garden Party as a closing celebration. This will serve to review the concepts covered and will take the form of a group-prepared meal, a field trip (to a city park, local farm, market etc), or a Fun Fair.

    Objectives

    1. Educate youth on the natural world, encompassing the following disciplines:

    a. Biology

    b. Botany

    c. Ecology

    d. Philosophy

    2. Empower youth and families to participate in sustainable environmental justice.

    3. Develop networks across organizations for increased collaboration to address issues in racism, environment and health.

    Any lesson is structured to mimic the principles of scientific inquiry.

    Topics will be covered through focused attention to multiple intelligences, interactive development of critical thinking, and channeling the inherent creativity of play.

    Each session begins with an engaging phenomenon meant to introduce the topic for the day and mindfully set the intention for the remainder of time.

    Lessons incorporate characters as a means to introduce youth to environmental concepts as anthropomorphized and relatable beings. Chants and storytelling serve as tools for retention of essential knowledge within each topic.

    For individual sessions, Guiding Questions will lead the discussion and serve as the “hypothesis” within each topic. These questions provide a lens through which to approach the information and for youth to examine their interpretations fully.

    Evaluation

    Youth will have a Nature Journal for the duration of their time as a Gaia’s Guide. Nature Journals will be used to record a variety of exercises that will imitate but circumvent the at times inhibiting pre- and post-test structure of assessing retention.

    These exercises will again follow the multiple intelligences approach and allow youth to appropriately document their understanding of any given topic.

    Lauren Little Edutainment LLC will provide clients, staff and educators an unique program overview and debrief to assess metrics and learning objectives.

    ©Lauren Little & Emily Petersen-2014

  • Gaia’s Guides Workshop Topics

    For a series, or individual sessions. All original puppets, stories and illustrations were created by Lauren Little & Emily Petersen

    Topic 1: Tree Tenders

    Taking care of your environment begins with a shift in perspective on the world around us.

    Topic 2: Trash, Recycling, and Composting

    Learning about the waste we produce on a daily basis is an excellent tool to understand the environmental impact of our consumption.

    Topic 3: Pollinators

    Honey bees, birds, and butterflies are some of the crucial pollinators who make our diverse environment thrive and survive.

    Topic 4: Growing Food

    As intimidating as it may sound, growing your own food—for someone any age—is a relatively simple project.

    Topic 5: What to Eat to Feel Complete

    We will learn about the different plants and herbs that can help keep your body healthy and strong.

    Topic 6: Great Grains

    In our increasingly food-conscious society, there are unlimited resources available teaching the benefits of eating plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables.

    Topic 7: Preserving Food

    What happens to providing your own food when the growing season is over?

    Topic 8: What’s in our Food?

    We all put food in our bodies on a daily basis, but what is really in our spoonful?

    Topic 9: Herb Healing

    Herbs serve as flavor for our food as well as medicine for our bodies. By growing, tasting, smelling, and cooking with herbs, students will gain a familiarity with different herbs and come to understand their importance.

    *Topics are adjusted to fit specific program needs

    ©Lauren Little & Emily Petersen 2014 -2022 All Rights Reserved