Book 6 from the Life Skills for the Young Lakota series is designed for sixth graders but can be used for other grades as well.
This continues the systematic approach of health and healing to education, aiming to nurture the whole child through a culturally relevant lens. It is designed to address the unique needs of young Lakota children, incorporating traditional wisdom with modern educational practices. This curriculum aims to build resilience and self-esteem while also teaching practical life skills for our children to thrive.
– Exploring the changes of adolescents in the four bodies
– Continued education on how to break the cycle of addiction
– Choose life over death; how to respond to bullying; tools for depression; tools to create healthy self-esteem; and learning to see the sacredness of life around you.
– Strengthen Lakota identity and language
– Developing a positive approach to life
– Promote healthy life choices
– Whole-body medicine wheel approach, viewing each of us in four parts; the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental aspects of ourselves that we refer to as “bodies.”
– Helping the adolescent to understand that each “body” is equality important to educate, nurture and develop in order to be able to walk a balanced life.
Physical health: nutrition, sleep, hygiene, exercise, teeth health, disease prevention, they start to learn about mapping a journey to good health, our relationship to Mother Earth, boundaries to protect us, how drugs and alcohol effects of physical body
Emotional health: identifying and expressing feelings, dealing with trauma, tools for healthy relationships, avoiding gossip and bullying, how to deal with strong emotions, the importance of healing emotional wounds, understanding codependency as an addiction
Spiritual health: developing the values of our ancestors – generosity, courage, fidelity, fortitude, truthfulness, truth, and wisdom, the importance of choosing a spiritual path, the medicine of forgiveness, the sacredness of life
Mental health: How to turn our challenges into our strengths, biggest changes in our brain is in adolescents and understanding what is going on, how to develop healthy habits, gratitude for life and the importance of it everyday
Exploring mitakuye Oyasin through the four bodies
The students will go around the medicine wheel 14 times (7 times for the first semester and seven times for the second semester.)
o Opens with Health & Wellness Practices (meditation, tapping, talking circles, journaling) The purpose of this is to help our children get out of stress and survival and to engage their learning brain.
o In Book 6 we hope the students will be reading the lessons together as a group with interactive activities for each lesson
o Incorporates Lakota language words and ancestral wisdom
o All workbooks have a pre and post inventory survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/HVYX8FT) to track the learnings of our children and to see how this curriculum is impacting their thoughts, behaviors and beliefs. Teachers are encouraged to take pre surveys the first week of school and post surveys the last week of school. If at home take the “inventory” at the start and at the end.
*Teacher’s Manual – check out to see what these include. It is designed so any teacher can teach it.
