Welcome

Herb Part of Class:

The objective of this class is for scholars to connect with selected freshly foraged plants. Scholars will engage with the plants using all their senses, intuition and their intellectual knowledge. From this they will explore, How does the plant smell & feel medicinal to them? What does it remind them of or bring up for them? They will record their intuitive thoughts and findings in their herbal journal. 

We will have detailed herbal lessons and cover how our intellectual knowing, our intuition and senses gives major clues of the medicine of the plant. We will also cover how our ancestors may have used these plants for healing. All of these details will be recorded in a provided herbal science journal. Scholars will press the fresh plants being studied into their flower presses. When plants become dried & flatten, the scholars will remove plants from flower presses and use a laminator to laminate freshly pressed plants into their herbal journal.

The Culture part of class:

Together as Melanin Scholars, we study & explore ancient Africa using the book Classical Africa by Dr. Molefi Kete Asante. This semester we will be exploring Nubia, the Kingdom of Kush and Ethiopia,The Gem of Axum. 

We will read a chapter a class and work on the workbook material together. There will be Chapter Activity HW that will be sent home with students, this will be reviewed the following class. In this class, we integrate embodied learning so the children can be fully engaged in their learning experience. This looks like creating art projects, drama skits and watching videos of the parts of Africa being studied.

2 Sections: Herbal and Culture

Herbal

• Gain knowledge of plants and their medicinal uses
• Integrate Plant Intuition & Our Senses
• Detailed Herbal Lesson with freshly foraged plants
• Create a herbal remedy 
• Capture observations in herbal science journal
• Learn new vocabulary & definitions--Spelling Trivia
• Embodied Herbal Learning: Herbal Arts & Crafts & Embodying new vocabulary words & definitions by acting it out
• Included in the class is a Herbal Science Journal
• Press fresh plants using provided Flower Press

Culture

• Included in the class is a Notebook for Printed Classical Africa materials by Dr. Molefi Asante
• Embodied Cultural Learning: Through videos for visual learners & Arts & Crafts for hands on learning
• Working with fellow scholars on group projects
• This Spring we explore: Nubia, Kingdom of Kush & Ethiopia, Kingdom of Axum