FAQs

Origins Conscious Curriculum is a comprehensive and new paradigm approach to education that guides and grows a child’s connection to their emotional, social, and environmental consciousness. We are dedicated to the whole child: mind, body and spirit.  

The holistic educational content and instruction seeks to answer the questions: “Who Are We?” “Who Lives Here?”  “What’s Happening?” and “How Are We Connected?”. These are answered through our essential understandings, 4 over-arching Focal Points of learning: Internal, External, Metaphysical, and Interconnection.

Through our Conscious Curriculum, a child will develop critical-thinking skills toward solving real-world problems, while gaining confidence in their identity, meaning, and purpose, in addition to academic skill sets. Creating the ‘Origins Effect’.

Each month we will be releasing lesson plans for you to use! We have single day Lesson Plans that are meant to be completed in one day, and we have Studies that include an introduction lesson, along with additional extension ideas that are designed to be worked on over the course of a full week. 

Between the single day Lesson Plans and the week-long Studies, you have all the lessons needed for an entire month. You can use the lesson plans however you want—for more emergent learning or you can follow our pre-filled planners day-by-day for full guidance. We suggest using the organizational Planners we have included to create structure and help plan the order of which lessons and studies you want to use. *Flexibility and adaptability is key. 

If you are beginning the school year with Origins Curriculum, or would like more guidance around the first four weeks of school, please for further guidance.

Each lesson can be adapted by altering the materials used, the time frame it takes to complete the lesson, as well as how the lesson is explained to the child. 

For example, if there is a finger painting lesson, but a child is very opposed to touching the paint or getting their hands dirty, you can take seran wrap and place it over the paint so the child can still move it around and create without touching the paint directly. We have included some direction for lesson adaptations in our daily lesson plans. The lessons are written for age 4 and we provide adaptations for older children (5 years) and younger children (3 years). If you are still struggling to adapt any of our lessons, our customer support is always more than happy to troubleshoot with you and come up with an alternative solution for you and your child.

The lesson plans are numbered in a suggested order. We have also plugged our daily lesson plans and studies into our weekly planner for further support. You can easily see how we might organize and plan the curriculum throughout the school year. With Origins Curriculum you can always mix and match as you choose! We do this to encourage emergent learning*, so that you can meet your child where they are at. You can hand-pick a lesson specifically chosen for your child to keep them engaged, based on their specific interests and how they are feeling that day. 

*Emergent Learning is defined as a process where teachers or parents plan activities and projects based on the specific group of children or child that they are working with, taking into account their skills, needs, and interests.

Beginning with your planner can be a little overwhelming, so we have gone ahead and filled out a planner for you! You can use this planner to work with your students on the lesson plans. We also have blank planners for you to use and create your own system of learning.

Circle is a time to gather together as a class. Depending on need, this can be in smaller groups or one large group. Circle is fairly open-ended, and can consist of more than one activity if children are engaged. We encourage you to hold multiple circles throughout the day. You can use this time to give children a heads up about things or lead into introductions or discussions that relate to the upcoming activity or lesson. 

Using songs, callbacks, chimes, or other signals are a great way to notify children ahead of time. Team building activities or educational games can simultaneously build academic skills and strengthen relationships. Sometimes circle time is for reviewing what we have learned, grounding ourselves together, or focusing on a particular skill or lesson. Circle time is supposed to be engaging and dynamic. It’s a time to strengthen healthy relationships with ourselves, our classmates, and our mentors. 

Circles are also a great time to encourage and practice gratitude. The following are a few examples of what you could do for circle time:

• Any Origins Curriculum Daily Lesson Plan, Study, or Exploratory Unit 
• Games: Simon Says, Red Light Green Light, Eye-Spy, etc. 
• Team Building Activities 
• Songs
• Obstacle Course
• Stories
• Role Playing
• Science Experiments 
• Cooking Experiments 
• Art/Music/Movement
• Yoga
• Calendar/Weather/Review Origins Posters

The weekly planner is an organizer that can help create structure and flow for the week. It can help you build upon lessons or concepts throughout the week, and remind you to revisit them too! The weekly planner has less space, see one of our pre-filled weekly planners for an example on how to fill it out. The weekly planner is used to create a basic “plan.” It is rare that we use this document to a “T;” we encourage you to be flexible and adaptable. Having alternative activities or games are necessary for any teacher to ensure that children stay engaged.

Absolutely, refer to it as much as you can! After a little while it will become second nature. You can review the Mother Mandala during circle times, before certain lessons or to help guide children to connect certain concepts. This can also be a great way to introduce the shift into a new season and Focal Point.

Focal Points help guide Origins Curriculum through the seasons. They break up the year into four quadrants of learning—Internal (August, September, October), External (November, December, January), Metaphysical (Febrauary, March, April), and Interconnection (May, June, July). The seasons influence Origins lesson plans and help to create a steady flow throughout the year. For the full breakdown of the Focal Points

The Feelings Scale is a simple tool that can help children to reflect and consider how they are feeling, increase awareness and practice using healthy tools like breathing, and return to wellness or a balanced state. The scale is color coded and begins with green (a joyful and positive state) and as you move up incrementally, the color changes to yellow, to orange, and then red (feeling upset or angry). 

Encourage children to mark how they are feeling throughout the day, perhaps upon arriving at school and again before departing. You can use clothespins with student’s names or name tags with sticky tack, so children can rate how they’re feeling on the feelings scale. Children can use this feelings scale at any point to communicate, non-verbally, how they are feeling. We do not always have the words, but there are many other ways that children can communicate how they feel. The Feelings Scale will become an essential tool that helps children express their emotions.