Adventure is a Learning Strategy

...and every adventurer needs a MAP.

Welcome to the heart of the Ceiba Nova experience — where every learner chooses their pace, purpose, and path. Below is a brief example of how this looks for a student. Go to Paths + Tracks to learn more about the flexible formats and learning modes that support our personalized, production-based education model. These are more than just academic tracks — they're dynamic ways to grow, explore, and build a life rooted in curiosity, community, and real-world impact.

All students at Ceiba Nova receive a Mentored Adventure Plan (MAP) — a living document that evolves with them, guiding their personalized learning journey. The MAP reflects each learner’s interests, challenges, and goals while ensuring purpose-aligned progress across core and exploratory domains.

Despite its adventure-centered language, this is essentially an IEP expanded to include interests, self-direction, and deeper student input. It is a dynamic guide that grows with students, charts their evolving interests, and ensures purposeful, reflective learning in all areas of development.

Here is a fictionalized example of a student & some of their MAP possibilities:

Maya is an 11-year-old deeply interested in animals, storytelling, and design. Her MAP (Mentored Adventure Plan) for this cycle reflects a journey across three main trails:

Nature & Environmental Sciences
Story & Worldbuilding
Creative Making & Design

Read below to see some of the paths Maya might choose to explore.

Maya's journey

🌿 Nature & Environmental Sciences Trail 🟢

Badge: Ecosystem Explorer

📌 Project Node: Design and maintain a butterfly habitat using native Costa Rican plants

📁 Artifact: Illustrated habitat journal with life cycle tracking and QR-coded observation entries

🎨 Creative Making & Design Trail 🟡

Badge: Junior Maker

📌 Project Node: Constructed a mini solar oven and used it to bake plantain chips

📁 Artifact: 1-minute tutorial video + photo gallery + student-written “maker zine” on solar cooking in tropical climates

📖 Story & Worldbuilding Trail 🟣

Badge: Worldbuilder: Level 1

📌 Project Node: Write and narrate a short story set in a fictional rainforest civilization

📁 Artifact: Storybook (handbound), plus an audio recording published as a Yoto card for classroom listening

🔗 Cross-Curricular Achievement: ⭐

Integrated Badge:

Problem Solver: Project-Based Thinker 🎯 Awarded for connecting her solar oven project with the story’s fictional culture and designing a fictional energy policy as part of her culminating presentation.

How "less interesting" subjects & areas of struggle might be integrated into Maya's MAP:

🗣️ Spanish (Integrated Across Trails)

Integrated into: Butterfly habitat project + field journals + storytelling

Activity 1: Maya maintains a bilingual observation journal, labeling insects, plants, and life cycle stages in both English and Spanish.

Activity 2: She rewrites her story summary in Spanish and records herself narrating it to share with classmates and visiting families.

Extension: Works with a native speaker or language partner to create a glossary of butterfly-related terms in Spanish and reflects on ecological language differences between English and Spanish.

🌍 Civics (Human Cultures & History Pathway)

Integrated into: Worldbuilding & storytelling project

Focus Area: Environmental policy, cultural values, and community structure in fictional societies

Activity: Maya designs a participatory system of government for her story’s rainforest civilization, modeling decision-making on indigenous community councils and sustainability principles.

Extension: She writes a fictional “Civic Charter” outlining laws related to land use, energy, and environmental justice, comparing them with real-world Costa Rican practices.

Applied Math & Problem Solving

Integrated into: Solar oven project + butterfly habitat journal

Concepts Used: Measurement, surface area, temperature conversion, graphing, and averages

Activity: Maya logs daily temperature ranges inside and outside her solar oven and graphs the data to determine optimal cooking time.

Extension: She calculates the efficiency of her oven over time and compares its performance under various conditions using percentages and ratios.