

An AME School Day
Welcome to our dynamic and engaging learning community, where we prioritize setting a positive tone for each day! We off our mornings with intentional self-care practices that include journaling, moving our bodies, meditating, and setting personal intentions. This mindful approach allows us to bring awareness to what we are grateful for, fostering a sense of appreciation and positivity.Following this enriching self-care routine, we gather for our morning meeting where we delve into the fascinating world of neuroscience and its relationship with our growth mindset. We encourage our learners to engage in inquiry-based discussions, which help uncover the science behind learning and ignite deeper curiosity. In our morning meeting we are developing executive functions by planning and prioritizing our day. Our goal is to empower young minds to manage their resources effectively, take risks, and embrace challenges. As the day progresses, we focus on preparing both our bodies and environment for the tasks ahead. Learners and facilitators collaborate to discover and implement effective strategies for personal development while also setting collaborative goals with peers. We emphasize the importance of using neuroscience to optimize learning through activities such as taking brain breaks, staying hydrated, moving, and employing strategies that enhance learning and memory retention. Finally, we come together as a community to share our experiences, strategies, resources, and progress. This collaborative sharing not only strengthens our connections but also fosters a culture of continuous growth and support within our learning environment.
Below is a dojo report from an AME school with students ages 5-10.
Inspired Artists May 27, 2024 /We had a super productive day today. We started with self-care and it was my turn to  choose and I selected a tai chi for beginners. For meditation, we talked a little bit about how to relax our mind with deep breathing and then we practiced mind and heart coherence using visualization and then we took turns sharing what we are grateful for in the last few minutes we tried to capture this feeling of gratitude and expanded from within us. Before our morning meeting, we watched a short video from Jim Kwik who is a brain expert and coach . We heard him talk about the importance of brain breaks, which is some thing that we practice here regularly, but it’s always nice to hear from an experienced expert. He helped us understand primacy and recency and why brain breaks are important for learning and retention and how we should do them. In our morning meeting, we reviewed some of the options for this week and then we jumped right in with a group activity working on our play script. The play will not be conducted in public. It is something that we are doing as an exercise to help us solidify what we are learning about our artists so that at the art museum and gallery, we have a very firm understanding of our artists and the different art styles. We will record the play. Hopefully it will go well and we can upload it onto our YouTube channel and people can see it when they come to the Art Museum and Gallery. we focused on science have been conducting experiments, but we needed to write some description cards so that when people come to the art museum and gallery, they will be able to understand how how we connected science to art and the students did an excellent job describing their experiments and we had one experiment that needed to be finished and it was successfully completed today. After lunch, we had math and ELA classes . In math students are learning about place value and understanding measurements. They conducted a bit of research to understand the size and value of some of the paintings they want to highlight at the art museum and Gallery. in ELA we were learning about a acoustics and alliteration and students had the choice of doing one over the other about either their artist or one of their masterpieces did an amazing job today at the end of the day we had our three reflection questions which ask us what do we know today that we didn’t know yesterday how we improved and how we helped the group make progress. We cleaned up and did our dojo points, but we ran out of time so tomorrow we will make sure that everybody gets their dojo points.2 likes 6 views
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Inspired Artists May 30, 20241 / 5We are officially in “crunch mode” of the output phase. This week we have been learning more about the brain- how to make the most of brain breaks and the m.o.m. method: motivation, observation, and methods for stronger memory. We learned the 1st m many times as we “get ready to be ready to be ready” for learning, by motivating ourselves and our brain, by having a reason for the learning, we are more likely to remember; if we observe ourselves to check that we are present and listening, we will remember more; is we use methods like acronyms and pictures, within a few seconds of learning something new, we are more likely to remember. As good readers we practice this by predicting and questions before we read( motivation/reason); we check our predictions and answer questions as we read to help us stay present, and we use methods like graphic organizers and notes to help us use the important information immediately so we are more likely to remember. We learned that things have to go from our heads to our hearts to our hands to really help us retrain what we are learning. Doing self care we talked a bit about the difference between conforming and transforming: when people want you to do things that don’t feel right to you, instead of conforming to their ideas try to transform their thinking or yourself . We have to listen to our hearts and learn the difference between what our ego is saying and what our soul is saying. We’ve been examining words and one of the prefixes is “imp”. We did some improv for our set history theater and it went everything well. We did a retreat today with a bitof the stage set and we definitely improved. Tomorrow we will do a dress rehearsal and possibly record the final copy of show!!! This theatrical is really helping us get familiar with our artists and into character for the art gallery museum!! We watched our first recorded rehearsal at lunch and all had some great laughs and saw areas for improvement for tomorrow! It was great great fun!We made progress on our math display; some students worked in their data analysis and created graphs to compare their input and output data. By doing the rehearsal we were able to identify some missing elements for the show and Manu helped us make the robot today!We made orders on our baroque era pieces and’s 1000 for to dots of the masterpieces.Days are flying by as the meaningful purposes of their learning start to become very clear to them and the incomplete tasks are now very important and student motivation is high!1 like3 viewss
Below is a Dojo report from a micro-school with students ages 6-11. The Good School Oct 28, 2022 Today was remarkable in many ways!!!We embarked on our new learning journey by picking the name of our class for the Cabarete Coconut Christmas learning journey. We had many many good options and had 2 rounds of voting. We are happy to tell that Lele's choice was voted the winner and the name of our next class if: "The Fun School"!. Everyone will get email invites to the next learning journey on Dojo. Another part of the process is to evaluate our success criteria. We will have a discussion and students will give their input and we will make it a collective effort to choose the criteria that we will evaluate at the end of each day.We witnessed some behaviors that took respect out of the respect piggy bank this morning so we decided not to paint as paint requires a lot of trust. But it worked out for the nest anyway because we had a very productive conversation about our next class and started to build our excitement.We started a new during school jobs activity where we pick sticks and have a job for the day: passing things out, putting up things on the walls, and being helper to the person putting things on the walls, being the meeting scribe and being helper to the scribe. Today Roch was the scribe and Aurelia was the helper. We decided that after we voted on the name we would have some creative juicing and then work on our individual projects, if there was time, before we started out game hour.Well, everyone was so excited about getting a new monster for the next class that we spent our creative juicing time setting up our monsters and names the way we liked. Then it was games hour. We played lots of chess, some backgammon, and UNO. Then it was time for our weekly Mojo inspiration: Today was about positive thoughts. We learned that you can tell a story to yourself that isn't true and is negative BUT you can change it and make a positive "what if" statement. For example, if you walk by and knock over the ice cream on the table you could tell yourself, "all my friends are not going to like me now, because I spilled the ice cream."Or, you could tell yourself, "what if my friends don't care, or maybe they don't even want ice cream." IF you tell yourself a negative story it can become a big story snake that follows you everywhere until you stop telling yourself that and change it to a positive story.In PM class we worked on completing our goals for the week so we could choose to do coding on play dupl. All the kids wanted to play dupl, the tomoclub game but it is without a moderator when you play for free. Still they had a blast! We also played with Sven's coded robot, and some physics games on phyfun. Then it was time for self-directed time and we opened the pool table again! We felt like there was an increase in effort to put trust in the trust piggy bank so we accepted that trust as payment for more freedom and fun to play pool and the playing went very well, We also played MORE chess:)Today showed that we are improving in our self- regulation and becoming better bosses over our thoughts and bodies. We had a lot of time to practice managing behaviors during times of excitement and we did it without incident! It was almost an incident free day!
Below is a ClassDojo report from a day in an AME micro-school with 3 families, students ages ranged from 5-10
Ms. Macare
SMB Kids Academy Turks and Caicos
Mar 18, 2022
We chose the longest meditation we've ever done together: 12.5 minutes. Many of us really enjoyed it. All of us had beautiful visions of planting gold seeds with our dreams and seeing them sprout or fully bloom. We discussed the value of meditation as a practice that build your focus muscles, and that we all improved our focus from when we started. It was the Madan's day to select the creative juices mixer. We gave them a few minutes to discuss because they weren't here when we all had time to brainstorm. They chose charades, During play we had a lesson in fairness and time management. Some got a turn and were having their 2nd while others didn't have 1 yet. How do proceed to ensure everyone has an opportunity while keeping this activity within reasonable time limits. We then had variables to consider, some which were applied this time and some we reserved. It was an awesome example of problem solving in a group. Some may say the lesson was a bit long but upon reflection, we acknowledged most of the "extra" time was spent repeating thing because not everyone was listening at the same time. All agreed the lessons were important.
We wrote our priorities for the day. We used executive functions to plan our resources, time, and tasks, and determine how best to proceed so the whole groups runs smoothly, efficiently, and effectively. Most demonstrated agency throughout the day. A few, on a couple occasions needed minor guidance to determine what to do next. After meeting we broke into WIFI user and non-WIFI user tasks. 3 started with vetting games and 3 worked on 1 of the remaining tasks: All About Us tab-uploading of pics and blurbs; setting up the buttons on the home page and the all about us page; daily challenges tab- designing math, history geography, vocabulary challenges that viewers can do on our site, pulling pictures, videos, text, and work samples from Dojo that help convey the learning process on our "What We Do" tab; filling in feedback about Sai's game and the Tomoclub game, on a Table Tenzin helped design. Devin and I took on task together: collecting the math data from last year's collections, so we could accurately compare to this years- something we discussed in morning meeting and determined kgs per person per hour would be the easiest way to compare with this year's data. We opened the pages in out book ad looked at the graph. We searched the text for info about the time spent at each clean up, but didn't find it. We searched shared files and pictures looking for the info in a text or a beach clean up invite, again we didn't get the info. We looked at the data we did have and went to the group for suggestions on how to use last year's data in a way that will make the comparison fair and data based.
We posed for our class photo of 2022! We had our Limerick contest, which we were supposed to complete yesterday but some people wanted to rewrite so we moved it to today. We listened to all the Limericks then voted for 1 by secret ballot and we had a clear winner with 3/6 votes: Sai Bhushan. I will share a video of his reading.
During Dojo points today we discussed and clarified the difference between "agency" and "self-regulation" and "tenacity". It was a meaningful conversation. In short: we agreed agency is making sure you get to all the places you need to be, with everything you need, in time. Tenacity is staying focused in the place, once you get there and have everything you need. Self-regulation is when you have/demonstrate when you compose yourself in a manner fitting the setting, specifically our group setting and purpose. It was insightful to listen to the students debate their perceptions and all come to a consensus, at least foundationally. I really enjoy when we reflect on the day because I see so much learning taking place and often the students don't think they have accomplished much, until we start discussing and itemizing. It's awesome when they feel like it has passed quickly or they haven't done much- to me it means it doesn't seem strenuous and they aren't trying to get out of it. They are enjoying learning- of course! The Limerick challenge alone, a last second thought, ended up have great value! Kids learning from what it is, to learning rhyming patterns, to stanzas and timing, and all their brains were so engaged I could almost feel the electricity of the synaptic connections. Everyone wanting to refine and improve their Limerick. Getting feedback from each other and helping each other.
Asked at the end:
Thing I enjoyed most today:
Sai- coding
Zara- charades
Sean-Tomoclub
Tenzin-Tomoclub Charades
Devin-Tomoclub and Sai's game
Kavi-Self-regulating
What lesson did you learn?
Kavi-self reg. no one voted for me
Tenzin-not to bug people when they're working
Devin-in gaming you have to be quick
Sai- not to mess with pixel art
Zara- self regulation to stop myself from managing people that I heard complaining
Sean-being able to make a mind checklist
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Below is a Dojo report from an AME homeschool group. The students, ages 7, 9, 10 reported what they did.
4 Fab Physicists
Boracay, Philippines
May 23, 2022
Sai- "l did troubleshooting of the turbine. I solved the math to determine the amount of power generated by the turbine. I analyzed DIY turbine videos. I participated in the QFT. I helped make spinners. I tried to make a clay turbine but we decided to use one of the other strategies we generated in the QFT because it wasn't working. I participated in the ooze lab experiment."
Kavi-"I cut lots of spinners. I got iron filing from the sand. I readied ingredients for the ooze lab experiment. I swept. I survey You-tube for sling-shot ideas. I recited the periodic table for the editors. I learned how to use dropbox. I participated in the QFT. I analyzed some of the turbine videos."
Zara- "I learned how to make comments in dropbox and insert photo. I did creative juicing and meditation. I started to work on ears. I did the QFT and then looked for ordering supplies for potential turbine. Then I tried to do the clay turbine but also couldn't get it to work. Then I helped make many color spinners. I participated in ooze lab."
Below is an Class Dojo Report from a homeschool group with 3 students ages: 5, 7, 8
BBS
Jan 22, 2020
In class this morning we wrote in our journals and some of us shared. Next, we looked at yesterday’s goals to determine what needed to be carried over to today and then we added goals for today. Then, we watched a Tedtalk on seasteading and voted to have our megastructure on land or sea. Sea won. Next we discussed the topics that will contribute to the development of our project and selected topics for each student to research and present.
Sai researched locations by studying maps, plate tectonics, earthquake epicenters and volcanoes. He labeled a map and identified 3 areas that would be least likely to have a negative impact from natural disasters. Zara studied sustainable food and water sources. She learned that ostrich meat is a healthier, more efficient and sustainable red meat. She leaned about the cycle of aquaponic farms and the desalination process .Kavi researched design ideas. He sketched one completely and started a second.
Sai presented and we voted to building the South East coast of South America .Then Sai completed his noun suffix word study while Zara and a Kavi continued their research. Then Zara presented. Kavi took a break to work on the geology book and Sai and Alexandra played geography game. When Zara was ready we all listened to her presentation. Then we had free choice at centers. Sai and Alexandra continued the game, Kavi built a new design using foam and straws, Zara and her friend listened to music. Then we all cleaned up and did our self evaluations on ClassDojo. Then we had lunch together.
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Super School of Singapore Apr 28, 2020 What a day!!! We took a different approach today and it was very useful. Because some of the students will have less time to work on the TedTalk in school this week, we decided to collaborate on 2 of the TedTalk segments and help our peers get their parts ready. We worked together on the “what happens to your body” part by studying articles, videos, and student’s work, about the intricacies of the respiratory lobules to help the speaker sequence his presentation. And we started to put together the visual aids to support his information. Next, we worked on portraying the different ways that bacteria and viruses can spread by creating puppets and props for our first segment presenters. We took a brain break to work on coloring the Singapore poster and having snack while listening to some favorite songs. Journal sharing is posted in individual portfolios.1 like9 views
Below are 3 excepts of Dojo reports from an AME micro-school with 2 families in Singapore, ages 5-9.
Super School of SingaporeApr 27, 2020 / 7We are in “crunch mode”(Sai). We are learning valuable lessons about prioritizing. I didn’t get a lot of photos today due to our high level of engagement but we accomplished very much. We calculated the amount of time we’d need to finish our novel and it’s impossible to do while in Singapore but we’re hoping to continue in USA. We started with literacy and students had a lot of personal connections to the text when we read about one of the characters getting bullied and reluctantly rescued by his older brother who was embarrassed by his younger brother’s lack of self defense. It was a a deep and meaningful discussion.Next we applied the QFT strategy and then labeled our questions as H(helpful) or NH(not helpful) to the TedTalk. We then used a scale to rate the H questions connected to their level of priority in completion of our TT preparations.The students then took their graphic organizers from last week and new the one from today to outline their plans for their segment of the TedTalk. I made banana smoothies as our second snack, first snack was fruit, we took the opportunity to sit at the table together and discuss next steps.We decided to set up the room for the TedTalk and have a run though to help us solidify and finalize what needed to be done. Sadly as the couch was being moved one of the students came and lifted a side suddenly causing me to quickly adjust and throw my back out:(Next we all took our turn to practice what we would say and do and then worked a bit more before cleaning, writing in our journals, and recognizing and rewarding our efforts on Dojo.1 like6 views
Super School of Singapore Apr 29, 2020 Another incredibly productive day. Students are completing and editing their presentations and have started to get feedback from peers about their final product. We took time to delve into literacy today because we reached an important part in our novel: the book is comprised of 3 parts each from a different character’s perspective. Today we finished one perspective and the book ended with the end of WW1 which as you will see resulted in ideas about bombs and all sorts of relate issues despite the fact that the predominant context clues really didn’t direct us there. Kavi and Devin have developed a deeper understanding of place value and worked hard with Sai to complete the death tolls display. Sean is taking feedback seriously and making a lot of adjustments. Zara, the most ready to present, was extremely helpful to other students. Sai is discovering the wonders of PPTs and having a blast creating an engaging presentation. I’m looking forward to the results! 1 like 11 views