One of my girls was home this week. She goes to a SUNY school in the NYS north country. Her history professor has them creating "Wonder Books" - like a class journal. It includes material they cover but it also includes their own wonder questions to take them deeper into the material. He's encouraged them to include images they find, collage, original creative writing, artwork, drawing, photos...anything to re-enforce their processing the material. I should say creatively processing the material. His focus is "spiritual" in that he's encouraging them to look at an era through the eyes of those who lived in that particular era and through their particular belief system.
The idea of a "wonder book" is what caught my attention and though this particular daughter doesn't think of herself as particularly artistic, her book is beautiful!
Wonder books as a way for kids to process a year's worth of teaching time would be fun! It could be as simple as helping each child to create a book by adding their work each week and taking home a finished book when the session or the year ends. And maybe they do a page at home each week that they bring to class to add to their classwork pages. It could be as elaborate as allowing each individual to process the material any way they want to and create something truly unique, depending on the age, of course. But any age could do this- alone, together or in groups of people their own age.
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