A Six-page Wonder Journal

There are many ways to record Wonders as you uncover them. Here is an easy way to document your discoveries. This journal can easily fit in a pocket or backpack to keep with you outside or on the go. Make your own, teach another, or create one to share with someone. Here is what you need to make your Wonder-full discoveries visible.

Materials:

• One piece of paper - The size of your paper will determine the size of your journal. Make a few different size journals by using different size papers (8.5 x 11, A4 size, or 11 x 17). You get the picture, the larger the paper the bigger the journal.

• Scissors

• Marking tools for recording wonders - pencil, colored pencils, crayons, markers, watercolors, etc.

• Collage fodder (scraps of colorful paper) and a Glue Stick for embellishing the cover.

Making the Journal:

1. Fold a piece of plain paper into eight (8) equal parts. Match the side folds and edges carefully. Press the flat side of a marker or pencil along the fold to make it tight. Open the page and lay flat in the landscape position.

2. Now fold in half vertically and cut from the folded edge to the center intersection with scissors.

3. Open page up fully and now fold horizontally. Push left and right ends toward the center creating a rhombus shape in the center.

4. Press the pages together and wrap the pages to form a six page book with a front and back cover. Run the flat side of a marker or pencil along the folds to make the book flat.

Creating the Cover: Certainly a single title like Fruit of the Day or Daily Discoveries in Nature will suffice. But a colorful collage or drawing of a bowl of fruit will help you remember to pause and record the beauty and sensory aspects of the world around you more frequently. Here a a few cover samples.

Filling your Wonder Journal: Starting a habit of entering a wonder into your journal everyday is a way to increase joy and gratitude. Whether you draw a realistic record of a flower, or an impression of a tree, crayon rubbings of textures, or strokes of color in an expressionistic sky, your wonders are reinforced and multiplied by using your mind, heart and hands. Adding words, sensory data, impressions or feeling-thoughts create a vivid, lasting memory.

*This is the first in an ongoing series of journal and bookmaking ideas to collect Wonders.