What a wonderful world.

If you think about the word "wonder" you might find yourself thinking about things that make you think. Questions you have yet to answer. A sense of awe and imagination. A day dream into possibilities. In learning, a sense of wonder can drive you into curiosity and observation. It can create a space for deeper and inspirational learning opportunities. Generating a sense of wonder can sometimes be challenging for an educator. We often feel forced into forcing a topic onto our fellow learners and quite often, we don't have time for a sense of wonder ourselves. We become out-of-touch with our own curiosity.

The beautiful thing about curiosity is that we can not outgrow it. We can squish it. We can misdirect it. We can even ignore it. Often we can burn-out and seem to lose it entirely. However, I truly believe that it is always lurking in the back corners of our mind, waiting for us to slow down. The natural world asks us to slow down, it encourages big thinking, big questions, unnoticed details, forgotten ideas and of course, wonder .

Lots and lots of wonder.

I wonder what will happen if I...

Wonder takes time, sometimes it takes effort. It often takes our breath away and sometimes it leaves us wanting more.

I wonder what is out there.

I wonder what I will find.

I wonder if I will be able to.

I wonder if I will like it.

I wonder if it's possible.

Sometimes as educators we forget to let things breath a little. We forget to stay quiet and watch. We forget about the value of making space for wonder. We forget to stay curious. Emergent curriculum is about cultivating our sense of curiosity and engaging it, as a co-learner and researcher. It's not always possible to predict what will happen but something is always out there, waiting for us to pay attention.