glumshoe:

One of my favorite memories this summer was at the end of week seven – my campers were looking through Journal 3 and I was teaching them how to solve simple substitution ciphers through frequency analysis (we didn’t see that it had a key until we’d already cracked it, but the kids agreed that they’d learned more and had a lot of fun doing it by hand). 

I had them select a large sample of Bill’s symbol cipher, copy each distinct symbol into a notebook, and then solve it through process of elimination. It was a little tedious, but they were determined kids and wanted to impress me. The moment everything started to fall into place, they were beside themselves with excitement. The one we happened to pick was the section where Bill talks about “removing [his] exoskeleton to feed” and they kids flinched and started screaming in horror at the imagery and implications of that.

I… may have also screamed. But since it was marine science camp that week, it was also a great opportunity to talk about starfish digestion, and how they turn their stomachs inside out to envelop and liquefy food. 

Bill Cipher: echinoderm? He does have radial symmetry, an exoskeleton, and the ability to regenerate body parts…

I love this idea so much…
How to use Journal 3 as educational material. XD
(Teach kids how to make their own invisible ink too lol… maybe not used IN the Journal tho)