PATTERSON] PRESENT STATUS OF NATURE-STUDY 243 



Seventy-five per cent, of the outlines suggest the making of col- 

 lection of various kinds. Some of the most common are — seed 

 charts, leaf charts, pictures of farm animals, collection of nuts, 

 pebbles, weed seeds, grains of the community, and seeds of flower- 

 ing plants and vegetables. 



Forty per cent, advocate the training of the creative powers of 

 children in the making of articles in connection with their nature- 

 study such as, a doll house, in the lower grades, a farm house or 

 bam in the intermediate grades, scrap books; making candy, 

 butter, cheese, maple sugar, and simple pieces of apparatus as 

 electric door bells and pumps. 



Over ninety per cent, suggest garden work with a number of 

 allied activities, as the germination of seeds, making cuttings, 

 budding, spraying, com gathering and judging, and planning and 

 arranging a garden display. 



The suggestion for correlating the nature-study and elementary 

 agriculture with other school subjects is interesting. The most 

 frequent correlation is with language. Eighty five per cent, of the 

 courses studied suggest this correlation. The majority of these 

 would have the teachers use the material of the nature-study les- 

 sons as the basis for a portion of the language work, both oral and 

 written. A few, however, instead of having a course in nature- 

 study suggest in the language course some nature topics that may 

 be studied with profit as a basis for compositions. 



Sixty per cent, of the courses suggest that the drawing be corre- 

 lated with the nattu-e objects under consideration in the nature 

 classes. Many of the drawing courses, base their work largely 

 upon nature objects without any special cooperation with the work 

 in nature-study. 



About twenty-five per cent, suggest some correlation with geogra- 

 phy. Several states and cities have a course called nature-study 

 and geography. All of these that I examined treat nature-study 

 topics in the first two or three years, then the work slips off into 

 pure geography for the rest of the grades. About twenty-five per 

 cent, of the courses suggest some correlation with human physiol- 

 ogy, hygiene and sanitation. Three of the states have incorporated 

 the hygiene and sanitation in the body of the nature-study 

 coiuse. 



Domestic science and manual training are suggested as worthy 

 of correlation in a few of the courses. About the same number 



