ORGANIZATION OF NATURE-STUDY IN THE 

 PRIMARY GRADES 



By B. M. DAVIS 

 Ohio State Normal College, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio 



"We have not yet organized nature studies in the schools into any well 



knit adjustment to general education" — (Elmer Ellsworth Brown, "Are 



we an Inventive People in the Field of Education?" Science, N.-S., vol. 



26, p. 5). 



Nature-study is passing out of the stage of propaganda into 

 the stage of appreciation. It has not proceeded much further. 

 So far its progress has been due to individual rather than to organ- 

 ized effort. There is an irregularity in its use as a school subject 

 which is not found in the use of other school subjects excepting, 

 perhaps, manual training. 



It is not unusual to find emphasis placed on nature-study in one 

 grade and none at all in the next; or to find the -same topic 

 repeated in several grades by different teachers. An example of 

 the latter is one of the stock subjects of the Thanksgiving season : 

 the pumpkin. 



The idea of the harvest, Thanksgiving day. turkey, cranberry 

 sauce, and pumpkin pie, etc., has at this season a more or less 

 prominent place in the minds of everyone from the youngest to 

 the oldest. It is fitting, therefore, that the schools recognize and 

 make use of the spirit of such a time. 



But when the pumpkin is discussed in all its relations — seed, 

 vine, color, fruit, and reasons found for its color, peculiarity of its 

 pul]), special way of taking care of its seeds — in the first grade, 

 and repeated witli the same child in each of the three succeeding 

 years or perhaps longer, one naturally feels that the pumpkin is 

 receiving undue prominence. I sometimes wonder if such a pro- 

 cedure might not prejudice the child against the pumpkin and 

 detract just a little from his enjoyment of the real functions of 

 the pumpkin, viz., its use in pies, and for making jack-o-lantcrns. 

 1 am tempted to digress a little, to suggest that if the energy of 

 these four years could be lumped together in such a way as to 

 have the child raise a pumpkin from the seed, harvest it and 

 finally follow it personally into a jack-o-lantern or a pumpkin 

 pie, the pumpkin would then have filled a happy mission as a 

 nature-study subject. 



ioi 



