HOME NATURE-STUDY COURSE. 



BY MARY ROGERS MILLER. 



This work is to be continued through the year and new students 

 are welcome at any time. It is designed for teachers and others 

 who have had httle opportunity to study nature, yet wish to prepare 

 themselv^es to teach children to know nature. 



For the present the material for the Home [N^ature-study course 

 will consist of various publications of the Nature-study Bureau and 

 Farmers' Reading-Course, together witli tlie quiz. If the work is 

 taken up with enthusiasm and the quizzes are returned regularly, it 

 is probable that special Home Nature-study publications will be 

 issued. When the interest warrants a separate series of 23ublications 

 for use in this department, tliey will be forthcoming. 



Just a word with you about the Home Nature-study. It is not 

 primarily a reading course. The pamphlets sent you are full of 

 suggestions for you to follow, experiments for you to perform, work 

 for you to do. Unless you actually do these things, you fail to 

 make the experiences your own, you take statements on authority, 

 and miss the point of the whole course. Reading what others have 

 observed about nature, lacks the freshness and freedom of original 

 investigation. Without the element of discovery and personal con- 

 tact, nature-study deteriorates into lesson-getting. Seeing nature 

 with other people's eyes, reading their thoughts about her ways, is 

 most delightful, after one has seen and thought for one's self. 



For example, scientists tell us that a certain brown and black but- 

 terfly with a long name migrates southward to spend the w^inter. 

 We read the words, and straightway forget the fact. " What if it 

 does," we say. But let us some day in fall, see the air and the trees 

 full of red butterflies fluttering so bravely yet so silently, thousands 

 and thousands winging their way toward the sunny southland, and 

 we care. When we see, straggling back again in spring the surviv- 



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