Rural School Leaflet 



1005 



CORN DAY 



(Friday, December 4, 1914) 



^HIS leaflet should reach you shortly before Corn 

 Day. All your plans will have been made, follow- 

 ing the suggestions given to your teacher in the 

 September leaflet on page 211. Make it a better 

 celebration than ever before. It has been a 

 bountiful year, and we have good reason to be 

 grateful at this season of Thanksgiving. Com 

 Day ofters an opportunity for your fathers and 

 mothers, and relatives and friends, to gather 

 with }'ou at the schoolhouse for an afternoon at 

 the close of the harvest season. 



You \\-ill send out carefully prepared invitations 

 that you have made in the drawing class. Some of 

 you will leam poems or bits of literature about the 

 corn plant. Others will write compositions on 

 the types of com or the selection of good seed 

 ears, the preparation of the soil, planting the com, cultivation, the com 

 harvest, the uses of the com plant on the farm, its use as food 

 and for other purposes, and like subjects. These will be read on 

 Corn Day. Others will make a report about the com crop in the 

 neighborhood, how large it was, who raised the most, what was the highest 

 yield per acre, how the com was stored, what methods were used to select 

 and preserve seed for another year, and such things that will interest 

 every one. The schoolroom will be decorated with comstalks, pumpkins, 

 and the fruits of the harvest time. There will be a good table for the 

 exhibit of ears that you have selected as most nearly perfect, folloN/ing the 

 outline in the September leaflet. Some one in the neighborhood who has 

 been successful in raising good com will talk to you a little and will judge 

 the ears that you have brought, selecting the best of each t^^pe. Com Day 

 will then mean not only a greater interest in an important crop, and a 

 desire to improve it, but also a new feeling of good will between young and 

 old, and a better understanding of the value of the study of out-of-door 

 life as it is found naturally and on the farm. 



You will all be interested to hear of the school exhibit of com at Farmers' 

 Week last year. Soon after Com Day a year ago, ears of com began coming 

 to the College from schools in all parts of the State.. Each school sent 

 one ear, or two ears if flint and dent could be obtained. These ears were 

 those that in the rural school had been judged best on Corn Day. They 

 were nicely labeled according to the form which we have given again this 

 year on page 2 1 5 of the teachers' leaflet. All the corn was unwrapped and 



