00^ Rural School Leaflet 



sticks I had in my hands into the ground, paying no attention to the 

 children, and then paced off one dimension of the garden and set another 

 stick. By this time play was forgotten in the curiosity to watch my 

 movements. They guessed what I was doing and began questioning 

 me. From that time until the term closed, interest in the garden 

 never waned. 



Before each recess period I talked to the class a few minutes about 

 what we should do during the coming period. To begin, just before the 

 first period after staking out the garden, I put a diagram of the proposed 

 garden on the board, dividing it into twenty plats. Then I numbered 

 them and let the chilren choose the number or location of their plat. 

 During the recess period we measured out and carefully drove the stakes 

 at the four corners of each plat, being careful to get all sticks in a straight 

 line. After this was finished they began spading and preparing the plats 

 for the seeds. They brought shovels and rakes from their homes, all 

 their parents were farmers, nevertheless there were only three shovels 

 ever used and a couple of rakes. The larger boys spaded the younger 

 one's gardens and the girls', in return for which they shook the sods and 

 carried them away and picked the stones off the plats for those who 

 spaded their gardens. Right here, I think this was a good lesson. 



Everything now progressed as you will find told in their letters, each 

 planting five different kinds of seed. Some of them were brought from 

 home and some I ordered from Charles Vicks' Sons. 



Next we gravelled the path and built a fence around the whole garden. 

 The children have described our method in their first letters. Building 

 the fence was necessary, because of a farmer's cattle. The schoolhouse 

 was located in his pasture, so to speak. 



The garden soil was sandy and not very fertile, but it had been used 

 years ago for a vegetable garden. However, the various seeds grew and 

 the children watched them every day. It became a habit with them 

 the first thing each morning to visit their garden. To encourage them 

 in making observations and writing them down, I said I would present 

 the one who made the greatest number of observations, with a picture. 

 You have all of these observations as they were handed to me. As 

 you see, although they do not amount to much in themselves, it kept 

 them watching. 



Before school closed the plants were of good size, even though we did 

 get a frost the night of the second day of June, which seriously injured 

 many of the plants; and later the cattle broke in and destroyed the best 

 among them. It was a great pleasure to all of us, when the hardest 

 work was over to watch the successful working out of our plans. 



