82 The Ottawa Naturalist. iJu^y 



and should be adapted to the hunger and needs of the child. 

 During- the symbolic or play period ot later infancy, and during 

 the keenly observant but still comparatively unreflective period of 

 early childhood, emphasis should be cast upon the sensory-motor, 

 the historic, the individual, the social, rather than upon the 

 abstract, the technical, the scientific. 



In the primary grades of the school, therefore, the greatest 

 stress should be placed upon activities connected with the child's 

 immediate experience, involving a study of his surroundings — 

 geography and history. 



While the work should be purposive, it should not to any 

 great extent appeal to the commercial instinct. The child is 

 usually specially interested in certain living forms of plants and 

 animals ; but he is not interested in all such forms, nor are inani- 

 mate objects devoid of interest to him. The construction of a 

 thermometer or a study of various forms of water may lie closer to 

 the child's life interest than an investigation of certain animal forms. 



The material should not be selected on the basis of trivial 

 superficial interest, but should be of such a nature that when the 

 child realizes what is there and what it means to him, it will 

 become interesting. The despised and persecuted common toad, 

 usually looked upon as an ugly venomous and loathsome beast, 

 becomes an object of genuine interest when the child learns that 

 the toad is entirely harmless, that it is one of the most humane 

 and valuable fly traps yet discovered, that it destroys large num- 

 bers of injurious insects, that its life cycle extends over thirty 

 years, that it is easily tamed and that it is destined to become a 

 valuable and highly appreciated domestic pet. 



5. The study in the initial stages should not consist of set 

 formal lessons. For example, the metamorphoses of an insect or 

 the development of a plant from seed to fruit may be observed for 

 months, with an occasional brief conversation to organize the facts 

 learned up to the present, and to direct observation for the future. 

 By spending an hour a week, in brief or extended discussion (as 

 the conditions of the case require), much valuable work can be 

 done in every grade. The school garden, and the field excursion, 

 when properly conducted, afford the ideal conditions for elementary 

 Nature Study. 



