4 PRODUCTIVE FARMING 



Arranging the Schedule. — ^A ''sliding schedule" may be 

 made to admit agriculture without reducing the recitation 

 time for other subjects, thus: First plan — On Mondays let 

 agriculture take the place of the first morning recitation 

 period; on Tuesdays, the second period; on Wednesdays, 

 the third period, and so on through the week. Another plan 

 would be to have agriculture three times a week, alternating 

 with some three other subjects, — each of them being given 

 four times a week. Another time-saving plan to use in the 

 smaller rural schools is to combine several of the upper 

 classes into one class when teaching a new subject Hke 

 agriculture. 



Correlation. — It is, indeed, a very good plan to correlate 

 the work in agriculture with other subjects in school. The 

 other subjects will be made far more interesting to most of 

 the pupils if agriculture is made the center of interest around 

 which to group these other subjects. 



School English is made more interesting by having pupils 

 read and write and speak on those themes which are close 

 to hmnan life. Language comes forth spontaneously when 

 the pupils have something real to tell or to write about. New 

 words in this book or in the Bulletins should be woven into 

 the spelling and language work. 



A few arithmetical problems have been suggested in this 

 book. These will serve to show that much of the arithmetic 

 work of the school can be founded on agriculture or enriched 

 by it. 



One of the best ways to study local geography is to study 

 the soils of the neighborhood (Fig. 1). Trips may be taken 

 by the class to near-by places where examples of erosion are 

 shoTSU, or the action of ancient glaciers, or the cropping 

 out of ledges of sedimentary rocks. Study soil-depths, soil- 

 textures, and soil improvement. Take samples of soils and 

 subsoils. The study of the ways in which soils are being 

 formed all about the neighborhood is real geography. 



