288 METHODS IN TEACHING 



search for the wealth of the Indies, and time can even be 

 found to tell a little of the story of Vasco da Gama and of 

 that of Marco Polo. Thus the efforts and voyages of 

 Columbus begin to take their right place in the world's his- 

 tory, and his long trip to the west across the mysterious 

 Atlantic has a new meaning to the children. They have 

 already, in the fourth grade, heard some of the stories about 

 the coming of the Spaniards ; here is the opportunity, in the 

 fifth grade, to show how these explorers had followed fast 

 on the track of Columbus, eager to take advantage of his 

 discoveries. This review of the fourth grade stories, the 

 more detailed accounts of Columbus, round out sufficiently 

 for the fifth grade the Spanish explorations. The discover- 

 ies of the French are omitted entirely ; those of the English 

 center around the Cabots, Henry Hudson, and the settle- 

 ments in Virginia, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. The 

 colonial life is given character and distinctive existence by 

 the stories that cluster around the lives of such men as Miles 

 Standish, Benjamin Franklin, William Penn, the boyhood of 

 Washington, and the Indians. 



It is not the accumulation of historical facts that is de- 

 sired, there will be plenty of time for them later. It is the 

 picturing by the children of the life of a 

 period that is valuable, the collection of 

 many details, incidents, stories, that will vivify a period and 

 give it reality in later history study. There should be a 

 solidarity about every period. The life should be seen in 

 those details that are dear to the hearts of all children : the 

 houses lived in, the mails, the work done, the implements 

 used, the means of transportation, the love for England, the 

 kind of liberty that came to the dwellers in the new land. 



