CHAPTER IX 



NATURE-STUDY PROPERTY OF CHILDREN 



FLOWERS AND VEGETABLES 



At Noey's house when they arrived with him 

 How snug seemed everything, and neat and trim : 



With little paint-keg, vases and teapots 

 Of wee moss-blossoms and forgetmenots : 

 And in the windows, either side the door, 

 Were ranged as many little boxes more 

 Of like old-fashioned larkspur, pinks and moss 

 And fern and phlox ; while up and down across 

 Them rioted the morning-glory-vines 

 On taut-set cotton-strings. 



JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY, A Child World. 



IN order to develop the educational values connected 

 with the plants children are trying to rear at home we 

 must first know what they are. For a- simple language 

 lesson, ask each pupil to write a list of what plants he 

 owns. This will, of course, result in a mass of unclassified 

 data that the teacher must arrange and tabulate before it 

 becomes usable. This entails an unnecessary amount 

 of labor, and a better method is to have blanks with the 

 names of the commoner sorts printed in order on sheets 

 of school writing paper. The data will thus be uniformly 

 arranged by the children themselves, and the teacher can 

 keep them on file as a basis for assignment of lessons on 



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