APPENDIX. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR THE USE OF THE READER IN THE 

 SCHOOL ROOM. 



In tliis day of laboratories, the use of a Botanical Reader may be 

 questioned. The aims of this book are stated at length in the 

 Preface, and it may be taken as an apology for the book's existence, 

 if apology be necessary. The writer has endeavored to arrange the 

 book so that it cannot be used as a substitute for field and obser- 

 vation work, but only as a stimulus and aid. She has found Califor- 

 nia teachers generally very willing to undertake real nature study ; 

 but teachers who must unfold all subjects to many children in limited 

 time, can not be specialists, and need every legitimate aid in work of 

 this kind. It is easy to lead children to open their eyes to natural 

 objects and to induce them to bring specimens for school-room study, 

 but their expression of what they see shows how much their observa- 

 tions need to be interpreted and supplemented. Of course the Reader 

 should not be used until children have found out what they can for 

 themselves, and have expressed it in their own way. The order of 

 the chapters conforms to the changing seasons in our climate, begin- 

 ning in the autumn, but it would not be wise to attempt the entire 

 book in one year. The early chapters were written for children in 

 the fourth and fifth grades, but some of the later chapters should not 

 be undertaken before the seventh or eighth grades. Courses of nature 

 study are usually made to extend over the entire eight primary and 

 grammar grades, and this is doubtless best if the work can be suffi- 

 ciently varied to keep up keen interest. It has been thought best to 

 suggest in detail the adaptation of the Reader to a course of plant 

 study, although the index of plants and topics at the end of the book 

 renders it easily adaptable to any course. The course selected is 

 similar to the one now followed in the L,os Angeles City Schools. 



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