SCHOOL-GARDENS IN PHILADELPHIA 217 



done in normal schools in Massachusetts, Illinois, and Missouri. 

 Without trained teachers, gardens can have little educational 

 value. 



The work done by the gardens in supplying nature materials to 

 the schools should also be extended. The schools have found in 

 the gardens a supply for language, drawing, and nature lessons. 

 From the time the schools opened, on September 8, until October 

 8, when the gardens closed, the gardens were visited almost daily 

 by one or more kindergarten or grade classes from the various 

 public schools near them. Each class filed through the garden, 

 and received a lesson from one of the garden teachers on the 

 vegetables grown. A part of one such lesson overheard was a 

 comparison of one vegetable of which the root is eaten, with an- 

 other in which the leaves are eaten, and still another in which the 

 fruit, or the seed is used. In addition to those visits to the gar- 

 dens, a large number of schools, from all over the city indeed, sent 

 requests to the gardens for supplies of specimen plants, leaves, or 

 flowers for use at school, to be drawn, studied, and written about. 



This use of the gardens as a supply depot has led to the sug- 

 gestion that the city should continue throughout the year this ex- 

 cellent method of assistance to its regular school teachers, in order 

 to make the work of the schools more alive. By retaining the 

 garden teachers regularly through all but the coldest months, to 

 supply nature materials to the schools, schools could be supplied 

 throughout the fall and spring, and the balance of the time in 

 winter be used by the teachers for the necessary study and vaca- 

 tion. 



A further suggestion for the extension of the playgrounds that 

 were run in connection with the gardens is that every school-yard 

 in the city should be open to the free play of children during all 

 the daylight hours. More games are needed for the playgrounds, 

 and our readers are asked to see if they have not some unused 

 basket-ball, tennis, croquet, or quoit set, or other game to send to 

 the gardens. Games, especially team games, are preferred to 

 gymnastic apparatus, because they develop social responsibility 

 and encourage physical development without endangering life and 

 limb. 



