NATURE-STUDY IN PRIMARY GRADES 



By S. SILCOX 

 Stratford Normal School, Canada 



The aims of nature-study work in primary grades should be to 

 interest children in animal and vegetable life; to help interpret 

 nature literature; to teach the value of life and to arouse right 

 action towards it. It is most important that children should 

 know what life should be destroyed or held in check as well as to 

 know what life to foster. 



The principles which should be observed are that children 

 cannot study any object intensively, that habits and use should 

 precede structure and adaptation; that active personal ex- 

 perience is the basis of effective interest; and that work should 

 be related to every day life. 



The most pitiful effort in education is the attempt to teach 

 young children the detailed structure of plants and animals. 

 When the senses alone are relied upon, it is not so bad, but when 

 the teacher insists upon explaining to children of tender age 

 phenomena that cannot be fully understood by children under 

 twelve years of age, one feels that the curriculum of the good 

 old days saved us from something. 



There are many things which require many years to learn and 

 which form the basis of classification, so essential in science. 

 To introduce this work prematurely is to waste time now and to 

 develop antipathy towards the subject for all time. Let us leave 

 science for the high school period and in primary grades devote 

 ourselves to the development of a sympathetic attitude towards 

 life around us. 



The best way to make one's meaning clear is to take a class and 

 actually teach a lesson on the subject under discussion. The 

 next best way is to tell how an actual lesson was taught. This I 

 propose to do. Before doing so let me say that no two lessons on 

 nature-study should be exactly alike. In fact, if I were teaching 

 ten or twenty lessons to a class, I should endeavor to make each 

 different from the other, always bearing in mind that the aims 

 are the same in each. 



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