44 THE XATIRE-STUDY REVIEW [6:2-Feb.. 1910 



no avenue of work either in nature-study or any study so full 

 of opportunity to work with the whole community as this spe- 

 cial one. 



I had a shortage of garden space at the Rochester City 

 Training School. I asked for volunteer offers of back yards in 

 two sixth grades. Thirty were offered. Thirty homes were 

 actively touched. Fathers, mothers, babies, all helped. Not 

 only were there thirty homes interested but the others all about 

 these thirty centres. It is the business of the school garden to 

 leak over into the back yards, the front yards, the side yards 

 of the children and neighbors. There are thickly populated city 

 districts where the big school or association garden is the only 

 bit of ground space a child can get hold of. The products go 

 home and often times an old tin can, a window box or a roof 

 garden is the after effect. When the garden work loses this 

 vital, human touch it might better give way for something else. 

 It is a line of work which comes to a child -at a certain restless, 

 unbalanced time of his development, enters into his soul and 

 acts as a balance, an anchor, a safe-guard to hold him, sometimes 

 for all time, sometimes for just that time when he needs a tem- 

 porary wholesome influence to save him from that which is not 

 wholesome. To other children it comes merely as a big broaden- 

 ing life interest which stays as a source of pleasure and resource 

 forever. To a community it comes to wake up, to draw to- 

 gether, to humanize. 



The first two grades represent periods of gathering in of 

 many percepts; the middle grades, periods of separating out 

 and linking together of these same percepts; and the upper 

 grades of grammar school a time of generalization from these 

 same associations previously formed. This is but a loose sum- 

 ming up of the situation. 



So in the first stages we cannot teach much of definite, 

 specific garden work, but we can give a child a great deal in a 

 very general way. At this time it may be a key note for the 

 work appearing in all the free expression work. All the activi- 

 ties of the entire garden work may be followed by the child ; 

 he can help in clearing the garden spot, watch the ploughing 

 and marking off of the garden, know what the other children 

 are to plant. The garden work of these lower grades offers a 

 splendid opportunity for the upper grades to assist in teaching 

 the younger children. One of the best pieces of planting work I 



