224 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW [10:6— Sept., 1914 



this subject makes on the advancing boy or girl, not the same treat- 

 ment of a subject in the third grade as in the first. Studies which 

 will insure a child's observation and realization of cycles of growth, 

 whole life histories, have come to be the goal of our efforts (not 

 some logical analysis of a plant's life history but a child's actual 

 contact with the plant throughout its stages of growth) : planting a 

 bulb in the ground in the fall, another in a pot to be kept for winter 

 blooming, the study of the same or a similar bulb grown in water, 

 the enjoyment of the blossoming plant at Christmas time, the 

 watching for the first green leaf tips in the spring, the keeping of the 

 wilted plant and the watch for the growth of the new bulb. All 

 this we have come to feel necessary if children are to be started on 

 the road to "the habit and power of reflection." We are trying to 

 make our lessons a study of our own surroundings and not those of 

 the author of our favorite book on Nature-Study. And yet we do 

 need all the help we can get from books and pictures. We may 

 visit the grocery store to see "fruits grown near Mankato," but we 

 must tell some small boy "where oranges come from." We may 

 answer briefly now for our own immediate surroundings offer too 

 much of interest to allow us to go far afield, but in the winter days 

 when we are "shut ins," some Third Grader may give a talk on 

 "How I got an Orange for Breakfast," illustrated by California 

 post cards shown in the Radiopticon, an inexpensive bit of appara- 

 tus used in our own class room, a machine which can be easily 

 operated by any one. 



As to method, we distrust mere listening on the part of the 

 children and are relying more and more on doing, planting, gather- 

 ing, collecting, sorting, drawing, talking on the part of the child 

 himself, seeing (with a chance to ask questions) good pictures which 

 help complete chains, links of which it is impossible to bring under 

 the boys' own observation. We are becoming more fixed in the 

 idea that the recording of impressions in some pictorial way, 

 drawing, cutting, painting, molding in clay, pasting of pictures to 

 form charts, has much to do with the permanency of impressions. 

 Booklets which by reason of the teacher's planning will organize 

 the simple experiences of the children will help toward orderly 

 thinking. The framing of questions is most important. Children 

 do better thinking if the question seems to them clear and questions 

 seem clear to us or to them to the degree that the starting point of 

 thinking lies in a familiar region. Has your mother a store room? 

 What does she keep in it ' Who else has store rooms ? What are 



