CHURCHILL] NATURE-STUDY 369 



pupils, and nature-study offers daily opportunity for this best 

 kind of teaching. If we utilize these opportunities, we have 

 one subject that will vitalize and humanize and leaven the whole 

 lump of our public school education. 



Be human. Keep the course close to the really vital, human 

 interests of the home life of your community. By selecting the 

 right human-interest subject matter we can make every intel- 

 ligent parent feel like saying, "I never had a chance to learn 

 these things in school, I wish you would learn all you can about 

 them and come home and tell us." 



The topics suggested in the following grade plan are treated 

 in Nature-Study and Lije (Hodge) and, most of them, in Stevens, 

 Burkett and Hill, Elementary Agriculture. Teachers can also 

 find the best up-to-date information on problems of local interest 

 in bulletins of the United States Department of Agriculture or 

 the Oregon Agricultural College, and they should cultivate the 

 habit of writing freely to these institutions and encourage their 

 advanced pupils to do the same. 



The course itself is given in the following Grade Plan, the 

 purpose of which is to enable grade teachers to avoid confu- 

 sion and repetition of the same lessons year after year, to co-ordi- 

 nate related topics and especially to fit the subject matter into a 

 progressive course adapted to the maturing interests and powers 

 of the growing child. It also limits and defines the lessons of 

 each grade and thus greatly simplifies the problem of the teacher. 

 It is hardly to be expected that every teacher should attempt to 

 do everything suggested for his grade, especially the first year; 

 but each teacher can begin by selecting the topics in his grade with 

 which he is most familiar. In ungraded schools the topics may 

 be distributed according to advancement and age of pupils, the 

 idea being to get each boy and girl to doing as much active, practi- 

 cal, out-door work, away from their books, and with the gardens, 

 flowers, fruits, birds and trees as is reasonably possible. 



While methods of studying topics in the grade plan are dis- 

 cussed fully in the books referred to, some general points of view 

 may be briefly outlined as follows: 



Animal lessons precede plant lessons as hunting and fishing 

 and animal domestication antedated agriculture in the history 

 of the race. The dog was the first animal tamed by man. Shaler 

 has called this taming of the first animal the greatest step in 



