SHAVvJ PLANTS FOR CLASS-ROOMS 69 



warmth. The boys and girls will have nice big canna plants to 

 set out in their gardens when it is time to do so. And at the same 

 time these young cannas are decorative in the class-room. 



Botanical nature-study which can be given along with these 

 plants started for a purpose seems rather better than using entirely 

 material like beans, peas and corn which must be thrown out after 

 a series of lessons. Planting such seeds as the cobasa vine seed 

 offers such an opportunity for real nature work. The cobasa seed 

 shows the germ so plainly. The vital part like the eye of 

 the bean should be placed in direct contact with the soil. This 

 leaves the cobasa seed standing up on end, looking like the sail of a 

 ship. Great care must be exercised in placing the quarter to half 

 inch layer of soil over these seed. Plant three seeds in a three inch 

 pot. As the first leaves appear, then the second pair, see what 

 opens up, what differences. You have here two types of leaf, 

 simple and compound. Later tendrils come. There is a lot of 

 botany crowded into the cobaea seed. These cobaea vines grow 

 twenty to thirty feet high. They may be planted out in early 

 June. 



A class may raise seedling material enough to stock everyone's 

 garden in that class. In March start in boxes or pots in the class- 

 room, calendula, stock, phlox, pansy and lobelia, also tomatoes, egg 

 plant, lettuce, melon, and parsley. One class of children at the 

 Brooklyn Botanic Garden had great fun with lobelia (Blue King). 

 They raised enough to border the children's gardens and for each 

 child to take home all he wished. It is a border plant, growing 

 about four inches high and beautifully blue of color. 



All these seeds should be started in fine soil. When the plants 

 are yet very small, after the first leaves appear and second just 

 show, transplant to other boxes, pots or pans. Place each little 

 plant about one inch from its neighbor. Possibly a second trans- 

 planting will be necessary. 



These are only a few suggestions from my own work with children 

 at the Ethical Culture School, New York City, and the Brooklyn 

 Botanic Garden. More and more it seems to me that lessons in 

 nature-study which work toward real and necessary ends are to be 

 used rather than those which have fancied or forced reasons for 

 being. 



