r 



cooper] our school GARDEN ' 285 



playing, courting, home-making, hunting, or being hunted, in the 

 endless struggle for life, where the one who thinks quickest and 

 most accurately lives and rules. 



Our School Garden 



Bessie Cooper 



Teachers who are alive to the best interests of the children 

 under their care, no longer question the advisability of having a 

 school garden, but wherever it is at all possible they provide a 

 plot of ground where the children may work and study. 



Formerly we aimed through our garden work to give the child 

 first, an interest in and love for plants, second, a knowledge of 

 ways of planting and caring for different plants and third, a desire 

 to apply this knowledge, so that he would make use of it in caring 

 for a garden at home. Experience has shown that the knowledge 

 gained in school was not always applied, that the child needed 

 more help than we were giving him, and that the parents must 

 be interested. Now, we are not only trying to accomplish our 

 former aims but we are actually connecting the work of the school 

 garden with the home garden work. Thus the third grade child 

 begins helping to provide for the family needs. Also, the products 

 of the school garden are not only planted and cared for by the 

 children, but they are being prepared for sale, sold at market price, 

 and the money is spent by the pupils in some legitimate way. 

 This is found to make the garden work much more profitable 

 and even more interesting than before. The children greatly 

 enjoy seeing how much money they can make a small plot of 

 ground produce, and finding how much they can save for father 

 and mother by raising vegetables themselves. 



Perhaps greater care must be taken in planning for the lower 

 grade garden work, than in the upper grades. Here the children 

 are not able to do so much work and the interest cannot be sus- 

 tained for so long a period of time. In selecting seeds care is 

 taken that seeds of both early and late maturing plants are in- 

 cluded in the order. The quick maturing ones are needed that 

 the Httle ones become interested early and soon see results of tlieir 

 work, while the later ones sustain interest and give fall work. 



