PALMER CORNELL RURAL SCHOOL LEAFLET 207 



The requirement that we teach in nature study five certain 

 birds a year, for example, m.ay make it easy for the teacher to 

 dish out an allotted amount of inform.ation to the pupils without 

 much difficulty. But the fulfillm.ent of this requirem.ent too 

 frequently leads to book study rather than nature study. This 

 same practice also has the disadvantage that nearly every bit of 

 information which goes to the children m.ust in some way come 

 through the teacher. Teachers will find their work much easier 

 if instead of trying to teach nature study to the children, they let 

 the children teach nature study to themselves. With the help 

 of the Leaflets which have been and will be published this should 

 not be difficult in the rural schools of New York State. 



Teachers sometimes m.ake the mistake. in thinking that they 

 are required to know everything and teach everything published 

 in the Leaflets. This is no more so than that they should tea:h 

 everything which appears in a dictionary and should know the 

 definition of every word in the dictionary. No one would deny 

 that a dictionary is one of the most useful of books and it is hoped 

 that the Leaflet may prove to be a more or less attractively organ- 

 ized nature study dictionary with the ideas expressed in terms 

 which may be understood and appreciated by individuals as young 

 as the yoimgest school child. The "cut-out pictures" and "story 

 sections" of the Leaflet, for exam.ple, can teach to the younger 

 children in a simple way the m.ore serious -minded facts which 

 the life history chart presents in a m.ore orthodox manner t3 the 

 older children. 



Graded Nature Study. 



There is one danger which m.ay arise from, an attem.pt to grade 

 nature study work arbitrarily. Som.e teachers may think they 

 should teach only the work outlined for the third and fourth 

 grade whether or not the children in these grades had had the work 

 on the sam.e subject for the lower grades. Generally, it is wise 

 to start the whole school with the work outHncd for the first and 

 second grades. The children in the higher grades will cf course 

 finish this sooner than will the primary children. They can 

 advance to the work outlined for the third and fourth grades. 

 The older children should finish this work sooner than the children 

 of the third and fourth grade and can proceed to the work out- 



