90 NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



interesting language lessons were developed from them. Some 

 of the children who had several gardens allowed us to uncover 

 the seeds in some of them to watch the development and from 

 these we had quite a few excellent drawing and painting lessons. 

 The little bean and corn plants were especially good for this. 

 This school is in a foreign district where most of the parents 

 of the children have gardens in their own back yards, and as soon 

 as these little plants had grown strong enough to be moved, 

 the children took them home and planted them in their fathers' 

 gardens, where they cared for them all summer. 



Winter Sleep— A Kindergarten Lesson 



Augusta M. Swan. 

 Washington D. C. 



We know that the birds go down to the warm south-land when 

 fall comes, and each day food is getting harder to find. But when 

 Jack Frost comes with his cold wind and snow, when trees are bare, 

 and the sky is gray, where are all the insects, or little bugs which 

 we saw round us in the summer? We don't see them or hear them 

 as we take a walk through the woods and fields in January. 



Have they gone south with the birds? Oh, no! They are 

 still with us in some shape or form waiting for the warm days of 

 spring. 



All we have to know is just where to look and then we may be 

 able to find the babies of som.e insect m.other, who carefully hid 

 them, away when the days began to get cold. Unless we look very 

 carefully we shall not be able to see these babies because they 

 are so tiny, so well hidden, and they don't look Hke their mothers 

 at all. 



There on a dry old goldenrod stem we see a little brown ball. 

 It is tough though, if we try to pull it open, because inside the ball 

 are baby spiders, sleeping and waiting for springtime. 



Last fall, when we all started to school, the mother spider knew 

 the cold weather was coming, so she made a warm strong nest, 

 fastened it by threads of silk to a weed and then put her eggs inside. 

 When spring comes the little spiders are ready to leave theii nest. 



Mother Grasshopper prepared for the cold weather too; but in- 

 stead of hanging her eggs up in a ball, she made a deep hole in the 

 ground, and then laid them there. 



