PRINCIPLES DETERMINING METHOD. 149 



In no school-work do teachers have better opportu- 

 nities for studying children. Experience has shown 

 that nature study, more than any other work in the 

 elementary school, leads the teacher to study her chil- 

 dren and adapt her methods to them. In nature study, 

 genuine nature study, teacher and pupils are working 

 together, fellow-investigators of truth. 



In such child study we discover certain character- 

 istics or laws in the development of children (and al- 

 most equally marked in the adult) which determine 

 method and require special consideration. These are : - 



First. Sense-perception, as determining the medium 

 through which, and the method by which, the child 

 must originally gain his ideas or impressions or per- 

 cepts. 



Second. Apperception, as determining the means or 

 method by which new ideas must be assimilated and 

 incorporated with the old ideas, forming concepts or 

 general notions. 



Third. Interest, as determining the condition for and 

 the method of gaining the most effective sense-percep- 

 tions, and of relating these percepts in apperception. 



Fourth. Imagination, the power and process of form- 

 ing mind pictures or mental images of what is seen or 

 perceived (visualization), of recalling or reproducing 

 these mind pictures (memory or reproductive imagi- 

 nation), and of modifying and combining the mental 

 images of what has been perceived so as to picture 

 what has not been perceived (constructive imagination). 



Fifth. Sequence, the relating of ideas in a series, as 



