SELECTION AND SEQUENCE OF MATERIAL. 313 



find it most difficult or impossible to form a concept 

 of a force only, as distinct from matter. Children can 

 only conceive -or express forces in terms of things which 

 appeal to their senses. Gravitation becomes a giant. 

 The work of frost is ascribed to Jack Frost. Although 

 they realize that Giant Gravitation and Jack Frost do 

 not and never did exist, they have no other way of 

 conceiving and expressing force. They personify force 

 for the same reason that their ancestors, in the child- 

 hood of the race, personified and deified the powers and 

 phenomena of nature, the winds and thunderbolts. 



For this reason it seems wise to emphasize in lower) 

 grades the study of things, plants, animals, and mine-' \ 

 rals, arid to limit the work in physics during the earlier 

 years in school to the study of water (rain, streams, 

 waves, frost, steam) and air (currents, drafts, and winds), 

 regarded as forces by the children because they do so 

 much work. From this we can pass to the causes and 

 effects of heat, phenomena with which the children are 

 most familiar, and later take physics and chemistry as 

 such, heat, gravitation, magnetism, electricity, sound, 

 light, and chemical phenomena and forces. 



It seems scarcely necessary to add that that is best 

 for study which is most common and familiar. We are 

 somewhat prone to think that we must go to distant 

 lands to find wonderful and curious things. Nature 

 study should, first of all, show the children the won- 

 ders at their doorstep, the treasures and beauties on 

 which they have been treading for years. These they 

 have seen and can see daily, Working with 



