16 THE NATURE STUDY COURSE. 



wire one, etc. These may afford subjects of special studies to 

 be reported at school by children residing on such farms, or, 

 if convenient to the schoolhouse, the objects of visits by the 

 class. 



Then there are the indoor operations* How much can be 

 made of a child's participation in a bread-making if it involves 

 observing the qualities, quantities and treatment of the 

 ingredients, questioning as to the whys and wherefores of 

 every step in the process, recording everything in detail, 

 expecting to discuss it in school and to compare it with the 

 experiences and reports of others. If such opportunity cannot 

 come on a Saturday, it is worth any boy's or girl's time, 

 provided that it will be expertly turned to Nature Study 

 account, to stay home a half-day to help with the baking. 

 Further it is practicable to encourage occasional exhibits of 

 buns and tarts, articles made of wood, cardboard and clay, 

 samples of patching, button-holing and hemming, of plaiting, 

 knitting and darning, done partly or wholly at home under 

 parental instruction but with the teacher's knowledge and 

 sympathy, — all accompanied with neat records of the processes 

 and reasons and, in some cases, with illustrative drawings. 

 Where there is a will there is a way; it is certainly not 

 impossible to do a good deal of useful, educative manual 

 training and domestic science in the rural schools. 



The School Garden. — Every school, whether rural or 

 urban, may have its garden. The Ontario Regulation of 1904 

 provides for a special grant for every well-equipped and 

 properly-conducted garden of a minimum area of one acre. 

 But educative studies of great value and variety can be based 

 upon operations conducted in a garden even less than a 

 twentieth of that area. What the laboratory is to the teacher 

 of chemistry the school garden is to the Nature Study teacher. 

 In addition to it, or in its absence, every child may be encour- 

 aged to cultivate a little plot at his or her own home, or to 



