50 THE NATURE STUDY COURSE. 



of visitation to the children's home gardens? Window- 

 gardening in the school-room may be managed so as to give 

 each a proprietary interest in a plant. If there be a school 

 garden the object advocated may be easily reached there. 

 But by some means or other try to have every child in the 

 primary grades cultivate one or more plants of his very own. 

 Note the methods referred to in the paragraph on The School 

 Garden, page 17. Those who are old enough to write may 

 keep a diary of the growth; younger pupils may report 

 important events, such as the showing of buds, the opening 

 of blossoms, etc., to be recorded by the teacher or a monitor. 



Recognition of the common trees of the locality by their 

 most conspicuous features is equally interesting and useful to 

 pupils in the junior and intermediate grades. It is enough 

 for the juniors to distinguish maples from oaks and oaks from 

 elms, etc. ; the older ones will find suitable problems in 

 recognizing the different kinds of maples, and oaks and elms. 



Acquiring a superficial acquaintance with a few common 

 door-yard and road-side plants will also prove interesting and 

 useful observational exercise. A school-inspector said to a 

 Part II class one day : " I will give you ten minutes to go 

 out into the yard to collect and bring in to me one leaf of 

 every different kind of plant you can find." When the time 

 was up each of the nine children had a handful of leaves. 

 They stood between a long bench and the platform, and laid 

 their specimens on the latter. One child was called upon to 

 hold up a leaf while the others sorted over their lots to find 

 one like it. All of that kind were laid on the bench behind 

 the child that held up the specimen. Then another child was 

 called on to hold up a leaf, which action was followed by 

 another assortment. When the exercise was finished the long 

 bench held leaves of twenty-one different kinds of plants 

 which had been collected by these children in a clean, tidy- 

 looking school yard. They knew the name of only one kind 



