SCHOOL DEPARTMENT 



Edited by A. A. ALLEN. Ph.D. 



Address all communications relative to the work of this 

 department to the Editor, Cornell University, Ithaca, N. Y. 



THE NEW YEAR WITH THE BIRDS 



This is the time of good resolutions. The year is still so young that we 

 have not yet forgotten the ones we made on New Year's Day and there is 

 plenty of time to make others. Let us, therefore, in making our plans for the 

 school year, lay out a definite work that we will do in bird-study and then let 

 us stick to it. It is not well to try to do everything in one year and the past 

 volumes of Bird-Lore are so replete with suggestions that it is well to decide 

 at the beginning of the year just what plan is to be followed, lest one get lost 

 in his own enthusiasm, and arrive at the 

 end of the year with no piece of work well 

 done, Decide on one line of work to fol- 

 low and then center all efforts about it. 

 Let the composition, the drawing, the 

 manual training, and the geography, as 

 well as the nature-study, center about it, 

 so that the children will actually live in 

 the experience and make it part of their 

 lives. Suppose, for example, one decides 

 to study the migration of birds. Do not 

 wait until the birds begin to come back in 

 the spring, begin now. Start the bird cal- 

 ender with the winter birds. Many of 

 them are migratory and are merely spend- 

 ing the winter with us. It is a good lesson 

 to find out which they are. The bird cal- 

 endar will.make more than one good draw- 

 ing lesson. Refer to the March- April Bird- 

 Lore of 1920 for ideas as to the making 

 of the calendar and information about 

 the migration of birds. Get out your bird 

 books and look up the nesting range of the Snow Bunting, the Tree Sparrow, 

 the Northern Shrike, or any other bird that you see on one of your winter 

 walks or that is reported by some child and let it make a lesson in geography. 



Plan at least one walk for birds with the class during the winter and then 

 have the children write it up as one of their English lessons. If it does not seem 

 feasible to get out together, encourage or require them to take individual 



(55) 



NORTHERN SHRIKES ARE COMMON 

 THIS WINTER. CAN YOU SUGGEST A 

 GEOGRAPHY LESSON ON THIS BIRD? 



