110 NATURE STUDY LESSONS FOR PRIMARY GRADES 



might wish to shoot it.) Does it need anything 

 besides a good coat and a sheltered home to keep 

 it alive in the winter? (It must have food.) What 

 does it eat? Let us watch, this winter, and see if 

 we can find out for ourselves. [The teacher should 

 frequently ask for the results of the children's 

 observations and give them her own, then they will 

 think her questions are not idle ones. The chil- 

 dren may find that it eats mice, carrion, hens' eggs, 

 corn, acorns, nuts, frozen apples from the boughs of 

 trees, and the fruits of poison ivy, poison sumac 

 and other sumacs, sand, and gravel. They may 

 discover also that it drinks a great deal of water. 

 Careful observations made by the children will 

 arouse in them a more than transient interest in 

 the object studied. This the teacher should work 

 for constantly, and feel quite sure that her work 

 amounts to but little if the children are not inter- 

 ested enough to watch, outside of school, the move- 

 ments of the animals studied.] 



Let the children tell what they have observed in 

 regard to the manner in which the crow catches 

 and kills the mice. What does it do with the 

 hens' eggs? Where and how does it get the fruits 

 of ivies and sumacs? Why eat sand and pebbles? 



