FOR THE USE OF TEACHERS. 



No. 1. 



Leaflet 



On Nature Study. 



Designed for the Use of Teachers of 

 Public Schools. 



PREPARED BY THE 



FACULTY OF PURDUE UNIVERSITY. 



INTRODUCTION TO NATURE STUDY. 



By Prof. Stanley Coulter. 



The purpose of these leaflets is to aid the teachers to bring the chil- 

 dren of rural districts into close sympathy with nature, to cultivate the 

 habit of accurate observation, and to give them such information con- 

 cerning these matters as will be not merely of present interest and use, 

 but which will serve to give added power and usefulness to them in 

 after years, whether they remain upon the farm or enter some other 

 life work. It is further the purpose to show how the truths gathered 

 from these observed facts may be made to be of service in enabling 

 them to do familiar things in a better way, or may even serve to sug- 

 gest entirely new ways of forcing nature to contribute to our prosperity 

 and comfort. 



Teachers in our ungraded schools are already overcrowded with 

 work, and it is a part of the purpose of these leaflets to suggest to 

 them how, not by added work, but by work of diflerent character they 

 may secure much more perfect and enduring results. Nature work of 

 the highest type can not be given from data drawn from books how- 

 ever skillfully prepared, the data must be drawn from nature itself. So 

 each of these leaflets has as its real center some broad underlying prin- 

 ciple, capable of almost endless illustration and expansion. If this is 

 grasped, it will give new methods of interpretation of nature and its 

 phenomena, which will enable the teacher to use to the objects nearest 

 to his hand as the material for nature study. 



