CHAPTER IX 

 nature- study property of children 



Flowers and Vegetables 



At Noey's house when they arrived with him — 

 How snug seemed everything, and neat and trim : 



With little paint-keg, vases and teapots 

 Of wee moss-blossoms and forgetmenots : 

 And in the windows, either side the door. 

 Were ranged as many little boxes more 

 Of like old-fashioned larkspur, pinks and moss 

 And fern and phlox ; while up and down across 

 Them rioted the morniiig-glory-vines 

 On taut-set cotton-strings. 



James Whitcome Riley, A Child World. 



In order to develop the educational values connected 

 with the plants children are trying to rear at home we 

 must first know what they are. For a simple language 

 lesson, ask each pupil to write a list of what plants he 

 owns. This will, of course, result in a mass of unclassified 

 data that the teacher must arrange and tabulate before it 

 becomes usable. This entails an unnecessary amount 

 of labor, and a better method is to have blanks with the 

 names of the commoner sorts printed in order on sheets 

 of school writing paper. The data will thus be xmi^ormly 

 arranged by the children themselves, and the teacher can 

 keep them on file as a basis for assignment of lessons on 



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