Teaching a Class of Boys How Plants Grow 
and plant cultivation, while that most important feature of 
botany, classification, is given attention. Then comes the 
study of the adaptation of animals to environment, and 
elementary classification. Woody plants, industries depend- 
ent on forests, plants without wood, useful plant products 
and protection of trees in cities conclude the course. 
The Nature study classes and their teachers make many 
trips to the country, the suburbs, and to the parks. In 
the latter the botanical gardens are, of course, centers of in- 
terest. The superintendents of these gardens are men from 
whom the pupils can learn much, and one of them told me 
not long ago that he was always glad to see the school chil- 
dren come into the gardens on a Nature study trip, for the 
questions of such visitors were intelligent and pleasant to 
answer, while the average visitor’s quéries were absurd and 
annoying. From the superintendents of the gardens and 
their assistants the children learn the facts vital to the suc- 
cessful raising of plants in the home. In fact, in some of the 
city homes, in the poorest sections of New York city, where 
light and air were at a premium, I have seen plants that 
showed by their thrifty appearance far better care than 
plants in some country homes have evidenced. Often draw- 
ings and water color sketches are 
made of material found in the 
Nature room of the public school 
and in the botanical gardens. Again, 
the children who have to do with the 
model farms frequently enter the 
bench work classes and construct 
small houses, barns and fences, such 
as they have seen in their infrequent 
suburban trips. Then, too, some of 
the Nature students who are in the 
basketry class often construct small 
baskets, and these, “lled with ferns, 
furnish a charming decoration for 
the Nature room: Domestic ‘science 
pupils in the Nature class learn from 
actual contact: therewith all about 
the food plants; pupils of the milli- 
nery class learn Nature’s own color 
combinations, and all about foliage 
and blossoms, from: actual observa- 
tion. In teaching members of other 
industrial classes which come to the 
Nature study class, form is the topic 
often used, the Nature study teacher 
correlating her work with the other 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
May, 1906 
subjects. Every class has at least 
thirty minutes in the Nature room. 
As a result of this method of 
bringing the children of the city 
closer to Nature, thousands of city 
homes bloom and blossom, walls that 
were blank and bare are adorned 
with drawings and sketches, and the 
children themselves learn that there 
is a vast amount of beauty in life, 
that the joy of living is much greater 
than their parents knew or were able 
to learn from their limited oppor- 
tunities. It has brought a new side 
of life into cheerless homes where 
poverty had hitherto made beauty 
and art strangers. 
The fact is, all things considered, 
that the public school of to-day in- 
fluences the home because it teaches 
the pupils not only how to appre- 
ciate but how to think, and to think 
logically, profitably. It is not based—this modern cur- 
riculum—on the theory that the pupil must be made like the 
machine that can do certain things and find its usefulness 
at an end when these things are accomplished. Rather is 
its basis the effort to cause the pupil to learn how to make 
the most out of whatever ability is his, and to be prepared 
to meet emergencies. With training of this sort the pupil 
sees home needs that under old ideas and methods would 
never make themselves visible to him. Not only do the boys 
and girls feel the need of a host of little things heretofore 
lacked, but they learn how to supply these needs by the skill 
of their own hands. 
The pupil is urged to train the hand as well as the mind, 
so that both may work in unison. For this reason, if a girl 
shows particular interest in anything that is at all scientific, 
she is given the same opportunity that is offered the boy to 
develop any latent talent which may be hers. In consequence, 
some of the brightest students in the laboratory work of the 
public schools, and in all applied science, are girls. The girls 
are particularly apt in microscopical work. 
In general the scientific work in which these pupils are 
engaged is known as elementary science. ‘The first steps are 
me captioe spree, Or 
Y 
Gye 
Drawing Plants from the Flat and from the Round 
