B Y THE WA YSIDE 
7 (> 
BY THE W AYSI D E 
Published on the tenth of each month except July and 
Angust. 
The official organ of the Wisconsin and Illinois Audu¬ 
bon Societies. 
Twenty=five cents per year. Single Copies 3 cents. 
All communications shonld be sent to Miss Ruth Mar¬ 
shall, Appleton, Wis. 
NATURE STUDY IN SCHOOLS 
Nature Study Correlated With Language 
Work. 
“I don’t know what to write about,” is 
the common response we receive when 
we ask children to write a composition. 
The picture “The Doctor” in our lan¬ 
guage books is very impressive and full of 
meaning to an older person, but it con¬ 
veys very little to the mind of the child. 
The subject “Coal” is better, but the for¬ 
mation is beyond the child’s comprehen¬ 
sion and a visit to a coal mine is too 
often out of his reach. 
To supply material for these little 
minds to act freely and spontaneouslv, 
let us leave the cut and dried book work 
and turn to Mother Nature for our ma¬ 
terial. What is there more interesting 
for a child to work with intelligently 
than the responses of nature? How 
many courses in our curriculum have 
this subject for their fundamental basis! 
But how can we bring nature in reach 
of a class in language? A few sugges¬ 
tions to the boys and girls and you can 
without difficulty secure some of the fol¬ 
lowing material: a caterpillar, cocoon, 
chrysalis, plant, cornstalk, tadpoles, bou¬ 
quet of flowers, a handful of earth from 
the woods, wigglers out of a pool or soft 
water barrel, leaves, twigs, etc. 
A milkweed caterpillar furnished some 
lively interest for the children last fall. 
New leaves were furnished every morn¬ 
ing, but it was not long before the cater¬ 
pillar made its chrysalis. After ten days 
or more a beautiful milkweed butterfly 
emerged from the chrysalis. What ade- 
light it was to the children and how 
anxious they were to tell about it! 
The polvphemus, cecrepia, promethea 
cocoons also furnish interesting subjects 
for compositions. 
Frogs’ eggs will be furnished by the 
boys to supply a dozen rooms. Only a 
few of these should be kept, however, in 
the aquarium or shallow pan to develop 
into tadpoles and frogs. 
One boy brought some “little wee tad¬ 
poles” as he called them. These were 
placed in a bottle with water and a little 
perforated paper put over the top and 
placed in the window. The little wig¬ 
glers were soon seen swimming on the 
top of the water, and the next morning 
nothing was left on the water but some 
little transparent boats. We soon dis¬ 
covered the occupants of the boats, half 
a dozen mosquitoes under the perforated 
paper. 
A large amaryllis blossom in the room 
worked very favorably in the recognition 
of the parts of the flower. The large 
orange-red perianth, the anthers thatturn 
like door-knobs, do’not fail to attract the 
children. 
A handful of earth gathered in the 
woods last fall and put in a flower-pot in 
February was placed in the sun and care¬ 
fully watered by the children. They knew 
that there were some sprouts or seeds in 
the soil, but it proved far beyond our ex¬ 
pectations when we discovered six kinds 
ot plants in the small flower-pot. In the 
early part of March three of these pro¬ 
duced blossoms. These, of course, did 
not fail to attract the most indifferent 
observers. The dodder, a parasite, was 
among the remaining three. This was a 
Continued on last page. 
