Page:Comenius' School of Infancy.pdf/42

 better known and more common plants, violets, grasses, and roses. Likewise, the difference between animals; what is a bird, what are cattle, what is a horse, etc. Finally, the outward members of its own body, how they ought to be named, for what use designed; as the ears for hearing, the feet for running, etc. 2. Of optics, it will suffice for children to know what is darkness, what is light, and the difference between the more common colors, and their names. 3. In astronomy, to discern between the sun, moon, and stars. 4. In geography, to know whether the place in which it was born and in which it lives be a village, a city, a town, or a citadel; what is a field, a mountain, a forest, a meadow, a river. 5. The child’s first instruction in chronology will be to know what is an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year; what is spring, summer, etc. 6. The beginning of history will be to remember what was done yesterday, what recently, what a year ago, what two or three years ago. 7. Household affairs, to distinguish who belongs to the family and who does not. 8. In politics, that there is in the state a chief ruler, ministers, and legislators, and that there are occasional assemblies of the nation.

10. As to actions, some have respect to the mind and the tongue, as dialectics, arithmetic, geometry, and music; some respect the mind and hand, such as labors and corporeal actions. 1. The principles of dialectics may be so far imbibed as that a child may know what is a question, and what an answer, and be able to reply distinctly to a question proposed, not talking about onions when the question is garlic. 2. Arithmetic, the foundation of which will be to know that something is much or little, be able to count to twenty, or even all the way to sixty, and understand what is an even and what an odd number; likewise that the number three is greater than two, and that three and one make four, etc. 3. In geometry, to know what is small or