Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/399

Rh desk with pencil on unruled, paper, the copy being still written on the board. When all had reached this stage, concert arm and finger movements were taught. During the second and third years the forms of the letters and combining strokes were analyzed, and each drawn on a large scale to accurate measurements.

The children saw no misspelled words, and were not asked to spell or write isolated words. During the first and second years they usually had a copy from which they wrote. In the third year they wrote original exercises. They were told to ask, when not sure how to write a word. The word was written on the board: no effort was made to have them think how a word should look, no matter how many times they had seen it written and printed.

Work in the natural and physical sciences, starting with broad conceptions, was carried forward along various lines, care being taken to show relations, and to lead the children to regard themselves as a part of nature. In mineralogy and geology, the paving, building, and ornamental stones most used in Boston; the ores of the principal metals, and their products; graphite and the making of pencils; gypsum and halite, were studied, each child getting his knowledge from specimens before him. Each was furnished with a testing outfit, including what a field geologist commonly carries, except the blowpipe and reagents to use with it; and these children from six to ten soon learned to use the outfit with as much skill as any adults whom I have taught.

In physics, lessons were given on extension and gravity; on the solid, liquid, and gaseous states of matter; on heat as the force producing expansion and contraction; on the evaporation, condensation, and freezing of water, with results in dew, clouds, rain, snow, and the disintegration of rocks; on movements of air as agents producing wind and storms; on the thermometer; on magnets, and two of their uses. In chemistry, lessons were given on air and its composition; on combustion and its products; on iron rust as to formation, and effects on iron; on CO3 as an ingredient of calcite, and a product of breathing; on acids as tests for lime rocks containing CO2; on the distinction between physical and chemical changes. In astronomy, a few lessons were given on the relations of sun and earth as causing day and night and the seasons.

Botany was pursued in the fall and spring months. In the spring the children planted a window garden, from which they drew plants for the study of germination and growtli. From garden and wild plants they studied buds and their developments, and the forms, parts, and uses of some leaves, flowers, and fruits. A series of lessons on plants yielding textile fabrics and the manufactures from them was projected; but, owing to the difficulty