ing that arouses the kindly thought, the desire to feed, to fondle and to protect. Well do I remember the difference I felt all through my being when, as a child, I was taken to see stuffed animals in the museum after having visited the living animals in their cages.

The life was not there

that had held me before. I felt no interest. Curious forms and bright bright colors even did not interest me. I only wanted to go back to the living creatures to see what they were doing.

The three living animals of the higher type that can be well kept in the kindergarten room as pets, if only a few days at a time, are the kitten, the rabbit and the canary. These we have tested in our kindergartens thoroughly and they are a never failing source of pleasure and profit. The kitten or rabbit may be allowed the freedom of the room. The canary's bath, as well as his song and his food, has proved suggestive. Pigeons and sparrows may often be observed in the street and are sometimes fed on the window sills. Even a chick or two finds it way occasionally into the kindergarten room. One that was sent to the country for his good afterwards repaid the kindness by sending back his photograph!

It is the individual animal with an individual name that we can use to the best advantage in the education of the little child. Children become attached to one particular horse or dog that may be seen daily on the way to school. A touching incident appeared in the papers last summer of "Jack," a dog, who was saved by the children's love and pennies.

Next in interest to these living creatures of the higher types are those to be found in the school aquarium or

terrarium.

As many as six distinct types of animal life have been observed in these by kindergarten children, namely, fishes, frogs and tadpoles, turtles, lizards, snails and several kinds of water bugs. Living bees, butterflies, spiders and grass-hoppers have been entertained in our window boxes. Each one of these insects has a peculiar living interest to a child because of a characteristic motion or habit, and from the movements of each, a play may be developed which proves the best and only drill needed.

It would be forcing the matter to expect a city child in a kindergarten to become familiar with many living animals, and, indeed, it will be a very active kindergartner who, during the year, secures all of those mentioned. To aid our work a few living animals should be provided by the city in every small park. A beginning in this direction has already been made by our Park Commissioners. A hen and her chicks as well as a small pig were the delight of the children last summer in De Witt Clinton Park in the section given over to "The Children's School Farm."

In the kindergarten there should be very little instruction about animals. For example, there should be no formal lessons on parts and their uses. What can the animal do? Can we pet it? Will it hurt us? What shall we feed it? Does it ever go to sleep? Can it make a noise? What does it say? Can we make that sound? are typical questions. The parts should be suggested almost wholly by their How is it that Bunnie hops? Why does he need such long ears? How can pussy walk so softly? How does she wash herself? How can the bee get food from the flowers? What

uses.

do the fishes move when they swim? What does our canary do when he goes to sleep? When he takes a bath? Such questions, based upon characteristic activities, will lead the children to observe and name characteristic parts naturally and that is all that should be required. There should be no drilling by formal repetition.

Picture books of animals are a necessity in a kindergarten, and many excellent ones are named on the New York City Supply List. Those showing the natural environment of the animal are preferable to comic pictures. of animals, but humor has its place even in the kindergarten. The children should have access to these picture books before nine o'clock and whenever there is a free play time. At stated times each child should have a different book and should look over it freely as a child uses a picture book in the home. As the kindergartner passes from child to child she should ask a question about this picture or that, gradually leading the children to ask. the names of animals they do not know.

Not only toy picture books but toy animals are welcomed by the kindergartner. Small wooden animals are very useful in arranging park and country scenes in the sand courts.

The names and uses of seeds and vegetables are often brought naturally to the child's attention in the feeding. of animals. This is one way by which the child is led naturally to "the observation of plants" and to naming them. The "care of plant life" is more important. Plant life is not so fascinating to the young child as animal life because there is less activity to be observed. The child, however, may be active in watering plants, in playing

farmer, in sorting seeds, in planting them and in modeling vegetable and fruit forms.

It has been the aim in our kindergartens to have every child plant a seed and watch it grow; to visit at every season and many times the tree nearest the school building; to learn its name, see if there are any nests or any cocoons to be found in it, if any ants or other insects climb up its trunk, whether it has a rough or a smooth bark; to watch for its buds, its leaves, its flowers, its fruit; to gather some of its leaves when they fall; to see when it waves its branches or rustles its leaves; to see if it is as high as a house nearby, and if not which window it reaches; to see how it looks after a shower or when it is dressed in snow.

"Every fir and pine and hemlock
Wore ermine too dear for an earl,
And the smallest twig on the hemlock
Was ridged inch deep in pearl."

And so may our tree be dressed some day! Is there a hole in our tree? Who made it? Could a squirrel get in? What would he do if he should? Could we climb our tree if it grew in the country? Why may we not climb it in the city?

The children play with acorns, maple seeds, cones, leaves, milkweed pods and seeds when they can be secured in quantities. Before and after the Christmas holidays the fir tree and evergreens are used both in play and in work. (See in SCHOOL WORK, April, 1902, an article by Miss E. M. Underhill.)

Kindergartners, while on a walk with the children in the fall, often make it a point to visit a grocery where the rich colors of vegetables and fruits attract the eye. One of our kin

dergartners writes, in a recent article in the October number of the Kindergarten Review: "Several stores were in view from our windows, and in our walks we examined them and the markets more closely. We went into the grocer's and bought vegetables and fruit; these, on our return to the kindergarten, were placed in a box which, when the proper time came, was easily transformed into a barn with two compartments. Best of all, we purchased a pumpkin which we made later into a Jack-o'-lantern."

Little children care more for flowers, fruits and vegetables than for seeds, buds or leaves, but the rustle and falling of leaves are attractive to them and also the swaying of the branches; for here is motion, and fancy suggests a tiny nest rocking in the tree top. Wherever it is possible we relate plant and animal life.

Every good kindergartner makes constant efforts to have a few brilliant flowers in her room, and it is no uncommon sight to see quite a miniature flower garden on the floor in the center of the morning ring. If there are a number of potted plants in the window, they are often removed to help make this play-garden, and each plant is named as it is placed and again as a child plays he is walking around the garden.

Mr. Henry T. Bailey bids the kindergartner make her kindergarten room a constant object lesson of all out-of-doors. He says "We must

have, at least, beautiful walls for the everlasting hills, beautiful curtains for the stately clouds, beautiful gardens for the fields of flowers, the gold-fish jar for the happy brock, and the canary bars for the echoing groves of the woodland." This sounds very poetic, but is it not a practical thought for schoolroom decoration? The city kindergartner can do nothing better than to make her room an echo of nature unless indeed she finds happily the reality in a park nearby, or the very unusual opportunity to have the children make an out-of-door garden. Difficult as it has been to find Mother Earth, kindergartners in Manhattan and The Bronx have made seventeen out-of-door gardens, while those in the other boroughs have made even more owing to their natural advantages. There have been small crops of radishes, lettuce, beans, corn, oats, peas, grass in these out-of-door gardens, and even in window boxes and in our "egg-shell farms."

Active digging, so valuable for exercise as well as pleasure, is a rare possibility. It is imitated to some extent by using garden tools in our large sand boxes which we place upon the floor as a closer resemblance to the ground than a sand table.

In this article we have dwelt mainly upon impressions received from the world of nature. In our next, we hope to present more fully the expressive side in creative work, in language, in play and in song.