MOTHERS' CORNER.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10092, 4 March 1911, Page 4

MOTHERS' CORNER.

(Specially compiled for the "Star.")

" Every home is a mint for the coining of character."

REFLECTION. (By MRS CUNNINGTON.) In the three little articles, of which this is the third. I am trying to direct the attention of mothers to the desirability of responding to their children s growing intellectual life by personal influence, not leaving everything of that kind to the school teachers.

Since I began these, articles I see that Mr E. K. Mulgan, inspector of schools in the Auckland district says that the Nature studies in the State schools are not made quite as vivid and attractive as they might and should be.

If this be the case, and Mr Mulgan is a most kindlv as well as shrewd critic, there is all tho more reason why mothers must bestir themselves m this educative direction.

We have already touched on the subject of satisfying the child's instinct of perception, or "noticing" as we call it. The child is beginning to observe, to watch, to look out for things. You want, therefore, to draw his perceptive powers to all that is beautiful, true and good. Hence my plea for you to take your little ones into Nature's vast edifice—the Temple of God. Now wo come to the next step in the child's mental progress, when he. asks intelligent questions. I use the word "intelligent" on purpose, because a great many children acquire a rather tiresome habit of asking frivolous questions just to get mother to notice them. Mother must distinguish for herself what questions are prompted from idle fussiness and what ones are due to intelligent desire for information on the child's part. But our trouble is that very few, children ask intelligent questions at all! What we have to do is to foster, encourage, stimulate the reflective powers of children, lead them to ask questions by drawing their attention to the facte "of Nature, while we demonstrate at the same time that facts always have a preceding cause. '■'Curi-, csity," says a writer of much thought, "may be successfully appealed to in the child with much more certainty than in the adult in whom this intellectual instinct lias grown so torpid as never, to awake unless it enters into association with some selfish personal interest."

The child's curiosity and powers of observation are now, we suppose, well aroused. Ho notices forms and colours, and is able to clearly distinguish differences in plan£* and animal structures.

By degrees you will lead him tw seek for the oauses and reasons of the objects he notices, and it will presently dawn on him that Nature's underlying purpose and motive is use! Once he has seized hold of the idea, that plants and animals develop those characteristics that serve useful purposes in the struggle for life, the, child is in possession or the key that opens most of Nature's doors; he has, indeed, caught the principle- upon which all organic' life is constructed. For example, let the child notice the whitish bloom on a cabbage-leaf, then out the bloom off one leaf, and' he will see- in a £evf hours that the leaf with the bloom has kept fresh and firm, while the other is wilted. Cause: The bloom prevented the loss of water from the leaf; it was, in other words, of use to the cabbage. With a fairly strong magnifying-glass you can see, perfect forests of tiny hairs on certain leaves that are exposed to muck sunshine; they aro useful to the plant—-they ward off the fierce rays and prevent drying out of the contained moisture. -Try the" simple experiment of .covering a piece of your lawn with, an old'" sack or a, board for a couple of weeks; then note the difference, on the blades-of grass under the sack- and-those on. the .rest of the lawn. Tho sheltered blades..are much longer; they have been struggling to get into the air and sunshine. Air and- sunshine are of use to the grass I Study, plant defence devices—spikes, thorns, bitter tastes, etc. Study "seed devices, such as the dandelion's feathery hooked barbs, the scarlet holly berries attracting hungry birds to eat them, thus scattering the seed all over the country. In fact, as Grant Allen says in his charming book, "Flashlights on Nature," "everybody who has studied plants in a broad spirit is well awaro that each act of the plant's is just as truly purposive and as full of practical import as any act of an animal. If a child sees a cat lying in wait at a. mouse's hole, it asks you why she does so. You roply, because- she wants to catch her prey for dinner." But even imaginative children seldom or never ask of a rose or a narcissus: "Why does it produce this notch on its petals, or why does it make this curious crown inside the cup of its flower? Yet the rose or the narcissus have just as much reason of their own for everything they do and everything they make as the cat or the bird."

I liavo touched on plant more than animal life because plants are more easily studied and more accessible to women and children than animals, but some mothers may prefer to draw their children's attention to animal life; others, again, may be moro_ attracted to geological studies, and this, indeed; is a fascinating chapter in the book of Nature. Then there is sea life, freshwater life, of both animals and plants. """And ever at the loom of birth The mighty mother weaves and sings.

And the human mother, in the midst of all her toils and troubles, in the jar and clatter of oven city life, may pause and listen to Nature's myriadtoned music, and in listening tell the children that it is tho voice of God Himself.

"Wisdom and Spirit of the universe, Thou Lord that art the Eternity of Thought, —Wordsworth.