19

E.—lb

The headmaster of the Kaikora North School writes, " The school is in a transition state between the old and the new syllabus work. The work for the year was practically finished in the upper standards in March last. The headmaster has used the interim in prospecting and experimenting in the new field of work. In particular we have taken up " nature-study " from nature, the whole material for the lessons being supplied by the children themselves. Another subject of great interest to the children is elementary geology as far as it affects geography —as the erosion of rocks, the formation of soils, &c. The new method of dealing with English has also been introduced. The arithmetic in the school has always been taught on a system similar to the new syllabus system. The above have been necessarily experiments. The results are as follows : (a.) The new style has proved very attractive to children and is a great relief to the teacher from the old mechanical syllabus, (b.) There is wonderful opportunity for combining one lesson with another, (c.) The experiment has been tried of making the work of a whole day revolve round a subject, say, geography, as follows : Reading lesson is taken from the geography book. Spelling consists of geographical names. Writing consists of geographical definitions. Drawing consists of maps, sections, and diagrams. Composition, of subjects such as the sun, the action of frost, the seasons, or a description of a country and its people, as China, Japan. Arithmetic, sums relating to distances between places, areas under cultivation, calculation of local time, percentage of total water in Pacific, Atlantic, &c. Science, of lessons on the formation of plains, &c." From these two descriptions it will be understood how wide a scope there is for the study of nature, and no two schools need be alike in cultivating the habit of observation and of expression among the children. At Motu, for example, the children, with the help of the master, have collected specimens of the principal bush flora, and they have a knowledge of the more important of the forest-trees, including their characteristics and uses. A list also has been kept of the birds seen in the vicinity of the school, with the date and a brief description of each. At a recent visit paid by me to the district a young pigeon was brought in by a surveyor, and the Chairman of the Committee undertook to make a photograph for the benefit of the children. At Petane the observations in the way of " nature-study " are of a different character, but they are nevertheless of much interest and future value to the children. The weekly compositions describing the things observed and the thoughts arising therefrom are suggestive and of much promise. I have purposely given these examples to show what is possible where teachers choose to make " nature-study " a reality. The training of infants in " nature-study " is of a somewhat different character, and the mistress of the infants' department in the Napier South School describes her work in the following words (the syllabus of the course is omitted) : " In the first lesson each child was supplied with a pea, a bean, a grain of wheat, and a grain of maize. These were examined and described by the children. The skin was peeled off, and each child found that the pea and the bean split into two parts while the wheat and maize remained whole. The class learnt that all seeds have either two seed-leaves or one seed-leaf. Specimens of these seeds were planted in a box. Other specimens, including a lupin, were germinated behind glass or in saucers on moist flannel, and a monitress was appointed to water them. All were kept on the mantelshelf before the glass, and each morning the children were required to notice them and describe the process of growth as they saw it. The most forward of these young plants were afterwards planted in the school-garden and tended by the children. In the succeeding lessons the children brought the specimens required. Each child was told to find out the name of the plant from which the specimen was taken, and where it grew. The class has been frequently taken out to the school-gardens to observe the process of growth there. In addition to the above work Standard I. has been taken to the beach for a lesson on the natural phenomena observable and on the contour of the land. As evidence of the interest which the children have manifested in their nature lessons, and of the growth of their observant faculties, they have spontaneously brought the following objects with a request that teacher should tell them something about them : Fossil shells from Bluff Hill, a piece of wood covered with young shell-fish from the beach, frogs and fishes from the swamp. One morning we found across the fireplace a perfect spider's web with the spider in the middle. With such a splendid illustration to work upon, the spider and its comparison with the fly became the subject of a number of lessons, including one on perseverance, for our friend the spider had its web swept away three times, and each time it wove another in exactly the same place, taking refuge meanwhile in a very conspicuous corner of the mantelshelf, where it remained for three weeks. The children often had the opportunity of seeing the spider secure and feed on its prey. The above lessons have been correlated with the plasticine lessons in PI and P2 classes, and as far as possible with the brushwork and composition of Standard I." Unfortunately few of our teachers possess the necessary books of reference bearing upon the flora and fauna, &c, of this country. Hutton and Drummond's book on " Nature Study "in New Zealand is of help, and so is the recently published work by Mulgan, " The New Zealand Nature-study Book," but teachers require something more than these if they are to interest their children in the vitalising pursuit of carefully observing the things around them. " Nature-study "is all-embracing in the power it gives to children in the way of rational enjoyment, and every encouragement should be given to the teachers by providing the schools with works of reference bearing upon matters that relate directly to thej country. More than once attention has been called by me to the need of diagrams to illustrate the flora and fauna of New Zealand, but if " nature-study " is to become a reality in the schools I would suggest the following works of reference for use in all the larger schools, whilst those relating to birds and plants could be supplied to the smaller : (1) Buller's " Birds," (2) Featon's or Hetley's " New Zealand Flora," (3) " Indigenous Grasses of New Zealand " (Buchanan), (4) " Forest Flora of New Zealand " (Kirk), " New Zealand Mollusca," Brown's " Coleoptera," " Manual of New Zealand Entomology " (Hudson), " Animals of New Zealand " (Hutton), Hochstetter's " New Zealand," " Annual Reports of the Agricultural and Survey Department," " New Zealand Year-book," and " Maori Art"