In the days when teachers argued about the differences between Object-lessons and Nature-lessons, one point insisted upon was that the Nature-lesson far surpassed the Object-lesson because it dealt with life.

We have learned now that we should as much as we can surround our children with life and growth.  Even indoors it is easy to give the joy of growing seeds and bulbs and of opening chestnut branches:  without any cruelty we can let them enjoy watching snails and worms and we can keep caterpillars or silkworms and so let them drink their fill of the miracle of development.  But beauty comes to children in very different ways, and always it is Nature, though it may not be life.

Children revel in colour, colour for its own sake, and should be allowed to create it.  In a modern novel there is a description of a mother doing her washing in the open air and “at her feet sat a baby intent upon the assimilation of a gingerbread elephant, but now and then tugging at her skirts and holding up a fat hand.  Each time he was rewarded by a dab of soapsuds, which she deposited good-naturedly in his palm.  He received it with solemn delight; watching the roseate play of colour as the bubbles shrank and broke, and the lovely iridescent treasure vanished in a smear of dirty wetness while he looked.  Then he would beat his fists delightedly against his mother’s dress and presently demand another handful.”

The following notes from another student’s report show how this may spring naturally out of the children’s life:[23]

[Footnote 23:  Miss Edith Jones.]

“We were spinning the teetotum yesterday and it did not spin well so we made new ones.  While the children were painting their tops, Oliver grew very eager when he found he could fill in all the spaces in different colours, but Betty made her colours very insipid.  I want them to get the feeling of beautiful colour, so I shall show them a book with the colours graded in it, and we shall each have a paper and paint on it all the rich colours we can think of.  The colours will probably run into each other, and so the children will get ideas about the blending of colours, but I will watch to see that they do not get the colour too wet.  If they are not tired of painting I want to show them a painted circle to turn on a string and they can make these for themselves, using the colours they have already used.

“I want the children to do some group work, and I thought we might make a village with shops and houses under the trees in the garden and have little men and women to represent ourselves.  The suggestion will probably have to come from the teacher, but the children will probably have the desire when it is suggested, and I hope we shall be able to go on enlarging our town on the pattern of the towns the children know.  If they want bricks for their houses they can dig clay in the garden.