In the nursery class therefore our curriculum is life, our apparatus all that a child’s world includes, and our method the one of joyful investigation, by means of which ideas and skill are being acquired.  The teacher is player in chief, ready to suggest, co-operate, supply information, lead or follow as circumstances demand:  responsibility must still belong to the children, for while most of them know quite naturally how to play, there are many who will never get beyond a rather narrow limit, through lack of experience or of initiative.

It is quite safe to let experience take its chance through play, but there are certain things that must be dealt with quite definitely, when the teacher is not there as a playmate, but as something more in the capacity of a mother.  It is impossible to train all the habits necessary at this time, through the spontaneous play, although incidentally many will be greatly helped and made significant by it.  If the children come from poor homes where speech is imperfect, probably mere imitation of the teacher, which is the chief factor in ordinary language training, will be insufficient.  It will be necessary to invent ways, chiefly games, by which the vocal organs may be used; this may be considered play, but it is more artificial and less spontaneous than the informal activity already described.  It is well to be clear as to the kind of exercises best suited to make the vocal organs supple, and then to make these the basis of a game:  for example, little children constantly imitate the cries of ordinary life; town children could dramatise a railway station where the sounds produced by engines and by porters give a valuable training; they could imitate street cries, the sound of the wind, of motor hooters, sirens, or of church bells.  Country children could use the sounds of the farm-yard, the birds, or the wind.  In the recognition of sound, which is as necessary as its production, such a guessing game could be taught as “I sent my son to be a grocer and the first thing he sold began with s and ended with p,” using the sounds, not names of the letters.  For the acquisition of a vocabulary, such a game as the Family Coach might be played and turned into many other vehicles or objects about which many stories could be told.  All the time the game must be played with the same fidelity to the spirit of play as previously, but the introduction must be recognised as more artificial and forced, and this can be justified because so many children are not normal with regard to speech, and only where this is the case should language training be forced upon them.  Habits of courtesy, of behaviour at table, of position, of dressing and undressing, of washing hands and brushing teeth, and many others, must all be taught, but taught at the time when the need comes.  Occasions will certainly occur during play, but the chances of repetition are not sufficient to count on.

Thus we summarise the chief business of the Nursery School teacher when we say that it is concerned chiefly with habits and play and right surroundings.