The elements of housekeeping are the ABC of homemaking.  We shall do well to teach them early, incidentally, and with no undue exaggeration of their place in the scheme of living.  We simply familiarize the girl, by long and quiet contact, with the tools of the homemaker, for future scientific use, just as we teach the multiplication facts for later use in the science of mathematics.

A definite list of the simple homemaking tasks suitable for little girls to undertake may not be out of place here: 

  1.  Setting the table. (A card list of table necessities is
     useful.  Such a list may be given each little girl when she
     undertakes home practice work.)
  2.  Clearing the table.
  3.  Washing the dishes.
  4.  Sweeping the kitchen.  Sweeping the piazza.
  5.  Dusting.
  6.  Making beds and caring for bedrooms.
  7.  Arranging her own bureau drawers and closets.
  8.  Simple cooking.
  9.  Hemming towels and table linen.
  10.  Ironing handkerchiefs and napkins.

As the child grows older, methods of teaching grow increasingly direct.  Even here we shall perhaps not talk a great deal about “preparing for homemaking.”  But we shall see that the tools grow increasingly familiar, and that ideals once taught are retained and added to.  We shall see that our science, our mathematics, our art, all contribute to the acquirement of homemaking knowledge.  We shall give a practical turn to these more or less abstract subjects.

Sewing and cooking classes are by this time a recognized part of grammar-school courses in many city schools.  That they are not so firmly intrenched in the country schools is due usually to difficulties in the way of securing equipment and to the already crowded condition of the school program.  The ideal remedy is the substitution of the consolidated school with its domestic science room and its specially trained teacher for the scattered one-room buildings.  Wherever the consolidated school has come, it has been enthusiastically received and supported.  No one wishes to go back to the old way.  But in many localities the consolidated school has not come and cannot be immediately looked for; and in these places the need of the homemaking work is just as great.  The teacher must find the way to give these girls what they need.  If no other way presents itself, the teacher will do well to ask the help of the mothers of the neighborhood.  Perhaps one who is an expert needlewoman will give an hour or two a week in the school or at her own home to carrying out the sewing course which the teacher cannot crowd into her own already overcrowded program.  Perhaps another will do the same for the cooking, making her own kitchen for one afternoon a week an annex of the school.  It is important, however, when such arrangements are made that they be recognized as school work, and if possible the courses followed should be planned and supervised by the regular teacher of the school.  Thus only can they be held to standardized accomplishment.