There are agencies, or organizations, in almost every community that could and should serve recreational ends.  The trouble with many of us is not so much the lack of time or of the means for recreation, but a lack of knowledge of how to get the most out of our recreational opportunities.  Hence the need for leadership.  Hence, also, the need for an education that will open up to us new avenues of enjoyment.  Recreation may be obtained not only from athletic sports and social entertainments, but from the fields and woods, from books and music and pictures, even from variety in our work, if we only knew how to find it.  The school is under as great obligation to provide us with an education that will teach us this as it is to equip us to earn a living.

Investigate and report on: 

The opportunities for play in your community.

The forms of play most prevalent in your community.

The extent to which play in your community develops team work and leadership.

How your school playground could be improved.

Play as a means of education in your school.

Agencies besides the school that afford opportunity for play in your community.

Leisure on the farms of your locality:  for men; for women; for children.

Could an eight-hour day be applied to farming in your locality?  Why?

Length of the working day for different employments in your town or neighboring city.

Minimum wage laws in your state.

Recreational facilities and agencies in your community.

Community centers in your community and their activities.

The value of a county field day in your community.

Meaning of the statement that “the boy without a playground is father to the man without a job.”

ATTRACTIVE SURROUNDINGS

APPRECIATION OF THAT WHICH IS BEAUTIFUL

Beauty in one’s surroundings adds much to the enjoyment of life, and therefore, also, to one’s efficiency in work and as a citizen.

People are often apparently blind to the beauty that is around them.  “Having eyes, they see not; and ears, they hear not.”  Those who live in the open country are surrounded by natural beauties of which city dwellers are largely deprived.  Too often, however, they are unconscious of them or indifferent to them.  To the hard-working farmer a gorgeous sunset may be little more than a sign of the weather on the morrow, and the beauty of a field of wheat or corn may be lost in the thought of the toil that has gone into it, or of the dollars that may come out of it.  Fortunate is the rural dweller whose toil and isolation are tempered by an appreciation of the beauties of the natural world about him!

ITS CULTIVATION