REVIEW QUESTIONS IN GEOGRAPHY. What is the oldest town in the United States? Settled by whom? Its large hotel bears the name of whom? What did he seek in vain? What city is the great-grain market? What and where are the twin cities? What city is situated near the Golden Gate? What two cities bear the same name, one near the extreme east of the U. S. and the other in the extreme west? What city is the great pork market? What city is the great cotton market? What is the Mormon city? What city on the St. Lawrence river situated on an island? What walled city on the St. Lawrence river? What city near Niagara Falls? In what city do Garfield's remains rest? In what city do Lincoln's remains rest? What celebrated watering place in Rhode Island? What city is called the "Hub?" What is the "Quaker City?" What cities are on rivers of the same names? What city of the U. S. is in no State or Territory? What capes have boys' names? What cape has a girl's name? What celebrated summer resorts in your State? What manufacturing cities in your State? What natural curiosities in your State? What Territories and States are subject to blizzards? To cyclones? WHO CAN READ THIS? One day two bootblacks, one white and one black, were standing on the corner doing nothing, when the white bootblack agreed to black the black bootblack's boots. The black bootblack was willing to have his boots blacked by his fellow bootblack and the bootblack who had agreed to black the black bootblack's boots went to work. When the bootblack had blacked one of the black bootblack's boots until it would make any bootblack proud, the bootblack refused to black the other boot of the black bootblack until the black bootblack who had consented to have the white bootblack black his boots should add five cents to the amount that the black bootblack had made blacking other men's boots. This the black bootblack refused to do, saying it was good enough for a black bootblack to have one boot blacked, and he didn't care whether the other boot that the bootblack hadn't blacked was blacked or not. The black bootblack proceeded to boot the white bootblack with the boot which the white bootblack had blacked. The black bootblack wore all the blacking off his blacked boot in booting the white bootblack. PRIMARY READING. A child may be said to know a word only when he recognizes it and calls it automatically. 1. A child learns the sound-word by hearing and using it frequently. He can learn the sight-word, as a word, only by seeing and recognizing it frequently. 2. If he reads easily and rapidly, it is only because he recognizes the words by the characteristic marks, the appearance of each word by unconscious recognition of them. 3. Talking, by a child, is a matter of the unconscious selection of words. Why can not one be taught as great ease in the use of the sight-words, that is, in reading? 4. But to return. A child learns to read well: By seeing each word frequently. By seeing a word in as many new connections as may be. By seeing new pictures, new thoughts, new situations, built out of words, that are already becoming old to him. By reading much with few words. 5. The good readers in any school are most apt to be the children that have grown up among toy books at home. 6. A good reader, in short, is a child that has been prepared to get thought and pleasure out of books. 7. Therefore I do not believe that reading, in this sense, can be taught a child out of any one first reader, or out of any one series of readers in existence. 8. When a child discerns that he can get pleasure out of a book, then he is ready to swing from the pole of Mother Goose to that of Shakespeare. 9. If he finds it a laborious and painful thing to pick out a scrappy meaning from a page, he stops reading when he stops school. 10. Learning to read is one thing; learning to love to read is another thing. PRACTICAL QUESTIONS. What are some of the best methods of preventing whispering in a mixed school of forty pupils? A Teacher. Keep your pupils so busy and interested that they shall have no time for whispering. The price of good order in school is eternal vigilance on the part of the teacher, not to watch for wrong-doing, but to see that all have something to do and are doing it. The highest motive that a child can have, to refrain from whispering, is love for his teacher, and for what is right. Spelling. Should pupils be required to write words in orthography without raising the pen or pencil, or write them in syllables? The aim of a written spelling lesson should be to teach words, not penmanship or syllabification. It should make no difference, so long as the word is neatly and legibly written, whether the pen is raised or not. Formal penmanship savors too much of the mechanical to be introduced into a spelling lesson. Variation in Reading Lessons.-Give a few pleasant variations in the reading lesson. District Teacher. Read a poem or story to the class and have them reproduce it; pass a history or book of tales around the class and let the different members read portions of the selection; hold a picture before the class and have it described and stories told about it; make a collection of newspapers and have the pupils read items of telegraphic and local news; have fables related, and whenever possible, supply supplementary reading. Personal Appearance.-Many of my pupils are careless about their personal appearance.. How can I introduce these subjects so that they shall be real "lessons and not lectures?" Teacher. Introduce a series of lessons on "general topics," arranged so that each can be made to bear directly or indirectly on the points you wish impressed on your pupils. A talk on the skin, made interesting by the use of a small magnifying glass, may be followed by one on water. The cleansing properties of water will lead back to the topic of skin, and the fact to be brought out will be doubly impressed. From the skin the transition to hair and nails is perfectly natural. Arouse your children's interest by having the human hair compared with that of a dog or horse. A lesson on touch may be made to introduce the subject of finger nails. The finger-tips are adapted to a delicate touch. The nails protect and keep shapely the finger-tips. If, then, the nails are cut closely, or worse still, bitten off, the protection of the finger is gone, the flesh must turn hard to be its own protection, and the delicacy of touch is lost. A lesson on dogs or cats may be made to serve your purpose. A sleek and well-washed animal is more liked than one that is dirty and rough looking. So, wellbrushed hair and a clean face are more attractive than the reverse. Have the children examine the teeth of some animals, and compare them with their own teeth. A lesson on bread will contain, of course, a reference to crusts. Here you can dwell on the necessity of eating the hard as well as the soft parts of bread and other food, to preserve and keep firm the teeth. Teach them, above all things, that plenty of sleep, and exercise, and a happy disposition are the greatest aids toward making attractive looking people. Explain what is meant by the sequence of subjects. The order in which subjects should be presented in harmony with the natural development of the mental faculties. Thus, observation and expression are to be first developed; hence we employ object lessons, number frames, pictures, and language lessons. Then memory stores material from geography, reading and history, by which the reflective powers are developed, etc. TO MAKE A HECTOGRAPH. Will you give me directions for making an outfit for copying handwriting? I desire to use it for furnishing my classes copies of questions. C. C. M. Soak one ounce of gelatin over night in enough cold water to cover it well. Heat six or seven ounces of glycerin to 200 degrees over a salt water bath, made by dissolving two ounces of common salt in one pint of water. Pour the surplus water off the swelled gelatin and add the gelatin to the hot glycerin. Continue heating for an hour, avoiding formation. of bubbles or broth. Finally add twenty drops of oil of cloves to prevent decomposition. Pour the whole into a long pie tin or a specially made receptacle of desired size, allowing it to set level until the composition hardens. To make copies of any writing or drawing, make the original with hectograph ink, using a clean steel pen. Be careful to wipe off the composition pad with a damp sponge or cloth, and when it is nearly dry lay the writing down on the pad carefully and rub it down smooth. Leave it about a minute, then remove by one corner. Then lay your sheets on one after another, leaving each on just long enough to make a good copy. These points have to be learned by experience. After using, the pad should be gently washed off with a moist sponge. The principle of the pad is that the aniline in the ink is caught by the composition, and enough of it is given off to each sheet of paper to make a visible copy. To make hectograph ink dissolve one ounce of aniline violet, black, blue or green, in seven ounces of hot water and on cooling add one ounce of alcohol, onequarter ounce glycerin and a few drops of carbolic acid to preserve it. Or the ink can be bought for a trifle. WORKING TOGETHER. A million little sunbeams Should sit down and cry together, PUNISHMENT. Punishment never made anybody better. By means of it millions have been made better, but it must be carefully remembered that school studies and school discipline are only means to ends. The old idea was, if a boy is bad make him good. Whip him into it. good. Whip him into it. This was supposed to be the royal road to virtue, but in ten thousand cases it has proved to be the royal road to vice. Punishment has its place, but we must be careful to know where that place is. If it gets into the wrong place, woe be to the subject exercised by it. It requires wisdom to know how, and when, and where to punish. Perhaps the greatest error in punishment is the one so common-punish under the impulse of anger. impulse of anger. The child then accepts it as vindictive and not reformatory, and little is accomplished except to gain his ill-will. MATHEMATICS. ROBERT J. ALEY, BLOOMINGTON, INDIANA UNIVERSITY. THE METRIC SYSTEM. Congress legalized the use of the metric. system in 1868. The following facts will give some idea of the progress it has made: It is used in the United States mints, the weight of dimes and half dollars being given in grams. Postage rates to all countries in the postal union are by the gram. Electricians, chemists, physicists, in fact all scientists, use metrical units and measurements almost exclusively. The Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Lake Survey, and the Geological Survey use the metric system very extensively. Many manufacturers make all their products upon metric measurements. Those manufacturing for the export trade are compelled to do so in order to compete with other countries. The great advantage in the use of the metric system is not alone in putting ourselves in closer touch with the rest of the world, but in a great saving of time and effort to every school child in our country. Compound numbers as a distinct subject in arithmetic would practically disappear. In the metric system all the weights and measures are related. The fundamental units are five in number: meter, are, stere, liter and gram. With these five units, seven prefixes are used, making a total of only twelve names to learn. Compare this with the number to be learned in our present compound number systems. Perhaps the mistake in the past in teaching the metric system has been in putting entirely two much emphasis upon the reduction from our present system to the metric, and from the metric to our system. This is dull and uninteresting work and usually disgusts the student with the metric system. It is also an almost useless process, for when the system comes into use, reductions will seldom need be made. In teaching, use the metric units by themselves, just as the ordinary units of compound numbers are used. Every school should be supplied with a set of metric measures and weights. By means of these and the concrete problems resulting from their use, much interest may be aroused, and the system easily mastered. √/3=length 127 the ratio. 16 80 27 20 2 if Х 9 V /3= length of fence= 16 perimeter. 64 3 A straight fence through a triangu. lar field cuts off just one acre. The sides of the field are 56 rd., 39 rd., and 25 rd. cross fence is the shortest possible, find its length and po39 sition. ; Solution: It is plain that in a triangle with a given vertical angle and given area, that the base is the shortest 25 which is bisected by the altituuc-i. e., the triangle is isosceles. Also for a given area, that triangle has the shortest base whose vertical angle is the least. Therefore the fence is built across the smallest angle in such a way as to form an isosceles triangle. By trig. A= 11° 18' 36". Taking a as radiusb-tang, † A=.2000018+ .·.b=.4+. .'. Area · of the triangle equals altitude X.4 altialt. 2 tude 160, whence altitude 28.284 and base 11.3136+. The two equal sides are Valt. 2+ (b)2=28.5305+. George H. Telle, Salem. 5 α 20 √27=161/3=base cd. 3√3 =11.5466+= length of fence. Ᏹ 56÷÷2-28-cd. 392-252 -8=dg. 2X56 |