Bird Portections in Schools

The Child's Activities. - One of the most effective phases of nature-study is that which calls into play the manual activities of the child in providing for himself opportunities for making studies of the life around him. This principle of utilizing the child's activities is one that is well understood and applied in the kindergarten, but too little employed in later years. It will prove a most effective instrument to be used with the children when circumstances allow. Bird-study is specially well adapted to make use of these activities in building bird-houses for winter protection and spring nesting, and lunch-tables for feeding the winter birds, and in providing drinking fountains. The very fact that the child is doing something for the birds is a means of developing that helpful sympathy with nature which may prove such an important factor in all his subsequent life. And, furthermore, an excellent opportunity is offered for training the perceptive powers of children by watching the birds that may come in response to the attractions offered. These observations will be carried on with much greater ardor and thoroughness because the child has himself helped to furnish the conditions which make his observations possible.

Building Nesting-houses

Manual Training. - The construction of these houses and lunch-counters may be carried on at the home, or it may naturally be correlated with the work in manual training, as is being done in some cities. Mr. Finley, a field-agent of the Audubon Societies, writes from Oregon: " We have a great deal of interest in bird-study worked up in various schools about the state. Wherever there is a manual-training school they are making many bird-houses." Superintendent Alderman, of Eugene, Oregon, writes that while he was county school superintendent of Gamhill County he encouraged the children of the manual-training department to build bird-houses, which they did to the extent of over one thousand. With reference to the work in Eugene he writes: " As a result of a little encouragement, the children brought in for inspection 334 bird-houses. They filled three rooms of the Eugene High School. Almost every yard has a bird-house in it now. Birds build in most of the houses. The notes the children kept of the selection of the house, etc., were made the basis of the language work. The children were warned not to let the English sparrow build in the houses. The following birds built in the children's houses: violet-green swallow, bluebird, wren, chickadee. The civilizing effect of bird-study upon the children is at once evident. It is the finest training in observation that I know of."