From My Country School Diary ~ Julia Weber Gordon
"In the front of the room on the right is our nature corner, which now contains a jar of hibernating ants, a turtle in an aquarium, wild flowers mounted on cotton under cellophane, a booklet of waxed fall leaves, a booklet of leaf spatter prints, a collection of rocks, fungi, birds' nests, and a winter dish garden of mosses, lichens, pipsissewa, and partridge berries."
"An exhibit of Indian relics including about twenty-five arrowheads, an ax, a mortar and pestle, slickstones, and pieces of pottery......."
"It snowed last night, our first really big snow! How happy the children were. They made snowmen, built a fort, and had soft snowball fights. ...we took time to compare the shapes of snow crystals with the shapes of quartz and salt crystals. I like to watch the children's eyes open wide with wonder."
"Children learn more when they can see things and think of them in relation to themselves rather than abstractly."
"This afternoon we began to work on our rock garden. We have a stone row that was well covered with soil when the road was widened. It is in a shady spot at the edge of the road. There were leaves to be cleaned out and bushes to remove. It was a beautiful day to work outdoors and the children were very happy."
"In the afternoon we tramped over Dad's farm and found quartz crystals, sandstone, shale, limestone, and flint for our collections. I wish I could do this more often. A teacher and the children can get so close in this way."
"We have some turtle eggs in our museum. Four hatched today while the children watched. It fascinated them."
"The children want to give Robin Hood for their puppet show this year. I began to read it to them yesterday. They gather around me and we have a happy time."
"I read the stories of Bach and Haydn to the children. They like the Mozart story best."
"For three years I have tried to bring back to these children the spontaneous desire for learning which their parents and teachers, including myself, have been busy taking away from them."
~This book, written in the late 1930s, takes the reader through four years in the teacher's career. Although this is a public school teacher's diary, I was really inspired! This is a great book for any teacher.
~from a review
The author is a woman who, having few of today's teaching aids to work with, used her ingenuity and resourcefulness to create a richer and more varied learning experience, one that would awaken interest and enthusiasm in children and that would give them a "sense that school was part of the real world, not just a place where you did meaningless things today so that later you might go out and do some other meaningless things somewhere else."
There is so much more in this book, these are just some highlights.
Been so busy
10 years ago
Sounds like a wonderful book! It makes me so anxious to teach.
ReplyDeleteIt is! You'll be a great teacher!
ReplyDelete