NATURE STUDY, an educational means of training the mind of the pupil, by direct ob servation, to a knowledge and love of the com mon things about him. Nature study attempts to aid, in the most effective way, through the natural and inherent instincts of all children, the perfect development of the child nature, in accordance with the natural laws of that devel opment. It aims at taking into account the various activities, interests, likes and dislikes of children, their love of activity, their desire to hear, to see and to handle things; to investi gate all that they come into contact with and to ask questions about everything that interests them. Nature study accepts the fact that this almost constant activity is the one great law of the child's development, physically and men tally; and it acts upon it. It attempts to direct this activity into the most useful and interest ing channels so as to secure for the child the greatest pleasure in doing, with the greatest benefit from the deed accomplished. It seeks to give him direct contact with things rather than to know them by descriptions of them. It makes prominent use of the fact that the human being is essentially an imitator and that the child, especially, is possessed of an irresistible desire or impulse to do what he sees his elders or his companions doing. All these are classed as nature motives; and nature study makes use of them to the exclusion of motives that are merely artificial. In other words, it works on the assumption that every normal child is born with an instinctive desire to investigate things and sensations, and through this investigation and the experience gained thereby, to get a knowledge of his environment.
A second quality as strongly a part of the child nature as his irresistible impulse to inves tigate is his strong social instinct. This enables him to identify himself with those about him and with all their various interests and to real ize his relationship to them; and it creates in him a desire to conform to the social judgment of his associates, that is to public opinion.
Nature study attempts to develop the life of the child along the lines of its proper relation ship to nature; that is, to mankind and the world about him. Another prominently de veloped instinct of children is the desire to he useful and helpful. Nature study attempts also to make use of this and all other instincts and tendencies of the child so as thus to be able to lead him along the path of development that nature has destined for him and, in this way, infuse a real interest into his work through the inspiration of a desirable object to be attained. Nature study may, therefore, be said to be an element of practically every subject of study in which the child succeeds in becoming interested. The sawing of a board or piece of wood in terests the young child, apart from the actual act of sawing. The nature of the wood; the motions of the person sawing; the teeth of the saw; the the severed pieces of wood; the picking up and carrying of the wood from one place to another; all these actions are naturally related to the child's life; and they are, hence, proper subjects of nature study, just as much as animals, trees and flowers and their actions, colors, forms, sizes and relation ships are.
Nature study recognizes the fact that child life and school life, to a very considerable de gree, reflect the life of the community and exhibit the child growing naturally and rapidly into the more extensive life of that community. It attempts to so direct these natural child interests as to enlarge the childish vision and to prepare the child for the coming greater activities of adult life, through proper percep tion and correct thinking and reasoning. Its sphere is, therefore, the whole field of ani mate and inanimate life, in which the child gains his early self-education, largely by obser vation; for with him literally "seeing is believ ing' ; and to this may be added tasting, touching and handling, which nature study helps him to do effectively, intelligently and with added pleasure.