Songs
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
2.
Angry words they never speak,
Promises they never break;
Unkind looks they never show;
Love sits smiling on each brow.
O, how lovely, &c.
3.
They are one in heart and mind;
Courteous, pitiful, and kind;
Willing others to forgive,
And make happy all who live.
4.
When at home, at school, at play,
They are cheerful, blithe, and gay;
Always trying to increase
Human pleasure, social peace.
5.
If we for each other care,
All each other’s burdens bear,
Soon the human race will be
Like one happy family.
O, how lovely, &c.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
2 Would you know how does the peasant
Reap his barley and wheat?
Look, ’tis so, so does the peasant
Reap his barley and wheat. La, la, la, &c.
3 Would you know how does the peasant
Thrash his barley and wheat?
Look, ’tis so, so does the peasant
Thrash his barley and wheat. La, la, la, &c.
4 Would you know how does the peasant
Sift his barley and wheat?
Look, ’tis so, so does the peasant
Sift his barley and wheat. La, la, la, &c.
5 Would you know how rests the peasant
When his labor is done?
Look, ’tis so, so rests the peasant
When his labor is done. La, la, la, &c.
6 Would you know how plays the peasant,
When his labor is done?
Look, ’tis so, so plays the peasant,
When his labor is done. La, la, la, &c.
Midi.
Let us now leave off our sawing,
Rest awhile in pretty playing,
Playing, playing, playing so;
Playing, playing, playing, playing,
Till ’tis time to saw again.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
Midi.
2.
Hare now be careful,
Sit quite still,
The hunter is near;
Dogs are running down the hill,
Sit quite still, sit quite still.
3.
Hare now be cheerful,
Jump and spring;
All danger is past.
Hare now spring, jump and spring,
Jump and spring, jump and spring.
Midi.
Footnotes
A Frœbel’s Building Blocks are in a Series of six, each one to be introduced after the previous one has been in a measure exhausted. But there is a specific way in which they are to be used, and exact directions for this are to be found in Mrs. Kraus-Bœlte’s Kindergarden Guide.
B Calkin’s Object Lessons will give hints.
C There is no excuse for its being so considered in Boston, now that Dr. Rimmer, the remarkable sculptor of the Falling Gladiator, has founded the true method of teaching to draw the human figure. It is indeed a method which it is not probable any person of less profound knowledge of the human figure than himself, (a practical surgeon as well as artist,) together with genius less bold and original, can conduct as he does; unless he shall train such teachers.
D Gray’s How Plants Grow, is invaluable for a teacher.
E See the North American Review of January and April—articles Kraitsir’s Significance of the Alphabet, from the pen of an eminent philologist; also Kraitsir’s Nature of Language and Language of Nature, published in 1851, by George P. Putnam in New York.
F The only possible advantage the present spelling has, is the help it gives to Etymologists, but it also often confuses them. A perfect alphabet, that is, an alphabet with eight more characters than the Roman, would have been the right thing to have had in the right place and time.
G k, q, and y were not Roman letters but Greek ones, k being introduced into the Latin originally as an abbreviation of ca and q as an abbreviation of cu. J and x were introduced into our alphabet by the first printers, but we have appropriated j to a new sound, not in the Latin language; and we have two sounds for x, (as printed Latin has), one being gs and the other cs. The Latins at first wrote lex legs, and vox vocs, as we see by the variations of these nouns for case.
H Nearly every one of these words are derived from the Latin, but they come into the English language from the Norman-French in which they were already corrupted. All nouns in ce are from Latin nouns in tia, and ought to have been written with se instead of ce, except peace and voice which come from the Latin pace and voce.
I All these difficulties with which I wrestled so many years in my character of champion of childhood, are entirely solved and done away with by the more recently introduced method,—introduced by authority of a distinguished philologist, of teaching the Italian alphabet, and always calling c and g hard, as the old Romans are supposed to have done. This mode is made practicable in the “First Nursery Reading-Book,” and the last edition of the “Primer of Reading and Drawing.” Abundant experience shows that reading taught in this way leaves nothing to be unlearned in English, and teaches an analysis of words into letters which contributes very much to the ease of the subsequent study of European languages, to which the sounds of the letters of the Italian alphabet apply almost without an exception. Experience upon this subject has given me confidence in the general rule of never teaching exceptions to anything until the rule is well understood and mastered.
J The work referred to, by Peter Schmid, of Berlin, was subsequently translated, and published in the 6th vol. of the Common-School Journal, and afterwards in a pamphlet called the Common-School Drawing Master. It is largely used in the public schools of Germany, and formed a new era in Germany, in the teaching of Perspective Drawing, as truly as Colburn’s First Lessons formed a new era in the teaching of Mental Arithmetic here.
K Since writing the above he has died untimely.
L Since these letters were written, the St. William’s school established in Edinburgh by George Combe, Esq., and in which that distinguished man taught personally during the latter years of his life, has proved conclusively that the Phrenological philosophy is a fine basis for education. The principle there practised is, to cultivate assiduously those faculties which were found naturally deficient in the pupils; thus aiming to make whole men out of what otherwise would have been but fragments of men.
M One of these children subsequently evinced much talent for the plastic art, which she traced back to this opportunity. She always kept it up, and gave fair promise of accomplishing something in this department of art.
[N] Several years after these letters were written, the Rev. Thomas Hill issued a series of cards containing geometrical figures composed of triangles of different sizes. They were very useful in aiding the development of the mathematical faculty in a private family, and might be used with advantage in the present Kindergarten-schools, whose success forever settles the question of the manner in which young children should be taught. The above letters exemplify the blind gropings of a true child-lover after that which has now been so beautifully developed by observation and genius united.