Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1886-04-29

"Only little child, but the child grows
into the man!
Here is the noblest work of life-to coun-
sci and to plan
The future of these little ones, whose
trusting faces show
How willing are their feet to tread the
way you bid them go"
When we think that a part of the fu
ture of the world lies within these little
ones, how earnestly we should try to fit
ourselves for our great work of training
their young minds to think, and to fit
them for the DObler uses of life.
Our methods of teaching may differ to
some extent, for think every thought
full teacher, who has spark of origin
ality about her. will show her own indi-
viduality in her work, and should not
have her methods materially interfered
with.
Unless there is something very objec-
tionable in a teachers method, if she
does her work well, and leads her pupils
to do and think for themselves, her work
will be good and lasting.
When a child enters the school room
for the first day, he is, if surrounded by
the right kind of home influence, natu
ral--just as God intended every child
should be; and if the teacher has love
for her children, and is careful reader
of child nature, what a delight it would
be to teach the little children-fresh
from their byhood-and many of their
baby ways still clinging to them.
What blessing it would be to the
world if the children would remain pure
and childlike longer than they do! "We
must enter the child's kingdom and learn
of the child before we can teach the lit
tie ones" When child enters the school
room he has learned to talk and, as a
general thing, knows the names of all
the objects and animals which he has
been accustomed to see around him in
his every day life; so that teaching d
child to read the first year is just teach
ing him to see in another way, what he
already knows.
We cannot give you any one authors
method of teaching for the first year, but
follow plan of our own, which is mod
ificstion of several methods.
In selecting our methods we must be
careful that they do not shut out too
much air and sunshine of real life AS
there are windows in walls so there must
be in our methods, if the mind and soul
of the children are to have healthy
growth.
| We must remember that "the law of
attraction and repusion is the education
ol law of childhood
In teaching the children to read, we
spend a few days in showing them pic
lures or drawings of familiar objects, and
lead them to talk freely about them and
tell us what they are and what they
know about them. The cat, mat, rat and
box furnish very good subject for the
first lesson, as these objects are all famil-
lar to the children.
After we have talked about the pic
ture for a short time, we write the name
of the objects on the board in several
different places, and have the children
point to the object and name it and then
to the word. In this way they learn ten
or fifteen words, and as soon as they be-
come familiar with them, we begin to
write short sentences on the board, using
the words they have learned. They learn
the words is, was, has. &c, just as they
use them in the sentence. We always
have the children develop the thought in
spoken sentence, before we write it on
the board.
We continue this way for six weeks or
two months; the length of time depend
ing on the brightness of the class.