Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1888-02-09

a work of art.
1--WE cannot bring the men and
women of the library to our table, but
we can bring their thoughts and in
SEPARATIONS, uttered in their choicest
and purest language, to the family,
and joining hands with them we can
walk with them and talk with them in
their moments of loftiest aspirations"
1--WE have built our government,
and are to maintain it, upon the broad
basis of universal education.
COMPOSITION IN PRIMARY SCHOOLS.
Even in the higher grades of our
schools we find it difficult to get pu-
pills to express themselves intelligibly.
| The two chief causes of this deficiency
are, that they have been allowed to
memorize from textbooks too much,
and that they have not had the proper
training in an easy and natural style
of composition.
| As soon as the children are able to
produce dozen lines of connected
narrative, letter writing should be
begun. At first, let the whole class
write letter about the same incidents.
The work may be conducted in some
such way as this:
A picture of an old-fashioned house,
with the surroundings of winter if pos
sible, shonld be shown To the class.
Now, children, it is Christmas, and
we have all been to take Christmas
dinner with OBSERVATION-DISCLOSURES lives
in this house. You must write me a
nice letter, telling me all about that
Christmas day"
The proper manner of beginning a
letter, etc., is supposed to have been
given previously.
1.-The first thing will be our trip to
grandmother's. Here is a picture Of
some of you on the way"
Show picture OF sleigh. with a
large party snugly covered up with
fur robes.
Write "Trip" upon the board as a
suggestion.
Nov, children, we want merry
ride, and we must not be long about
it. We will not have cloudy day for
! our Christmas. The sun must shine,
and the snow mast be just as white as
we like to have it when we go coast
ing"
Next write,-'.How we spent our
time at grandmoher's" on the black
board.
''This is what you must tell next,
children. Grandmother is going to
let the children have a good time She
must have a large, open, country fire
in her parlor, and there must be a
good place out of doors for the boys
to use the sleds that some one has
| rrixy
The little girls have brought their
Christmas dolls with them, too, and |
am afraid some of the boys forgot TO
leave their firecrackers at home, but
Grandmother has plenty of room, and
she will let them pop them out in the
garden. | think some of these little
girls are going to show us the dolls
they took to grandmother's. Yes, here
is Mary's, and here comes Jennie with
hers. George is going to show us his
sled now, but his firecrackers are all
gone.
"You must tell this fast, and you
may tell about any other toys that YOU
took with you, and what you did until
dinner time"
Next topic placed upon the black
board, Dinner"
'Now,we want to know about the
dinner. You may arrange that as you
like, but you must put some holly in
the dining-room, or we shall not think
it is Christmas. No one must eat too
much, remember. If you want to use
any words which you cannot spell,
raise hands and | will put them on the
blackboard for you
BY giving the children few such
hints as these by way of aiding them
and getting up an interest, good let
ter can be obtained and they will en-
Joy writing it. Let them make sug-
gestions occasionally in regard to the
subjects to be treated of.
After enough exercises of this kind
have been conducted to give the pupils
some freedom, they may be asked to
write a letter for home exercise, oc-
casionally, but, as general thing,
home work in composition is very I'M
satisfactory. In all grades below the
high school, certainly, this work
should be done mostly under the eye
of the teacher.
Now that pictures are so easily OBJ
tanned they can be used very extern
sively as aids in composition. They
may be made the basis of narrative,
and in this way the imagination of the
child is exercised. When the pupils
are far enough advanced pictures may
be used as the basis of a description.
1t is a good plan to allow the pupils to
select some picture and write des-
cription of it, which is to be read to
the class, and the picture should be
shown to the listeners, that they may
determine how true the description
was.
There are few points that should
be constantly kept in view in teaching
composition; The language should be
the child's own, and in order that this
may be accomplished the interest in