The Washington times., 1895-06-23
Teaching Geography.

Children delight in maps. To understand
geography is largely to understand maps
and all helps toward facility in that d.
rection are gladly welcomed by teachers.
The early steps in our work are essentially
aided by two provisions, one of the school
board and one of Providence. e., sand
boards and accessible suburbs prickling
with Illustrations. The former are wooden
trays three inches deep, three feet wide
and four feet long, painted blue on the in
side and mounted on desk on the platform.
About peck of clean, damp sand completes
the weapon"
Rock Creek, Kalorama Heights, new
streets, new road cuts, Mulligan's Hill,
and the Aqueduct Bridge offer hospitable
treasures
BY previous lessons in field and loom
the natural divisions of land and water have
been taught; skill in building the land
masses has been acquired; the forms of
water, effects of heat, winds and draughts
have been made plain by simple physical
experiments; thay have drawn maps of
their desks, room, school yard, and block
from the sand models built on scale re-
duced from their actual measurements.
They are now ready to combine forms and
troop to the fields with tablet pencil and
line. They have lists of what they are
to find and shouts are expected, thanks to
ArchimedeS' 'eXampled Eureka" Weknow
when they find an island, or canon, or a
sloping crevice beginning a stream bed.
They can talk of new stream" flood
plain,' mature stream source slope
and cutting power as gIbly as you say
"a, b, c."
A canon is selected, staked inyard squares,
the tablets being blocked in inch squares.
The edges of the canon are drawn block by
block; islands, prominent trees, or foreign
features are noted in position. 1t is hard
work, but permission to sketch anything af'
forwards keeps pencils and brains busy
The next day the trip is talked over freely
On the blocked sand board the canon is built
from field notes, the seated pupils, adding
correcting, or modifying the children's worB
at the board A map is drawn from the
sand-map using the different devices FOL
representation.
This leads to the wall maps which, when
used in connection with the relief maps
whether in sand, picture, or paper, have 9
new meaning. Excellent relief maps OF the
continents or sections may be obtained fol
| from five to fifteen cents apiece.
Too much cannot be said of pictures as an
| aid to this work of transforming physical
features into reality, peopled and alive.
| The most convenient way to use them
| is to have Quartered whole sheets of
bristol board and the pictures laid smooth
| ly on with flourpaste. Large stiff ones may
be mounted with brass tags, after drawing
| thecorners through slitsin the board. Never
| economIZe paper; q sheet containing one
| picture however small, is worth more
| than a tumble of many rot bearing on the
| point in question. Keep them classified,
! ready for use, in labeled, manila covers
Product charts, when used intelliScntly,
| are Invaluable, but when given over to
| Il barbarous riot in material color and logic
! are poison. The best size is that of the
| quartered bristol sheets and the best ar
| rangement, that which talks the truth
We must bend in acknowledgment OF tha