For Teachers and Students
Bird-Studies for Children
BY ISABEL EATON
It is a simple matter enough, with the little folk who happily live in the country, to excite an interest and develop a familiar friendship with their bird neighbors. The birds can easily be coaxed to the piazza or the window-shelf by the judicious offer of free lunch, and so a speaking acquaintance, perhaps even a life-long friendship, with them may be gained.
But with city children, especially those of the poorer classes, the case is very different. The question how to teach them to know and care for birds is by no means so easy. Look at their case: they have seen no birds but English Sparrows and caged Canaries and Parrots; few of them know the Robin; they practically never go to the country, and many of them never even go to the parks. How shall they be taught about birds? Observing the rule of advancing from known to unknown, would suggest Dick the Canary, as the obvious point of departure from a tenement into the world of birds; then, perhaps, the Summer Yellow-bird in the park, commonly known as the ‘Wild Canary,’ and then Mr. Goldfinch and his little olive-brown spouse, who would make a natural transition to the brown Sparrow family, and so on. The difficulty here is that it is so nearly impossible to get city children up to the park to see the Yellow-bird.
So another method, involving no country walks and no live birds, has to be resorted to. We may use pictures,—drawn before the class and colored, if possible,—and, trusting to the children’s powers of imagination and idealization, may connect with their experience at some other point. After studying about the carpenter, in kindergarten or primary school, for instance, it is easy to interest children in the Woodpecker by proposing to tell them about a “little carpenter bird;” after talking of the fisherman, a promise to tell them of a bird who is a fisherman is sure to stir their imaginations of the doings of the Kingfisher, and so with the weaver (Oriole), mason (Robin) and others.
When several birds have been learned, the best kind of review for little people is probably some game like the following, which has been
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