year optical exercises will be presented to their contemplation, colored and pictured objects; show them the beauty of the heavens, of trees, of flowers, and of running waters; how to bind corals to their hands and neck, and supply them with beautiful dress, etc.; they delight in gazing at these things; nay, the sight of the eye and acuteness of the mind are stimulated even by looking in a mirror. In the fourth and following years many things ought to be added to optics; they should occasionally be taken into an orchard, a field, or a river, that they may be allowed to look upon animals, trees, plants, flowers, running waters, the turning of the windmills, and similar things;[1] nay, pictures in books,[2] upon the walls, etc., are pleasing to them, and therefore ought not to be denied; for children ought rather to have them designedly presented to them.[3]
5. Children may, in the second or third years at the farthest, learn the elements of astronomy, by looking at the heavens, and distinguishing between the sun, moon, and stars. In the fourth and fifth year, they will be able to understand that the sun and moon rise and set; that the moon sometimes shines full, sometimes is a half moon, and sometimes a crescent moon. This may and ought to be shown to them. In the sixth year they may incidentally be instructed that the days are shorter in winter, that the night is then longest; whereas in summer the day is long and the night short.
- ↑ Rabelais long before had written: “All the birds of the air, all the trees, shrubs, and fruits of the forest, all the grasses of the earth—none of these should be unknown to the child.”
- ↑ And Comenius prepared the first illustrated school-book for children, the Orbis Pictus, an excellent edition of which Mr. C. W. Bardeen has lately prepared for American teachers.
- ↑ Jean Paul advises: ‘‘Open a child’s eye more than his heart to the beauties of nature; the latter opens naturally in its season, and sees farther and more beauties than you can place before it.”
