The mothercraft manual

by Mary L. Read

FOOTNOTES:

[33] These spontaneous interests and the developments of physical and mental abilities are briefly analyzed in Chapters [V], [XII], [XIII].

CHAPTER XV
THE TOY AGE

“Choose his toys wisely and then leave him alone with them. Leave him to the throng of emotional impressions they will call into being. Remember that they speak to his feelings when his mind is not yet open to reason. The toy at this period is surrounded with a halo of poetry and mystery, and lays hold of the imagination and the heart.

“When we have restored playthings to their place in education—a place which assigns them the principal part in the development of human sympathies—we can later put into the hands of children objects whose impressions will reach their minds more particularly.”

—Kate Douglas Wiggin.

The Toy Age. When the baby first begins to grasp objects and stare at them, the toy age begins, that is, at about four weeks. It increases rapidly in force during the first year, and from two to about ten years is in its height. It declines with the approach of adolescence and by twelve is devoted chiefly to apparatus for games. It wanes With the decline of imaginative play and gives way to the interest in reading and industries.

Education through Toys. Toys, as the child’s constant, most intimate companions and most used implements during these impressionable years, inevitably have a marked influence upon his character and development. Froebel was the first great modern educator to appreciate the significance of a child’s toys, and to apply himself to the task of selecting and inventing those that would best develop his creative self-activity, his personality and happiness. The blocks or “gifts” that he devised are valuable for their simplicity, their variety of form, and their purpose of giving to the child an increasing number of forms as he grows in imaginative and constructive ability. Froebel did not appreciate, as modern biology has taught us, that the little child is in the stage of fundamental muscle activity, and that the accessory muscles (finer muscles, of fingers and eyes) do not develop completely for steady use until after six or seven years. Froebel, therefore, used the 1-inch cubes, which hygienists to-day discard for the larger size,—at least 2-inch for table use and paving-block size for floor use.

How far are children’s expressions of desire for toys, as they visit a toy shop, an index to the value of these toys, or their permanent interest in them at home? Relatively slight. Here again it is necessary to distinguish between the child’s passing whim and his vital interest. Children are momentarily attracted by the gorgeous, the vivid-colored, by noise, rhythm, motion, the imitation of adult activities. This explains their superficial interest, while in a toy shop, in the realistic French doll with wonderful clothes and a speaking voice, in the mechanical toys, the flimsy little nonentities. At home, in the playroom, the flimsy nonentities are soon broken and cast away without more than a ripple of emotion, and the realistic French doll languishes alone in her glory, while plain Mary Jane receives the daily ministrations of affection and comradeship.

It is these factors of glitter, noise, rhythm, imitation, physical activity, combined with the possibilities of movement and counter-movement, augmented by the attitude and remarks of their elders, who, assuming the reasonableness of war, praise military activities, that explain the child’s interest in military toys. Any other toys that have these same qualities will hold the child’s enthusiasm as well. Engines, trains and their crews, fire engines and firemen, steamboats and sailors, life-savers, fishermen, policemen, mines and miners, steeplejacks, divers, carpenters, painters, farmers,—there is a great range of possibilities. It is true many of these are not yet to be had in the toyshops, but they will be found there as soon as the demand is sufficient. It should be noted, in passing, that the military toys have been imported from foreign countries, where war has been considered the climax of virtue, and where little children, especially in the royal families, were systematically imbued with a spirit of military prowess. The consequences are written so large that “the wayfaring man though a fool cannot err thereby.” International peace will begin in the nursery, in the training in ideals of activity and heroism that are constructive and helpful, not destructive.

In “A Story of a Sand Pile”, Doctor G. Stanley Hall comments: “It is a striking feature, to which I have observed no exception, that the more finished and like reality the objects became, the less interest the boys had in them. As the tools, houses, etc., acquired feature after feature of verisimilitude, the sphere of the imagination was restricted, as it is with too finished toys, and thus one of the chief charms of play was lost.”

Dolls. In a questionnaire-study made by Clark University of children’s interest in dolls, eliciting returns from nearly a thousand children, the following interests were noted.

(a)	The favorite dolls were simple, even rude, with few accessories, curly hair, four to twelve inches in size, could be washed and handled in every way, taken everywhere.
(b)	Dolls representing children or adults were preferred to baby dolls.
(c)	Interest in very small or very large dolls, and paper dolls, developed after eight or nine years.
(d)	Boys preferred dolls representing monkeys, animals, heroes, dragons, etc.

Quoting from Doctor Hall’s comments on this study:

The educational value of dolls is enormous. It educates the heart and will even more than the intellect, and to learn how to control and apply doll-play will be to discover a new instrument in education of the very highest potency. Every parent and every teacher who can deal with individuals at all should study the doll habits of each child, now discouraging and repressing, now stimulating by hint or suggestion.

Too many accessories lessen the educational value of this play in teaching children to put themselves in the parents’ place, in deepening love of children, and of motherhood. Children with French dolls incline to practice their little French upon them; can this tendency be utilized in teaching a foreign language to young children?...

The rudest doll has the great advantage of stimulating the imagination by giving it more to do than does the elaborately finished doll. It can also enter more fully into the child’s life, because it can be played with more freely without danger of being soiled or injured. With rude dolls, too, the danger both of hypertrophy and of too great prolongation of the doll instinct is diminished. The child’s interest is opposed to large, elegant French dolls which teach love of dress and suggest luxury, and dolls with too many mechanical devices, as for winking, walking, speaking, and singing, against which the Russian Toy Congress has so strongly protested. Rather small and durable dolls, soft enough not to hurt, flexible, with two or three colors and not more than two or three garments, along with plenty of hints regarding clothespins, flowers, and other varied material,—something like this seems to be the suggestion for a first doll, with increasing variation in size, material, elaborateness, and number till the doll passion vanishes in two dimensions, with innumerable paper dolls, towards adolescence.

That boys are naturally fond of and should play with dolls as well as girls, there is abundant indication. One boy in a family of girls, or boys who are only children, often play with dolls up to seven or eight years of age. It is unfortunate that this is considered so predominantly a girl’s play. Most boys abandon it early or never play, partly because it is thought girlish by adults as well as by children. Of course, boy life is naturally rougher and demands a wider range of activities. The danger, too, of making boy milliners is of course obvious, but we are convinced that, on the whole, more play with girl dolls by boys would tend to make them more sympathetic with girls as children, if not more tender with their wives and with women later. Again, boys as well as girls might be encouraged to play with boy dolls more than at present, with great advantage to both. Boys, too, seem to prefer exceptional dolls, clowns, brownies, colored, Eskimo, Japanese, etc. Boys, too, seem fonder than girls of monkey and animal dolls, and are often very tender of these, when they maltreat dolls in human shape. Again, dolls representing heroes of every kind and non-existent beings, dragons, and hobgoblins find their chief admirers among boys.

It seems to be about the age of six, three years before the culmination of the doll passion, that the conflict between fancy and reality becomes clearly manifest. Abandonment to the doll illusion and the length of the doll period decreases as dolls and their accessories become elaborate. With every increase of knowledge of anatomy or of the difference between living tissue and dead matter, between life and mechanism, this element of doll play must wane.

Tests of Good Toys

Lovable

Durable in composition and workmanship

Stimulating to imagination, analysis, invention, initiative, activity, workmanship

Adapted to experimentation, investigation or constructive purposes

Adapted to the child’s stage of development, viz., his motor ability, his interests, his mental development

Sanitary, washable; without inaccessible corners to harbor dirt and germs

Artistic in form, color, expression; that is, simple in design, harmonious in color, genuine, without either sentimentality or thorough realism

---

The purpose of toys is not merely to amuse the child but to call forth fuller expression of his self-activity.

Harmful Toys

Unpardonable Defects

Physical:

Dangerous: having sharp edges, corners or points; pins or tacks, small bells, buttons, ornaments, that may be pulled off and swallowed

Unhygienic: not washable; paint or dye that runs; made in unsanitary factory; too small for child’s stage of development

Inartistic: jangling, harsh, metallic, discordant sounds; unsymmetrical, poorly proportioned, ugly shapes; unharmonious or harsh colors; simpering, ugly, or unwholesome expressions on dolls or animals.

Flimsy in material or workmanship

Psychological:

Mechanical, merely amusing the child, making him only a spectator instead of providing a means for his own creative activity

Military, demoralizing for the following reasons:

(a) they cultivate the spirit of destructiveness rather than constructiveness;

(b) they foster callousness toward the value of human life;

(c) they give a wholly wrong impression of the meaning of war, omitting its destructive social and industrial effects, and overemphasizing the joy of its enthusiasm and rhythm.

Over-realistic, super-refined,—especially dolls

Unhygienic, Inartistic, Anti-social Toys.

Hygienic, Durable, Constructive, Social Toys.

Especially to be avoided under six years are toys having:

sharp points, corners, edges;

small bells or detachable ornaments;

paint which easily comes off;

flimsy toys easily broken;

woolly animals (unless washable and washed);

popguns;

fine material, sometimes sold as “Kindergarten material”, e.g., sewing cards, paper mats, straws, small beads, sticks, peg boards, crayons, blocks.

Mechanical Toys. Doctor Hall comments on this:

Mechanical toys, more than any others, seem to have the shortest existence in the hands of bright, active children, a fact which suggests that toys so constructed as to show principles of motion and elementary physical laws, without involving their own destruction, are an educational need yet to be supplied. This destructive form of curiosity, due to normal development of mentally active children, needing guidance, and to be furnished with a proper outlet, but not repressed, is not to be confused with the careless destruction of toys, due to lack of interest, which is unfortunately common in children whose interests and powers of appreciation have been weakened and dissipated by overloading them with toys and diversions until it has bred in them an ennui which has sapped their power of attention and left them incapable of self-entertainment. Healthy children, if allowed to develop under normal conditions, find interests and amusements for themselves, and the child who has been so reared that he wants to be constantly amused, and has no keen desires because they have been too frequently anticipated, has been deprived of one of the rights of childhood.

A baby’s early motor interests are in the things which he himself can do, and disappointed friends and relatives have often found their gifts of mechanical toys a failure, simply because they have too far anticipated the natural development, and the toy has proved either a source of fear or failed to excite special interest. In fact, even at a later period, mechanical toys which are too complicated in construction or too delicate to bear investigation, which are apt to be clumsy, soon lose their attractiveness, while something that can be taken to pieces and put together by unskilled fingers, so that it will “go again” may prove of continued interest.

And Kate Douglas Wiggin writes: “Every thoughtful person knows that the simple, natural playthings of the old-fashioned child, which are nothing more than pegs on which he hangs his glowing fancies, are healthier than our complicated modern mechanisms, in which the child has only to press the button and the toy does the rest.”

The Treatment of Toys. The right treatment of toys has far-reaching educational values in orderliness, thrift, prudence, depth of emotion, generosity, genuineness. The child who has a small number of durable toys that will stand the strain of usage and therefore accumulate years of associations and emotions, is having an education in genuineness and emotional strength, while the child who has a great number of flimsy toys that rapidly disappear is being trained in superficiality and shallowness. The child whose toys are promptly repaired when broken is being trained in prudence and orderliness, and still more so when, even during his second year, he is responsible for keeping them orderly and neat. The child who is surfeited with gifts, or who is allowed to spend his pennies prodigally for cheap jimcracks, is being trained in extravagance, shortsightedness, and discontent; while the one who is given a reasonable number of gifts and is taught to save his pennies and think carefully of worth-while toys to buy, is being trained in thriftiness, foresight, and satisfaction.

A Guide to Toys for Children

First Year. Utilizing hand, forearm, upper arm.

Sensory and Motor Experience

1 to 4 months:
Rod to grasp
Rubber or celluloid ball or doll
Semi-sphere of rubber or wood
4 months:
Celluloid dumb-bell
5 months:
Montessori sand boxes
Paper to crumple
Small enamel or tin cup
6 months:
Wooden ball
Mirror, pocket size, in frame
Spoon
Leather reins to pull upon, with musical bells
Rubber balls, each covered with one of primary colors (crocheted of cotton or silk)
8 months:
Picture book, linen, large, colored pictures
Small hand bell
Water toys—fish, swans
9 months:
Kitchen utensils in variety of shapes, sizes (no sharp edges or points, non-breakable)
Rolling pin, pie tins, Clothespins
Football
10 months:
Hard vegetables and fruits; potato, apple, squash, cucumber, carrots, eggplant (shapes, sizes, colors)
12 months:
Japanese gong
Tube
Rubber, wooden, or celluloid toys, e.g., doll, dog, cat

One to Two Years. Large size implements for forearm, whole arm, trunk; sensory and motor experience; color, sound, experimentation.

Wooden mallet, large nails, and bar of soap

Sand box and stones

Bucket and spoons, dipper

Variety of balls

Football

Wooden blocks 2 × 4 inches

Nests of balls, dolls

Spools

Kitchen utensils

Hard fruits and vegetables

2 or 3 dolls; 2 or 3 toy animals (rubber, celluloid, or wood)

Chair swing

Stationary ladder, 4 to 6 rungs

Rope to pull up weight

Montessori wooden cylinders

Two to Four Years. Utilizing fundamental muscles, sensory and motor activities, imagination, construction.

Imaginative Play

Dolls: Unbreakable, washable, 4 to 12 inches long baby and adult dolls; girl and boy dolls
Doll accessories: Pewter or enamel dishes, cooking utensils, stove
Laundry equipment, especially tub and flatiron; broom
Doll cradle
Doll’s house
Noah’s Ark: Dogs, horses, cats, bears, in rubber, celluloid, wood
Jack-in-box
Nested balls, dolls

Outdoor, Active

Wheelbarrow, wagon
Train of cars, boat
Velocipede
Fire engine
Horse reins
Garden tools; pail and shovel Balls: Football, large rubber with pictures; wooden; small rubber with spectrum colors
Tenpins
Rubber balloons

Constructive

Blocks; large size, as paving blocks, in hard wood, utilizing trunk and arms, for floor use; 2-inch cubes and half-cubes for table use; cut exactly to inch measures, if possible; range of sizes for towers; interlocking blocks
Montessori tower and stair
Carpentry tools; real tools in child’s size
Sand, modeling clay, paints, large size crayola; blackboard or large sheets Manila paper (2 × 3 feet)
Large wooden beads, pegboard
Sliced animals, birds
Soap bubble apparatus
Sticks in ¼ and ½ inch diameters, assorted lengths, 4 to 36 inch; plain, or dyed in primary colors
Color bobbins, spools, blocks
Quart and pint measures
Sand forms
Clothespins, boxes, spools
Stones, leaves, twigs, acorn cups
Zinc sand box; can be purchased; or a box may be made, having boards free from splinters, or planed smooth, lined with zinc (leaving no rough edges or corners), or made waterproof with several coats of cheap varnish.
Toy bank
Musical toys:

Triangle, tubephone, musical bells, drum, trumpet, horn (with care for mouth hygiene); toy musical notes and bars for later months

Four to Six Years. Fundamental muscles. Imagination, construction, measuring; experimenting with mechanical principles, simple chemistry, electricity; making toys.

Imaginative Play

Dolls (for both girls and boys)
Unbreakable, washable
Representing children of different races, countries
Doll accessories:
Carriage, trunk
Doll houses more complete
Stove and cooking utensils more ample
Laundry equipment that can be used
Indian suits (fireproof)
Punch and Judy
Toy theater
Kaleidoscope; magnets

Musical

Continue those of previous period

Wind harp, bugle or flute, tambourine, musical bells and glasses, toy piano

Outdoor, Active

Continue those of previous period
Garden tools, usable
Watering can, trowel
Tenpins, top, hoop, ringtoss
Balls (add bouncing ball, volley ball)

Constructive

Continue those of previous period
Blocks as previous period; add round, triangular, cylindrical; variety of geometric shapes
Stone mosaics (1 to 2-inch size) for parquetry
Picture puzzles
Paint book, drawing paper
Blunt scissors
Paste
Foot rule, yardstick
Gill, gallon, peck, bushel measures
Counter or small spring scales, weighing accurately
Thermometer
Meccano, interlocking blocks
Apparatus for constructing toy telephones, signals, motor toys

Six to Nine Years. Accessory muscles utilized. Imagination, imitation, construction, measuring, industrial play, making many toys.

Imaginative Play

Dolls (add china, bisque, paper)
Dolls representing other nationalities, historic or literary characters; stunt dolls
Doll accessories, both smaller and larger sizes; china dishes
Dominoes, checkers
Toy store
Toy theater
Toy money, stamps

Musical

Whistles, bugle, flute, mouth harp (care for mouth hygiene)
Autoharp or zither, toy piano (musical quality); violin or cello
Toy notes and bars; music note blocks

Outdoor, Active

Balls (add volley, hand, medicine, football, rubber bouncing)
Baseball and bat
Marbles, jackstones, tops
Kites, bow and arrows, battledore, grace hoops, jumping rope
Skates (both feet), stilts
Croquet, tennis racket, punching bag
Substantial wagon, trains, garden tools

Constructive

Blocks: Anchor, 1-inch sizes; dominoes, checkers
Knife, modeling clay, sand, paints, paint book, small crayola
Weaving frame; small beads, raffia, reed
Scrap pictures; straws, pasteboard parquetry
Stencil blocks
Apparatus for making toys, as in previous period
Camera
Radiopticon
Stereoscope
Clock that can be taken apart

CHAPTER XVI
STORY-TELLING

Value of the Story. Story-telling is the true pedagogical method of instruction, and to some extent of education, in early childhood. The story has many values, spiritual and intellectual. The wise teacher will use it to (1) entertain, (2) enlarge the experience by giving pictures of other children, homes, lands, social and geographic situations which no one child could experience, (3) acquaint the child with world characters and literature, (4) increase the vocabulary and the use of language, (5) cultivate imagination and concentration, (6) portray the effects of wisdom or foolishness, (7) present ideals of life, (8) give inspiration, courage, faith, sympathy.

What to Choose. Stories should be selected that will give the greatest number of these values, and that are suited to the stage of development of the children to whom they are told. In this age of cheap printing and authorship, the mediocre is always at hand, and the most valuable must be searched for as precious jewels. Life is so brief that there is not time even for all of the best.

The best story must first be true, not necessarily in a realistic sense of having actually happened to a certain individual in a historical time and geographical location, but it must be true in expressing the eternal verities, the principles that govern the universe. This rules out the tale in which error or vice succeed, or in which brute strength conquers spiritual strength. In the “true” myth, fairy tale, or allegory, Right eventually triumphs as it actually does in the universe, although possibly long delayed; wrong is punished; error and ignorance bring their unhappy consequences; wisdom and skill conquer circumstances; and the forces of the universe (whether presented as natural forces or as gods, fairies, or Providence) assist those who strive for righteousness and to assist their fellows.

It must next be vital. No less vicious and undermining than the untrue story is the weak, sentimental, mawkish, dull, or mediocre tale. In the reaction against such, and for want of a guide, children of reading age resort to sensational, flamboyant, lurid tales found on any cheap stationer’s counters and even in respectable editions in these days. Other children unfortunately take to such pabulum temperamentally.

It must also be positive, not negative. Moreover, the grewsome, harrowing story, the hypocritical, the morbid, are equally a crime against childhood.

The story must be of interest to the children. It must, therefore, have action, dramatic quality, and for children under six, repetition, humor of situation, fun, brevity, rhythm.

How to Tell Stories. For the person who “cannot tell a story” as for the person who “cannot swim”, there is one essential: forget yourself and plunge in, and practice until you have gained confidence.

1. Tell something in which you and the children are interested, and keep at it repeatedly until you feel at ease.

2. Recall stories that interested you at that age.

3. Tell stories the children themselves ask for, refreshing your memory by reading up a standard version, or by asking the children to tell it to you.

4. Study Mother Goose, Æsop, and Bible stories as models of the best story-telling. 5. Live the story as you tell it—see it as pictures in your own mind. Tell it so vividly that the children can play it out afterwards.

6. Use direct speech in telling conversation.

7. Make your pictures vivid by a few descriptive words, especially of colors and sounds; increase your vocabulary of adjectives.

8. Beware of making it too long, especially for very little people.

9. Use perhaps a very few natural gestures, but do not try to act it out. Children have not the mental ability to hear narrative and see action at the same time.

10. Children love the same story repeated, and they want it told the same way, in order to see the same pictures; therefore have your story clear in your mind the first time you tell it.

11. If you are telling a classic or standard story, respect it as it is, just as honestly as you would an historic or scientific fact. If you do not wish to tell it that way, don’t tell it at all, but don’t tinker it.

12. Do not try to memorize a story, except possibly the conversations.

13. If a story is clearly told, the child will usually absorb and discern the ethical principle involved, without any necessity on your part to obtrusively “point the moral.” Sometimes a child will draw an erroneous or unexpected inference because his judgment is yet immature or his ethical experience is elementary or perverted. Under such a condition, try to tell another story that will concretely clear his thought.

When you are able to tell a story spontaneously, joyfully, forgetting yourself, losing yourself in the story and in the children’s interest, you will be ready to study story-telling as a science and an art, and you will have learned by your experience some of the fundamental principles of the art.

The first requisite, however, is spontaneity, naturalness, self-confidence. To attempt to study method before attaining this quality is to incur the danger of substituting “finish” for vitality.

Times and Occasions. For effective story-telling choose the time when the child can give attention, and when the environment is without disturbing influences of noise, sights, other interests, interruptions. There are occasions, however, when the child is restless, tired, irritable, when a story that has much of rhythm and repetition will soothe him.

It is certainly unwise to try to secure his concentration when he is hungry, or eager for active exercise. Bedtime stories usually should be told before the child is undressed, and should be of a quiet, sedative kind, that the child may not be kept awake either through excitement, or thinking on vivid pictures.

Let the child have opportunity to absorb it into his soul. Therefore wait for the child, in his own time, to give it back, either by telling it, dramatizing, painting, drawing, cutting, modeling. This will foster the child’s initiative. When the child himself asks “What shall I do” is time enough to suggest directly such reproduction. Meantime, as a means of suggestion, it is valuable thus to illustrate a story yourself some time after it is told—immediately or some hours or days later. When the child is ready, he will imitate and ask to do it also, but his response should be spontaneous on his part, and of his own initiative.

Selection of Stories. Story-telling naturally begins in the latter part of the first year, with simple finger plays, and the cadence of Mother Goose. Here belong “This Little Pig”, “Open the Door”, “Ride a Cock Horse”, and other simple rhythmic nursery rhymes.

In the second and third year, more of the simple finger plays, such as “Here’s a Ball for Baby”, and the Mother Goose rhymes that have much repetition, can be used. During this stage the child loves little anecdotes about babies, dogs, cats, mother, father. In the “tell it again” stage from two to six the child enjoys following a sequence of incidents and seeing the pictures.

It is in the fourth or fifth year that his imagination and store of mental pictures is sufficiently developed so that he can make up stories of his own, and now his imagination is not yet limited by an appreciation of realities. This is the stage when fairy tales and myths begin. Interest in nonsense syllables, long words, rhyme, absurdity of statement, humorous situations, is now ripening.

In the fifth and sixth year he is ready for fables, and other animal tales such as those of the Jungle Books, for stories of primitive life, for Hiawatha told in Longfellow’s original version.

In the sixth and seventh year his horizon is widening beyond his own immediate home and times. He is ready for little stories about children or grown-ups of other countries and times, for historical incidents, great adventures. Children can now begin to follow the continued story, and this is excellent training in concentration; or they can be told the beginnings of a story, and the situation left as a problem for their own imagination to work upon.

The stories that the child himself tells are always a clue both to his interest and his mental development. The story he can tell will represent a simpler stage in development than the story he can appreciate and absorb.

Where to Find Stories. Mother Goose is the true classic of the nursery. It must be wisely selected, however, for children. There is much that is crude, and rude, as in all folk tales, and this should be culled out.

Fairy tales and fables also need to be carefully selected. Andersen’s are ideal, allegorical, true. Grimm’s and Abbott’s are collections of German and English folklore. They, too, need careful selection. Many of them reflect the undemocratic conditions of an older form of government—the cruelty of the autocrat, the superficial superiority of wealth and station, the resentment of the oppressed. Felix Adler points out that Æsop’s Fables reflect this resentment of the oppressed against the oppressor, and the trickery of the former to match the power of the latter.

The great world myths, both of the Greeks and the Anglo-Saxons, should become the early heritage of every child. Simple incidents from the Iliad and Odyssey, from Greek and Norse mythology, from the Siegfried stories, Beowulf, the legends of King Arthur, can be told during the fifth and sixth year, thus giving a first speaking acquaintance with these epics.

The following list is suggestive of types adapted to each age; it does not attempt to be exhaustive. There is so much of the classic and permanently good, far more than any one child could possibly absorb, that it is a double loss to the child if he is given the trashy and mediocre. The ambitious parent needs to take care that the child has time to think over, feel vividly, see clearly, the tales he is told, and that too much is not given in one year.

A Guide to Stories and Poetry

Six Months to Two Years. Rhythm, repetition, simple word-pictures of familiar objects or experiences; nonsense syllables.

Six Months to One Year. Chanting or singing nursery rhymes. Reading of great rhythmic poetry for sake of rhythm and feeling.

One to Two Years

Mother Goose:
Ride a Cock Horse
Jack and Jill
Humpty Dumpty
Hey Diddle Diddle
Baby Bunting
Rock-a-bye, Baby
Poems and Songs:
Sleep, Baby, Sleep
What does Little Birdie Say
Wee Willie Winkie (Brewer)
Hush, my Dear (Watts)
Stories:
Simple incidents of children, animals, birds
Folk Tales:
Three Bears
Old Woman and Her Pig

Two to Three Years

Mother Goose:
Little Boy Blue
Little Bo-peep
Little Tom Tucker
Little Miss Muffet
Pease Porridge Hot
Hickory, Dickory, Dock
Old Mother Hubbard
Cock Robin
Poetry:
Little Drops of Water
I Love Little Pussy
I Saw a Ship A-Sailing
Lady Moon (Houghton)
Friendly Cow (Stevenson)
Little Lamb, Who Made Thee (Blake)
Folk and Fairy Tales:
Three Little Pigs
Henny Penny
Goody Two Shoes
Slovenly Peter
Elves and Shoemaker
Babes in the Woods
Greek Myths:
Apollo and his Sheep
Mercury
Norse Myths:
Thor and his Chariot
Frey and her Weaving
Bible Stories:
Moses in Bulrushes
Christ Child in Manger

Three to Four Years

Mother Goose:
Song of Sixpence
Lucy Locket
Old King Cole
Simple Simon
There Was a Crooked Man
If All the World Were Paper
The Man in the Moon
Three Little Kittens
Poetry:
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
My Shadow (Stevenson)
The Baby (MacDonald)
Spring (Nash)
Owl and Pussy Cat (Lear)
The Jabberwocky (Dodgson)
Pied Piper (Browning)
How the Waters Come Down at Lodore (Southey)
Folk and Fairy Tales:
Tom Thumb
Sleeping Beauty
Jack and Beanstalk
Diamonds and Toads
Rose Red and Snow White
Jungle Books
Greek Myths:
Arachne
Latona and Frogs
King Midas
Narcissus
Phaëton
Norse Myths:
Thor and his Glove
Thor and his Hammer
Thor at Jotenheim
Bible Stories:
Jesus blessing little children
Jesus healing Jairus’ daughter
Garden of Eden
The Flood and the Ark
David and his Harp
Daniel
Elijah and Ravens

Four to Six Years

Mother Goose:
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe
As I Was Going to St. Ives
When Good King Arthur Ruled this Land
Where Are You Going, My Pretty Maid
Poetry:
Which Way Does the Wind Blow?
Robin Redbreast (Allingham)
The Fairies (Allingham)
Laughing Song (Blake)
The Year’s at the Spring (Browning)
Ariel’s Song (Shakespeare)
Come, Follow, Follow (Shakespeare)
Lullaby for Titania (Shakespeare)
Answer to Child’s Question (Coleridge)
Nonsense Songs (Lear)
Love Songs of Childhood (Field)
Book of Joyous Children (Riley)
Child’s Garden of Verses (Stevenson)
Hiawatha (Longfellow)
America
Biography, History and Travel:
Robinson Crusoe
Columbus’ Voyages
Mayflower and Pilgrims
Paul Revere
John Smith and Pocahontas
Betsy Ross and the flag
Stories from childhood of Benjamin Franklin
Abraham Lincoln
Edison
Mozart
Norse Myths:
Journey of Thor
Finding of the Hammer
Loki’s Tricks
Youth of Siegfried
Folk and Fairy Tales:
Dick Whittington
Ugly Duckling
Discontented Fir Tree
Epaminondas
Thumbelina
Beauty and Beast
Gulliver’s Travels
Just So Stories
Uncle Remus
King of Golden River
Fables:
Dog in Manger
Lion and Mouse
Hare and Tortoise
Bundle of Sticks
Ant and Grasshopper
Sun and Wind
Boy who cried “Wolf”
Greek Myths:
Ceres and Persephone
Philemon and Baucis
Orpheus and Eurydice
Io and the Gadfly
Pygmalion and Galatea
Ulysses
Callisto and Arcas
The Wooden Horse
Jason and the Golden Fleece
Vulcan
Bible Stories:
Creation Story
Child Samuel
Joseph and his Brethren
Children of Israel in Egypt
The Passover
Journey to the Promised Land
David and Goliath
Samson
Ruth
The Boy Jesus
Jesus feeding the Multitude
The Resurrection
Juveniles:
The Goops
Alice in Wonderland
Through a Looking Glass
Rip Van Winkle

Six to Nine Years

Poetry:
Piccola (Thaxter)
The Sandpiper (Thaxter)
Song of Spring (Hemans)
Pilgrim Fathers ”
Bugle Song (Tennyson)
Sweet and Low ”
The Brook ”
We are Seven (Wordsworth)
The Daffodils ”
My Heart Leaps Up (Wordsworth)
The Cloud (Shelley)
Ode to Skylark ”
The Children’s Hour (Longfellow)
Village Blacksmith (Longfellow)
Psalm of Life (Longfellow)
Building of Ship ”
Evangeline ”
Tales of Wayside Inn (Longfellow)
A Morning Song (Heywood)
Hark! Hark! the Lark (Shakespeare)
Indian Summer (Whittier)
Barefoot Boy ”
For a’ That (Burns)
Highland Mary (Burns)
Annie Laurie
Wind and Moon (Macdonald)
Old Oaken Bucket (Woodworth)
Robert of Lincoln (Bryant)
Vision of Sir Launfal (Lowell)
Lochinvar (Scott)
Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare)
Folk and Fairy Tales:
Andersen’s Fairy Tales
Jataka Tales
At Back of North Wind (Macdonald)
Arabian Nights
Greek Myths:
Labors of Hercules
Laocoön
The Odyssey
Tales from Ovid
Norse Myths:
Sigurd the Volsung (Morris)
Classic Tales: (selections)
Canterbury Tales
Fairie Queene
Tales from Shakespeare
Pilgrim’s Progress
Legends:
Beowulf
King Arthur
Robin Hood
American Indian Legends
Bible Stories:
Life of Jesus, including Crucifixion
Abraham
Jacob
Joseph
Moses
Joshua
David
Solomon
Daniel
Esther
Elijah
Paul
Biography, History, Travel, Science:
Local pioneer history
Pilgrim Fathers
William Penn
Washington
Lincoln
Significant historic tales from
England
Vikings
Pharaohs
Greek
Roman
Incidents from life of
Homer
Copernicus
Galileo
Caxton
Eli Whitney
Longfellow
Whittier
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Swiss Family Robinson
Darwin’s Voyage of Beagle
The Snow Baby (Peary)
Juveniles:
Pinocchio (Collodi)
Hans Brinker (Dodge)
Birds’ Christmas Carol (Wiggin)
Mrs. Wiggs (Rice)
Five Little Peppers (Sidney)

CHAPTER XVII
SCIENCE AND HISTORY

“True human wisdom has for its bedrock an intimate knowledge of the immediate environment and trained capacity for dealing with it. The quality of mind thus engendered is simple and clear-sighted, formed by having to do with uncompromising realities and hence adapted to future situations. It is firm, sensitive and sure of itself.”

—John Dewey.

“No book or map is a substitute for personal experience; they cannot take the place of the actual journey.”

—Ibid.

“The destiny of nations lies far more in the hands of women—the mothers—than in the hands of rulers.”

—F. Froebel.

Cultivating a Scientific Mind. Science is concerned with causes and effects, laws and principles of action, systematic classification of facts, exact knowledge of facts. A scientific habit of mind is developed in the little child by encouraging curiosity, exploration, experimenting, collecting, questioning; by consistent parental action and discipline, honesty and sincerity in statements, the answering of questions so as to provoke further thought.

Usually a child needs little stimulus to interest in natural science. Everything in the world is new to him. The baby is interested in every object he can touch, in shining or moving objects. The toddler is interested in moving things, especially animals, trains, clocks; in sticks, stones, and leaves because he can use them. The little child from three to six is interested in sun, moon, and stars, in day and darkness, in rain, snow, wind, in flowers and trees, as well as in animals and birds. Natural, spontaneous questions regarding the biological origin and development of life are asked between three and eight, and this is the period especially recommended for teaching the child of the mother’s part in his prenatal care, and the value of the father’s share, and thereby fostering his wholesome attitude of gratitude, and his respect for all motherhood and fatherhood. At four or five, rivers, lakes, hills, valleys, the time of day, attract his attention. Processes of mechanics, filling and emptying, pouring, pulleys, wheels, are matters of keen interest from early in his second year.

There is an early stage when he asks “What?” meaning what is its name. Later comes the “Why?” which is a search for physical causes and reasons, and also for philosophical reasons.

Learning the Fundamental Facts. The teacher of the very little child must first know what are the fundamental facts in science. Too often the traditional school training has given an intensive acquaintance with one or two sciences, so detailed that the fundamental foundations are obscured. The teacher of the very little child needs, instead, a comprehensive knowledge of many sciences, in their broad basic outlines,—especially physics, chemistry, nature-study, biology, physical geography, geology, astronomy, industrial geography and industrial processes, the story of primitive life and industries.

Nature Study That is Worth While. Moreover, her knowledge should not be purely impersonal; it must be human, poetic, related to industry and religion. The sense of wonder and of nurture is strong in the little child. He is more interested in feeding and caring for his rabbits or goldfish or flowers than in analyzing them, or describing their form or color; the latter are merely incidental in his interest, and they should be in his teaching. On the other hand, his knowledge of form, color, and such abstract qualities may well come quite naturally and incidentally through nature-study and handwork rather than through special apparatus, separated from real objects and life.

Geography. This comes naturally through his personal experiences. Maps, diagrams, globes, are complex and abstract and symbolic; they belong somewhere after six years, with most children not before nine years. The child must have arrived at the stage when he can think in terms of symbols, before he can really interpret them. It will do no harm to have a globe where he may see it, but it would be a fallacy to consider that he can really interpret it, and a mistake to attempt using it until he has grasped the idea of the bigness of the earth on which he lives. Maps will not be interpretable until later. He may point to places on the map, but without appreciation of their meaning. Somewhere between six and ten years of age he may begin making a “map” of the imaginary country he has built in the sand box, with rivers, lakes, cities; or of the room, locating the articles of furniture; or of the street, locating the houses, sidewalks, telegraph poles, first drawing freehand, and when more advanced, drawing to scale. At three or four years, with his sand pile, he can reproduce forms he has seen—hills, valleys, rivers, lakes. He will want to use real water for rivers. It is well to let him experiment with this until he is dissatisfied because of its disappearance, and then look for play substitutes,—gray, blue, or green yarn, paper or cloth, mica. It is more important that it should be representative to him than to his elders.

Real geography comes through seeing places and people. The little child under five or six belongs naturally in the country, where he has the opportunity for acquaintance with physical geography in many forms. Great variety of natural objects and experiences should be provided. On the other hand, intensive acquaintance with only a few people or nationalities is better. After four or five years of age, he is able to stand the excitement of traveling, and the risk of dust and crowds, and he is ready to profit by seeing other people, cities, customs, ways of traveling, industries. The least journey to a new environment is valuable, to enlarge his perspective and his sympathies. Even at three or four he likes to see pictures of other children in other countries, and how they live,—their houses, clothes, food, toys, pets. Especially is he attracted by stories of primitive, outdoor life. The story of Hiawatha, in Longfellow’s original, is well adapted to the sixth year, and some children love it and enjoy it earlier.

Dolls may be dressed to represent children of different lands. The sand box may be used to represent tropical, arctic, mountainous, agricultural, fishing, mining countries and scenes. Scrapbooks can be made for each country, with pictures from magazines, railroad or steamship folders, post cards. Foreign magazines may be obtained, in the east, through Brentano’s (New York). Correspondence could easily be arranged with a child in some foreign country if not through personal acquaintances, at least through some foreign school, mission, society, or consul. Early acquaintance with the children of other countries cultivates a feeling of sympathy that is the foundation of world fellowship and international peace. If there is opportunity to learn a few colloquial sentences in some of these languages, this will still further deepen the child’s sympathy. After six years, when his interest in collecting is strong, foreign stamps, flags, emblems, flowers, pictures, will be as keenly interesting to him as cigar labels or other inconsequential but glittering objects.

Industries. Let him see as many as possible of the forms of industry, especially the primitive simple forms, such as gardening, farming, care of animals, horse-shoeing, baking, sewing. He should go often to the grocery store (not during the busy hours) to see the different kinds of foods. Better yet, he should see some of these vegetables and fruits growing, the wheat and corn standing in the fields. He should see the ploughing, planting, weeding, harvesting; the feeding and the milking of the cow; the hauling and preparation of fuels. Little comment is necessary beyond remarking how everything that we eat or wear has come to us because other people have worked hard to make it grow, or to bring it or prepare it for us, and therefore we owe our thanks to all who have worked for our comfort. Thus from his own experience he may know and appreciate the postman who brings the letters, the fireman who hurries to put out the fire, the policeman who helps us across the crowded street and watches night and day to keep us protected from harm and danger, the street-sweeper and sprinkler who keep the streets clean, the man who brings the coal or wood or groceries, the street-car conductor and motorman, the engineer and fireman on the train that takes us about the country or brings the freight.

Through gratitude for the hard work that others do for him he will also learn to respect all labor, even though it does cause dirty hands and faces and clothes, and he will naturally infer that it is his duty to do his share and to work also for others.

History. Children, like savages, are historically nearsighted; they have not yet the experience to appreciate historic time; every event is located near the present, and their interest in history is more or less fictitious and artificial. This is the period for the great myths, for imagination now exceeds experience, and any adventure is credible.

There comes a time, about six years of age, when children begin to ask for a “true” story, meaning a realistic story, historically true. Then is the opportunity to recount the experiences of mothers and children, as well as of brothers and fathers, in other times. Nor need these be limited to his own country or modern times. “Once upon a time” or “A long, long time ago” is somewhere back in a vague sometime; yesterday or a million years ago are not yet spaced in his mind. This sense of time-duration may be developed by calling attention to it in his experience, for the two-year-old, day and night; in the fourth year, morning and afternoon, yesterday, to-day and to-morrow, seasons; in the fifth year, the days of the week and the months of the year will begin to have significance and sequence; in the sixth year, “last Christmas”, “next Fourth of July”, the date of this year, and the marking of duration, under various circumstances, of a minute, an hour, a day.

Of course, the little child will not be able to distinguish between different nations or races of the past; it is all one to him. This fact is easily overlooked by the eager teacher, who has so long since classified historic data in her own mind. This historical appreciation does not develop until the early teens.

For these reasons, it is good pedagogy to let the first historical stories be of the country in which the child lives. Historic sequence in the telling of these anecdotes is of slight importance.

Since so much of written history has hitherto been military and political, it is easy to fall into the error of telling stories of military experiences, especially wars and battles. In the light of modern developments, the superficialness and, for the child, the misleading effect of the usual military story should be clearly evident. It should not be made the ideal, nor a substitute for the adventure, courage, heroism, which the child craves and admires. The teacher’s responsibility is to find historic tales of those who served their fellowmen by constructive bravery and venture,—life-saving, exploring, inventing. Even a simple, homely incident in the life of a noteworthy historical character will be an introduction to deeper acquaintance later. In American history, Columbus, the Pilgrims, William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Betsy Ross, Eli Whitney, Edison, are a few examples. Stories from English history easily relate themselves to the little child’s vision. The childhood of noteworthy men and women furnishes many stories for this age period.

The teacher needs to beware of the fallacy of reading to children or telling to them things which they can learn through their own experience, experimenting, or observation. Many informational books of this kind are at hand, both in science and history. The temptation often is strong, especially for the teacher who is eager that the child shall learn much, and who has not clearly distinguished between mere erudition, encyclopedic accumulation of facts and, on the other hand, the vital, living experiences of life, with the growing power to observe, interpret, and enjoy for one’s self. The latter is dynamic, the way of wisdom.

Where museums or historical collections are available, there is a great educational opportunity, although much of the material is dead and unrelated to its natural situation.

Mathematics. The elements of arithmetic and geometry have but a slight place in the life or interest of the little child. At five or six he may begin to count objects, but his capacity is limited. The mere memorizing of numbers, as a series of words, is of no more mathematical significance than a nonsense jingle, and is not to be encouraged until, through his interest in counting, the child has an appreciation of the concrete meaning of numbers, at least to the range of ten or twelve. Measuring, using the actual standard measures of foot, yard, pound, pint, quart, gallon, dozen, is usually of interest at six or seven years. Interest in geometric forms is naturally slight, and even this is doubtless an æsthetic, not a mathematical, interest. Teaching of geometric form is easily overdone.

Reading and Writing. These have no place, biologically, before six years, and some psychologists say they belong psychologically after eight years, in the period of interest in symbols, abstractions, and rote learning. It is known that normal children who enter school at nine years usually finish the grades with those of their own age who started three years earlier. It is evident that with a natural outdoor environment, the child will acquire a better physique, a larger acquaintance with realities, and a richer development of invention, initiative, self-expression, than he does in the schoolroom. The ancient Greeks taught only games, dancing, and music to children under nine. Doctor G. Stanley Hall, Professor Lightner Witmer, Professor Arthur Holmes, Professor Clifton E. Hodge are among the authorities advising such late introduction to the use of abstract symbols. What can be done educationally in that period from six to nine years, without teaching the three R’s, has been amply demonstrated by Mrs. Marietta Johnson in her school at Fairhope, Alabama, and at The Little School in the Woods at Greenwich, Connecticut.

CHAPTER XVIII
HANDWORK

“No line of culture is complete until it issues in motor habits and makes a well-knit soul texture that admits concentration series in many directions and that can bring all its resources to bear on any point.

“Fully assimilated knowledge that becomes a part of life is strength—but that which is undigested and not transformed into carrying power, but is a burden to be carried in memory, is an added cause of tension and fatigue.”

—G. Stanley Hall.

Three fundamental principles are to be noted:

1. All is grist that comes to the mill of the handworker.

2. The one element that will transform any object or combination of objects into a created product is imagination.

3. The purpose in the children’s handwork is not the production of finished products, but creative self-activity, invention, self-reliance, the making of things to use, the utilizing of materials found in the environment, the putting of ideas into concrete form, the acquisition of dexterity with the hands, the development of brain centers through use of the hands.

The nursery, playroom or yard should have a corner for tools and materials adapted to the muscles of small hands and arms. A workbench of a height adapted to the child at each stage of his development, can be purchased at the large hardware stores, or can be made from a heavy packing box. Tools should be kept in good condition, and materials neatly shelved. The child at two years can begin to keep his workshop in good order.

Forms of handwork. The suggested list begins with the simpler forms and continues to the more difficult, in each group.

Painting: using a house-painter’s brush for real or imaginary (with water) painting; freehand painting of pictures; painting in of large, simple drawings, made with heavy line

Drawing: freehand drawing of known or imagined objects; illustrating stories; copying simple borders or geometric designs; creating borders, patterns for wall paper, or other decoration

Paper tearing: simple circles, household utensils, tools, animals, trees, dolls

Paper cutting: as in paper tearing, when child can easily handle blunt-pointed scissors (about five years); cutting out pictures with heavy outline (not under five years)

Modeling: moldings and forms, learning to manipulate soft material; making beads, nests, dishes, furniture, dolls, animals

Carpentry: hammering, sawing, planing; making simple dolls’ tables, chairs, furniture; making dolls’ houses, children’s furniture, wagons, toys

Tools.

Hammer, light weight
Wooden mallet
Small size, sharp saw
Coping saw
Small size, sharp plane
House-painter’s brush
Vise
Gimlet
Screwdriver
File
Small, blunt scissors
Weaving frame

Materials. Whatever the habitat and environment provides.

The country child is the more blessed of the gods, for he has

Twigs, branches
Corncobs, silk
Acorn cups
Straw, hay
Milkweed pods

The city child can more readily find

Spools
Pasteboard boxes
Wooden boxes
Wooden buttons

Every child has at hand

Clothespins
Wrapping paper
Corrugated pasteboard
Match boxes
String, rope
Leaves
Vegetables
Scraps of cloth and leather

Purchasable material which may be useful, to be bought as needed, will include:

Whitewood, ¼ inch, in assorted widths and lengths

Whitewood, cut in circles, assorted sizes

Water colors, dyes, dry colors and shellac, large crayola

Glue, paste

Modeling clay, plasticine, plaster of Paris, Portland cement

Paper: bogus, cartridge, book-cover, Manila, builders’, water color, drawing, colored, gold, silver, crêpe, tissue

Nails, tacks, and screws in assorted sizes

Cloth, yarn, leather, raffia

Board: bristol board, cardboard, binder board

Hinges, locks, staples

Brass paper fasteners

Paint boxes should contain only the three primary colors (red, yellow, blue) and black, so the child can learn to mix his own colors.

Labeled boxes for materials should be kept on the play shelves, and scraps of everything usable from the household kept in these.

Dry clay powder is the cheapest form of modeling material; composition clay or plasticine are cleaner.

Plaster of Paris and Portland cement are easy material for children to work with. They should be mixed with lukewarm water until the consistency of thick cream.

Dry colors purchased at the paint shop may be mixed with the dry clay powder, plaster of Paris, or cement, for color effects.

Children who live in the vicinity of a pottery can have their clay pieces fired. Enamel paint or water glass will waterproof clay. Decorations may be made with water colors or shellac varnish mixed with dry colors.

Handwork that is Injurious. The fine muscles of the fingers and eyes are undeveloped in the child under six years, and the nervous system is easily fatigued or overstrained. Handwork that involves use of small objects, as toothpicks, straws, lentils, peas, tiny beads, cambric needles, thread, 1-inch blocks, small papers, is a nervous strain upon the child. Fine lines, dots, holes, the following of a fine line in cutting or coloring, are also injurious to the eyes. Such fine material and work is no longer used in kindergartens that have respect for child hygiene.

Too long seated application to work at a table is also injurious. Half an hour is long enough for any child under nine years to sit still at work. If he is voluntarily absorbed longer, some active diversion should be arranged for a quarter hour, at least.

Work suggested that is too difficult for the child to do alone either discourages him by its impossibility, or develops dependence upon others.

Educational Values. The handwork is, educationally, a means of giving concrete expression to imaginative ideas, and of making the experience of the child more vivid. Stories, scenes from history, records of the child’s own experience, can be portrayed. The child does not naturally copy literally from objects.

Handwork that Utilizes Fundamental Muscles.

In the School of Mothercraft Child Garden.

No effort should be made, before six years, to produce finished products. Technique or skill in production do not belong to this period. Vividness, self-expression, development of motor control of arms and hands, coördination of eye and hand, the joy of workmanship, the confidence in creating,—these are the purposes of handwork in early childhood.

The genetic method in handwork is to start with your idea of what you want to make, and then make it of such material as you can find. This is Nature’s process, the child’s process, of creating.

The list of ideas to be realized will fall into a few groups:

Dolls in great variety
Animals
Trains
Wagons and other vehicles
Boats
Houses, animal cages, churches, barns, stores
Doll clothes
Furniture
Dishes
Toys for store-keeping—all lines of merchandise
Toys for playing at occupation—all lines of industry
Games

If any genius is involved in handwork, it is in adapting any kind of material to the realization of any one of these ideas.

Dolls. Clothespins with cloth or paper tied on are about the simplest.

Corncobs, with “real” silk hair, clothes of corn husks or cloth make popular dolls. Arms may be made of cloth bags stuffed with paper, cotton, cloth, and sewed into the shoulder seam of the dress.

Rag dolls stuffed with cloth, the features and fingers marked in with ink or water color. Any one can cut a rag doll pattern from muslin. (For sanitary reasons, rag dolls are not so popular as they used to be.)

Nut dolls. Peanut dolls are made by using double nuts, sewed together to make the head, arms, legs and body; the features and hair marked with ink. Almond, hickory, hazel and walnut heads are used, attached to sticks or rag bodies. Corks, clay pipes, bone buttons, raffia, yarn, may be used for doll heads with these bodies.

Vegetable dolls. Carrots, potatoes, cucumbers, squashes may be used, and the features marked with ink or knife.

The temporary possibility of vegetable, nut, and other “stunt” dolls does not add to their popularity. They are of interest chiefly after nine years, when the doll interest is waning.

Paper dolls. Bodies made of stiff paper or pasteboard, with clothes that can be taken off and put on. Faces can be drawn with ink or water colors, or heads from pictures may be pasted on.

Such paper dolls must be of a size to handle with ease.

Paper dolls cut singly or in chains, by folding paper and cutting, are a source of amusement to children about five, and of creative enjoyment about eight, when there is the motor ability and imagination to create them in great variety.

Animals and Birds. Vegetable. Use large vegetables for body; twigs or toothpicks for legs; straw, string, yarn, for tails; pins, beads, buttons, cloves, currants, raisins, for eyes; leaves, paper, cloth, for nose and ears; gashes for mouth.

Paper. Cut out freehand, or from heavy outline, in newspaper, drawing paper, wrapping paper.

Pasteboard. Cut with strong scissors or with coping saw. These may have legs, heads, and tails made separately and attached with thread, string, or fine wire so they will move.

Wooden. Draw from paper designs, cut from whitewood or other soft wood, with coping saw. These, too, may have movable limbs.

---

Kindergarten supply houses publish a set of paper patterns for animals and one for birds.

Animals and birds may be colored with water colors. Or wooden ones may be painted “true to life”, using the shellac and colors; about three coats are required. They are then waterproof, and the colors will not run. A paper or pasteboard support can be fastened to the back side of animals so they will stand up. Birds may be hung by a thread from the ceiling or window frame.

Boys who can whittle can carve out animals, thus providing some with three dimensions.

Houses. Houses are easily made from boxes by cutting out or drawing on doors and windows, with slanting or flat roofs of pasteboard or corrugated board. Porches, lean-tos, extensions, chimneys, steeples, gables, can be added by gluing or sewing on additional pasteboard. Castles, forts, silos, water towers are made from round boxes. Houses may be decorated with water colors.

Animal and menagerie cages are made by cutting out strips from one side of a box. Staircases are made of folded paper or bristol board.

Paper houses can be made from stiff paper, with doors and windows drawn or cut out. These are easily made, and a source of amusement for a rainy day, but not highly valued because not enduring.

Wooden houses are the joy of childhood. A house small enough to be convenient indoors, or large enough to play in outdoors, is one of the chief rights of childhood. For children under six or seven years, a packing box can be used. Two boxes of the same size make a two-story house. The children can scrub, sandpaper, paint, the outside and floors, design or saw out windows, put in partitions to divide into separate rooms, add a slanting roof and chimney. Doors may be added with hinges. Bricks may be made of clay and fastened together with cement or glue for a tiny brick house. Staircases are made of strips or blocks of the wood.

Children over seven can build a real wooden house with a little suggestion. They are also able to make small cement blocks for a block house. Boys of ten or twelve can make a log hut.

Trains, Wagons, Boats, Vehicles. Pasteboard vehicles can be made from spool boxes, candy boxes, match boxes. For wheels use spools, round wooden buttons, round box covers, milk bottle covers, circles cut from pasteboard. For axles use skewers, toothpicks, nails. Axles and wheels may be tacked, sewed, or pasted to the wagon. Axles may be dispensed with, and the wheels pasted directly to the wagon box. Dashboards, seats, canopies, foot rests, smokestacks, cowcatchers of paper or pasteboard can be pasted on, or attached with brass paper fasteners.

Paper wagons and cars can be made from a paper square folded into sixteen small squares, the sides and ends turned up and pasted, and paper circles pasted on for wheels. Paper seats and canopies can be added. The proportions can be changed by cutting out some of the squares.

Wooden vehicles are most satisfactory, because they can be made to really go, and boats can be sailed,—which is a boat’s very reason for existing.

For wagons or cars, a soap box or starch box is very satisfactory. The axles should be securely nailed on, absolutely straight. Material for axles and wheels will depend upon the size of the wagon and degree of efficiency desired. For small, crude vehicles, large wooden button molds, wooden spools (possibly sawed in half) may be utilized for wheels, and toothpicks, kindergarten sticks, or twigs for axles. A small nail or small circle of pasteboard, wax, or plasticine slipped on to the axle, each side of the wheel, will keep the latter in place. For more efficient and finished work, wooden disks of a suitable size and with the hole bored through, and the round sticks of a size to fit them, may be purchased from the carpenter shop or planing mill. Or the holes may be bored with the gimlet and filed out to size. The axles are glued into the disks, then glued, nailed, or screwed to the wagon or car body, and the edges filed or sandpapered so the wheels will turn. Or the disks may be nailed at the end of the axle, using a heavy nail with large head. For nicer work, regular wheels and axles may be purchased at the hardware store.

The engine smokestack is made from an empty spool or round box glued on. The cars are coupled together with string, wire, rope, or tiny chains purchased at the hardware store.

The simplest boat is merely a raft with a string tacked on, a spool smokestack, or a sail of paper on a wooden toothpick or skewer, tacked on one end or put into a nail hole. Beyond this is the two or three-decked boat made by fastening small wooden fig boxes or cigar boxes to the four pillars made from slats of a fruit crate, the first deck tacked to a thick block of wood for a keel. This boat will carry real cargoes.

A raft, either doll size or real size, of half-inch board nailed to two parallel joists, can be made by the six-year-old. With the coping saw, a sailboat deck with pointed ends can be made from the whitewood, a block nailed beneath for keel, a sailcloth of muslin hemmed and fastened with cord or small rope to a mast that fits into the hole bored by the gimlet.

Any number of tiny boats may be made of corks, nutshells, eggshells, with sails of paper and cloth, masts and oars of toothpicks, skewers or twigs, seats of paper or pasteboard.

Rafts may be made of sticks, corncobs, or strips of bark bound together with raffia, grasses, or cord. A canoe may be made of birch bark or leather sewed together at the ends, and lined with oiled paper, rubber cloth or oilcloth to make it water-tight. This will carry dolls and cargo.

Furniture. This can be made by the wholesale.

Paper. The easiest way is to use the paper square, folded into sixteen squares, folding and cutting away to get the desired proportions. Paper circles are used for wheels, rockers, mirrors, stove lids; silver paper for mirrors; gilt paper for brass ornaments. Water color gives realistic touches.

Pasteboard. Sheet bristol board may be used, first drawing the design carefully, providing for lapping, folding along the marked lines, and pasting the laps. In this way any desired size can be had. The designs can first be made in paper.

Pasteboard boxes require less work. Spools may be glued to a box cover as legs for a table or chair. Small spools for legs, or pasteboard semicircles fastened on for rockers, transform a box into a cradle. Safety match boxes glued on top of each other, with a paper fastener or button attached as a knob to the sliding sections, make a tiny chiffonier; a pasteboard frame attached to the back has a silver paper mirror or even one of the tiny real glass pocket mirrors. Beds may be made by fastening a pasteboard strip for head and foot board to the ends of a shallow oblong box. A poster bed is made from an oblong box and cover, sticking four skewers at the corners for legs and posts.

Crude wooden furniture can be made from soft blocks of wood fastened together with small wire nails. Chairs are made by nailing a back strip to a block seat; tables by nailing a square or round top to a center block or to blocks at each corner for legs.

Grocery boxes, shoe boxes, cigar boxes, fruit crates, will furnish cheap material of pine wood. This, however, splits easily, has knotholes and splinters, and is a last resort. An assortment of whitewood, one-half inch thick, in one, two, three and four-inch width strips, will be much more satisfactory. Patterns and dimensions should first be made.

Dishes. Nutshells, sea shells, acorn cups, leaves, gourds, chips, corn husks, pea pods, milkweed pods, eggshells, hollowed out apples, potatoes, squashes are the merest suggestion of the natural dishes suitable to a primitive and child life society.

Modeling clay or plasticine are the most satisfactory materials for dishes. Many dishes and utensils can be cut freehand in outline from Manila or silver paper, tin foil, bristol board. Children at nine or ten can work in hammered brass and bent iron.

Games. Ringtoss. Glue a small, straight stick, as a piece of a broom handle, upright to a flat board or disk. Make rings of several sizes from willow or other flexible branches, tied with raffia or cord; or use embroidery hoops, or rims from cheese boxes, hat boxes, small kegs. Any of these may be wound with raffia, strips of colored cloth, or ribbon.

Faba Gaba. Make bean bags of different sizes. Make a frame by nailing four strips together and nailing two strips across this square to divide it into four holes. This may be varied by (a) making the holes of uneven dimensions; (b) making a larger frame and dividing into six or nine even or uneven dimensions; (c) making three or four concentric or contiguous circles.

Grace Hoops. Make hoops as for ringtoss, about twelve inches in diameter. Make sticks about two feet long, half-inch diameter, of straight young branches, old toy brooms, old curtain rods; or buy them at the carpenter shop. Rings and sticks may be wound as in ringtoss.

Colored balls. Crochet covers of colored string or embroidery silk for rubber balls, or sew segments of colored linen or silk together for cover. Select carefully a series of true prismatic colors,—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. Attach a string of the braided cord, silk or fabric. These are washable and more sanitary than the worsted balls.

Toys. Mechanical toys that children make themselves are of educational value, as well as interest. In making their own mechanical toys the children learn the significance of many principles in physics, and are able to apply these in a variety of ways. Some children will thus discover principles for themselves.

---

Toy theaters, with shifting scenery and curtains that can be pulled back or rolled up and down

Toy elevators that will work up and down to carry passengers

Toy pendulum clocks that will tick

Toy derricks that will haul up a load of sand, coal, or bricks, and empty these

Woodchoppers, scissor-grinder men, acrobats, blacksmiths at their anvils, bell ringers, carpenters, laundresses, cooks, housekeepers, all made to work by the manipulation of strings, springs, or cleverly balanced and counterbalanced weights, shot or marble

Toy telephones, electric bells, wireless telegraph systems

Automobiles and engines that will go, the motor power furnished by a spring, windlass, or tiny, homemade electric battery.

CHAPTER XIX
MUSIC AND ART

Rhythm and Musical Sound. Even the tiny baby responds to rhythm and to melody. Rhythm brings “a cadence to the soul”, to use G. Stanley Hall’s phrase; it relaxes and soothes both mind and body; it has far-reaching significance as a spiritual and moral force. Chanting any rhythmic poem or jingles, singing, rhythmic performing of physical exercises, are the beginnings of music as a rhythmic art. When the noise-enjoying age arrives, at about six months, a string of soft-toned, musical sleigh bells, or later in the first year, at the pounding stage, a tubephone, will give as much enjoyment as harsh noises; and at the same time these are cultivating a rudimentary musical sense. With the development of the phonograph, good music can be had even in households where no one plays a musical instrument. A baby of six months will notice the music, and most children from a year old will show enjoyment in hearing it. It is less important to acquaint little children with well-known classics—which are easily thus worn stale—than it is to provide good types of melody, harmony, and rhythm,—music that is sincere, enduring, normal. If children hear much of such music from the great masters and their disciples, before the age of ten, their tastes may be permanently influenced, and cheap, flashy, sensational music will fail to attract them.

As rapidly as a child develops motor ability to use them, musical instruments of good tone, adapted to his size, will provide him with enjoyable toys that at the same time cultivate sense of good musical sound and opportunity for musical experimenting and self-expression. A stout drum, cymbals, triangle, a tambourine, flute (being careful of its use by only one individual, and that it is wiped before using) are inexpensive. Montessori uses musical glasses and a series of bells tuned to scale and sounded by striking them. Kindergartners make wind harps by stringing mandolin or other cheap strings and wires on a wooden frame made in the workshop. This may be tuned for chords and hung where the wind will play fairy music upon it.

Every little child loves to play upon the piano. The ordinary toy piano is a jangle of noises that can only pervert the child’s sense of musical sound. Good toy pianos, with about two scales, small enough for the three-year-old size, can be purchased for a moderate price from some large musical stores. If circumstances will at all permit a child to play at his own sweet will and in his own way upon a real piano, the act will not only yield him indescribable bliss, but will foster immeasurably his love of music, and provide a means of musical self-expression. Few people expect to become great artists on any instrument. Technique, therefore, is of minor importance. The love of music, the desire to find expression through music, is the important feature to cultivate, leaving technique to a later age, nearer the teens.

The hearing of singing as a daily experience of early childhood, is potent for imitation and for good humor. A baby who hears much singing or humming will, even in his first year, attempt to hum, and in his second year, make up little snatches of song. This is music as it should be, developing out of the daily experience of life, illuminating that experience. Froebel urged his teachers to encourage this spontaneous, natural singing, and to set the example by their own spontaneous singing when with the children. In progressive schools of to-day, children of all ages are encouraged to compose melodies for nursery rhymes or little poems that they know, and later to develop harmonies. Thus through creation the child develops a richer self-expression, and if he is interested to become more proficient, he furnishes his own incentive for the drudgery of acquiring technique. What more pathetic situation than that of a child compelled to “practice”, whose soul is in revolt, and who every moment is acquiring a deeper loathing for music?

For teaching musical notation, there is a pasteboard keyboard, a set of pasteboard notes of different time-length and a special blackboard with the musical lines on which the notes can be hung. With these many games can be played, even at five or six years of age with some children, although others will not be ready until seven or eight.

The Crude Tastes of Childhood. Little children, like savages, have not developed fine discriminations in color. This is largely a matter of education. The little child shows a preference for vivid color, and no sense of harmony in color. His color sense is as undeveloped as his spoken language, and needs training, especially through good examples, for its refinement. A glass prism hung in the sunlight will give him pure spectrum hues while delighting even his baby days. It is not yet known with certainty at what age children’s eyes are sufficiently developed to really perceive color, although they are evidently able to distinguish degrees of brightness before a year of age, and show a preference for red or yellow objects rather than gray. They prefer colored pictures to black and white. Kindergarten supply houses now furnish large colored wooden beads, to be strung on shoe laces, and colored papers in graduated series of hues, and large colored wax crayons the size of a marking pencil. The Montessori apparatus now includes a set of flat wooden bobbins, about two by three inches square, painted in graduated shades of the spectrum colors, which the children at four and five years love to match or arrange by graduations of shade. A box of water colors (primary colors only) is indispensable to childhood.

Art Education. Good pictures, well colored, with sufficient vividness to interest the child, abound in the magazines and the shops. The classic nursery rhymes and tales have been illustrated in color by several eminent artists, and copies may be secured through any kindergarten supply house. The little child prefers pictures of animals, children, and mothers with children, realistic or homelike. He is rarely interested in still life, the classic, or the symbolic.

The ambitious teacher can easily overdo the matter of taking children to an art museum. An occasional trip, between five and nine years of age, will do no harm, if they are permitted to wander at their will. It starts the habit of going to a museum. Of greater potency for æsthetic training is the beauty and harmony of the child’s own home, and especially of his own room. Here inexpensive but beautiful colored pictures hung low enough for him to see them easily, and charming little plaster casts, will feed his mind and his soul, as does the daily singing. He is learning that art is for the daily life, not merely for unusual places and occasions as in the museum.

At five or six years of age children may begin to make scrapbooks of beautiful and charming pictures that they find in magazines, or that are purchased through the kindergarten or art stores. Postcard reproductions in color are obtainable of many famous pictures, both classic and nursery subjects.

In art, as in morals, the constructively good will naturally crowd out the crude, the vicious, and the mediocre.

Children’s Drawings and Painting. To quote from Doctor G. Stanley Hall:

Children often like to look at and more or less understand pictures early in the second year. They care most for those that have a story connected with them, and want their pictures read. Children like to draw illustrations of stories and concrete things, which must not be taken away from them in order that they may be precociously taught to see lines only. Instead, therefore, of current methods, the thing for kindergarten and lower grades to draw is the human figure, and vastly more freedom and individuality are needed. Geometrical lines are ghostly and wooden. Things in motion are more interesting, and perhaps Ruskin is right in saying that the child should be limited to the voluntary practice of art. The prevailing methods that begin with mathematical forms, cube, cylinder, etc., are stultifying and not only destroy the natural zest and ability to draw, but take away the power to enjoy art and to understand nature, geography, history, literature, which it is one object of art to inculcate.

The child desires to draw human beings, generally in action. Drawing teachers usually demand complete visual control, but the children draw lines symbolizing the direction birds fly, draw the wind, draw a zigzag line representing the dance a person is engaged in, and even gross errors are repeated after correction and explanation, showing how dominant muscle habits are. Young children draw anything with abandon and pleasure. They do not use their eyes much, no matter how difficult the theme, but draw their own image of it with about as good success as if there were no model. Children care nothing for accuracy here, which is the ideal of the methodists. Their order below ten years of age is the human figure, then animals, plants, or houses, then mechanical inventions, geometrical designs and ornaments. Children’s work is essentially pictorial and not decorative. Thus Ricci declares that art as such to children is unknown. Froebel is wrong, therefore, and the child enters the educational field by the door of literature rather than by that of mathematics.

Always some one or, at most, a few details are focused upon and magnified, betraying just what and how far the child has observed up to date. If we only had a complete collection of all the drawings of a single child with proclivities for art but who had been unrepressed by criticism or derision, we should find its very soul in each developmental stage represented. Too early insistence upon technique crushes. Teachers have so long put form above content that they little suspect the innate power and love of children for this kind of work. Above all, teaching should be to encourage and not to repress the tendency to exaggerate each new trait, and should have regard not to the finished product and should pay little attention to symmetry or to an artistic whole. Uniformity, too, should be cast to the winds and the teacher should encourage the deep instinctive tendency of pupils to perfect each item as it looms into the center of interest.

From several hundred drawings, with the name given them by the child written by the teacher, the chief difference inferred is in concentration. Some make faint, hasty lines, representing all the furniture of a room, or sky and stars, or all the objects they can think of, while others concentrate upon a single object. It is a girl with buttons, a house with a keyhole or steps, a man with a pipe or heels or ring made grotesquely prominent. The development of observation and sense of form is best seen in the pictures of men. The earliest and simplest representation is a round head, two eyes, and legs. Later comes mouth, then nose, then hair, then ears. Arms, like legs, at first, grow directly from the head, rarely from the legs, and are seldom fingerless, though sometimes it is doubtful whether several arms, or fingers, from head and legs without arms, are meant. Of 44 human heads only 9 are in profile. This is one of the many analogies with the rock and cave drawings of primitive man.

The Sunday Supplement. Fortunate the child who is protected from the encroachment of these execrations. They are like the cheap colored candy in the penny shops,—made to sell to those of undeveloped sensibilities, and further dulling those sensibilities to better life. The ordinary Sunday Supplement page for children is a clever combination of all the crudities that children enjoy—vivid color, crude drawing, bad manners, defiance of authority, clownish humor. Of course children cry for it, as they do for drugs that have dulled their nerves and set up perverted tastes. If it is kept from the child until his teens, and meanwhile his taste is being trained by natural, daily means, the probabilities are that he will then find it offensive; at least he will have passed the age when it can pervert his taste and ideals.

The clownish humor, the crude drawing, the humor of the unusual position and unexpected dilemma, without the bad manners and other unethical conditions, are furnished in abundance in the drawings of Leslie Brooke, Gelett Burgess, Peter Newell, in Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice’s Adventures, in Edward Lear’s Nonsense Books, to mention only a few. Delicately colored pictures, which adults find exquisite, do not attract the child, but in this day there are abundant treasures of pictures and picture books with colors strong, yet not blatant. In this respect the English and American work is in the main preferable to French, German, Russian.

Many books of songs for little children are published that are merely mediocre, or ill-adapted to children because not based on a knowledge of child psychology and the range of the child’s voice. Some children can carry a tune at three years, others not until six or seven years. The natural range of the child’s voice can be easily tested by trying it out with the piano; it will usually range from E to A at three years and from middle B to upper D at six years. These physiological limitations indicate that songs for children to sing should have a simple melody, within this range, and should be short. Children like simple hymns, lullabies, songs about animals, nature, play, dolls, and action songs.

If a child is thought to have vocal talent, the voice should be especially protected from strain and misuse, and intensive training postponed until late in the teens when the voice has become placed. A teacher of ability should be engaged for the first training.

All children should be trained to use the voice intelligently, which is hygienically. They should be taught to sing softly and naturally, and never allowed to sing harshly, boisterously, or falsetto. Screaming and shouting injure the voice, especially in childhood, while the vocal cords are developing. By a little careful hygiene, the example of musical, well-modulated voices in their elders, and the selection of songs within their range, American children might develop as pleasant voices as are found in some of the countries across the sea.

(music note) = boys (backwards music note) = girls

Age 0 1-2 3-5 6-7 8 9 10 11 12

From Gutzmann and Paulsen.

CHAPTER XX
HOME NURSING AND FIRST AID IN THE NURSERY[34]

General Principles. Careful hygiene will reduce illness to a minimum. Study what to do in emergencies and illness before these appear, in order to be mentally and technically prepared to act promptly, with confidence and poise, when need arises. Teach children as early as possible how to spit, gargle, raise phlegm, inhale. Habits of obedience, self-control, and regularity will assist in recovery. Under any circumstances avoid excitement; keep calm and self-possessed. Use firmness, gentleness, patience, good cheer, and the spirit of play in care of illness. It is wiser to call the doctor at first, when symptoms of illness appear, than to incur severe sickness and greater cost by delay. A severely sick child needs a trained nurse. Children have less resistance than adults, and succumb more easily, therefore they need prompt, intelligent treatment.

Every woman who has the care of a little child should learn the following from the physician or nurse: use of clinical thermometer, bedpan, giving of enema, massage, dressing and bathing of bed patient, bandaging, first aid in serious cuts, fractures, broken limbs, drowning. There should always be at least one room in the house with washable walls, sunny exposure, and without carpets, heavy draperies or upholstered furniture, that can be used for an isolation sick room in emergency.

Symptoms of Illness and Their Immediate Care. When several symptoms are evident at once, the matter is more urgent. It is usually advisable to have the doctor call, rather than to expose the sick child to the change of temperature, dust, excitement of crowds, or danger of infecting others. In severe injury, secure any medical assistance in quickest way.

Discharge from nose	C (?)[35] 1
Discharge from eyes with inflammation	C (?) 1
Swollen lids, inflamed, yellow discharge	C[36] 3
Sore throat	C 2
Pain in or behind ears	1
Swollen glands in neck	1
Persistent cough	C (?) 1
Persistent lassitude	C (?) 1
Loss of appetite	1
Loss of weight	1
Severe or frequent earache	2
Headache with delirium	3
Stupor or dullness	2
Chills, with or without fever	C (?) 2
Fever with languor, loss of appetite	C (?) 2
Nausea with fever	C (?) 2
Convulsions	3
Eruptions	C (?) 2
Cramps and vomiting may be poisoning	C (?) 3
Persistent pain in feet or legs	1
Swelling of feet and legs	2
Black, or bloody stools	2
Claylike stools	1
Constipation (48 hours, not yielding to home care)	1
Green stools, diarrhea	3
White vaginal discharge	2
Bleeding from mouth or rectum	2
Frequent bleeding from nose	1
Pain at urinating	1
Retention of urine (24 hours)	1
Injuries:
Fall, especially of young child	3
Blow on head, severe	3
Deep cut, needing stitches	3
Deep burn	3
Excessive bleeding	3
Wound of rusty instrument	2
Bite of animal	2

1. Notify doctor. 2. Call doctor. 3. Get doctor immediately; urgent.

When a child shows even slight symptoms of illness, isolate and keep in bed for a day in a well-ventilated room. This avoids changes of temperature, requires less work of heart and nerves, removes pressure upon spinal nerves, and gives the body better opportunity to combat the lowered vital condition.

Communicable Diseases to which Children are Especially Susceptible

Disease	Early Symptoms[37]	Possible Complications	Special Precautions
Bronchitis	(G)[38] Nasal discharge, slight fever, hard, dry cough, lack of appetite.	Pneumonia.	Fresh air, warmth.
Incubation: 2 to 3 days.
Isolation: Till discharge ceases.
Influenza	(S)[39] Chill, fever. Discharge from nose, eyes; lassitude, general pains.	Irritated nasal passages; weakened resistance; earache, mastoiditis; bronchitis.	Warmth, fresh air.
Incubation: 2 to 3 days.
Isolation: Till discharge ceases.
Pneumonia	(S) Severe chill, cold and pain in chest, usually left side; high fever, languor. Respiration quick and painful. Sometimes short, dry, painful cough, vomiting, convulsions.	Increased susceptibility to tuberculosis.	Windows wide open; open fire; avoid weighting chest with poultices or clothing. Avoid gas stove.
Incubation: 5 to 8 days.
Isolation: Till discharge ceases.
Tuberculosis	(G) Anemia, poor appetite, loss of weight, persistent cough. Sometimes limping.	Stunted growth; bone defects.
Incubation: 1 to 6 months.
Isolation: Not necessary if discharges are burned, dishes disinfected.
Whooping Cough	(G) Running eyes, nose; headache, weariness; dry cough develops in about two weeks, sometimes without the whoop.	Broncho-pneumonia, hemorrhage, hernia.	Elastic abdominal band. Food after paroxysm if previous feeding not retained
Incubation: 1 to 14 days.
Isolation: 6 weeks. Until 2 weeks after cough has ceased.
Diphtheria	(G) Lassitude, headache; usually sore throat, yellow or gray-white patches; sometimes sudden high fever, convulsions, purulent nasal discharge.	Heart, kidneys, ears, broncho-pneumonia.	Recumbent position during fever. Avoid nasal douches. Anti-toxin.
Incubation: 2 to 10 days.
Isolation: 2 weeks. Until culture is negative on two successive days.
Tonsillitis	(S) Swollen inflamed tonsils. Chills, fever, headache, general pains.	Forms of rheumatism; heart disease, nephritis, St. Vitus’ Dance.	Rest in bed.
Isolation: 1 week.
Chicken pox	Eruptions on body. Sometimes fever, nausea, headache.	Kidney disorders; persistent sores from infecting skin.	Cut finger nails short; anoint skin.
Incubation: 11 to 21 days.
Isolation: Until all scabs are gone.
Measles	(G) Discharge from nose; eyes reddened, sensitive to light; dry cough. Eruptions first inside cheeks; fine body rash on fourth day. Sometimes chill, fever, hoarseness, malaise.	Weakened eyes; pneumonia, bronchitis, tuberculosis.	Protect eyes with amber glasses, or darken room. Warmth (70°).
Incubation: 7 to 18 days.
Isolation: 2 weeks from appearance of rash. Until discharges disappear.
Scarlet Fever	(S) or (G) Fever, nausea, red throat, loss of appetite; eruptions on second day. Sometimes convulsions, diarrhea, white ring around mouth.	Impairment of hearing, sight; kidney or heart weakness.	Prevent infection of ears. Report immediately decrease in urine.
Incubation: 1 to 8 days.
Isolation: 6 weeks. Till all peeling, sore throat, and discharges disappear.
Infantile Paralysis	(G) Stupor, profuse sweating, numbness or paralysis of limbs, difficulty in swallowing. Sometimes convulsions, headache, vomiting.	Paralysis.
(Polyomyelitis)
Incubation: 2 to 7 days.
Isolation: 6 weeks.
Meningitis	(S) Headache, nausea and vomiting; fever, prostration, rapid pulse, unconsciousness in few hours or days. Sometimes convulsions.	Paralysis, deafness, mental defects, pneumonia.
Incubation: 2 to 7 days.
Isolation: 6 weeks.
Mumps	(G) Fever, malaise, dizziness, drowsiness, vomiting or diarrhea. Glands near ear swell 1 to 8 days later.	Infection of ear, deafness. Infection of reproductive glands, causing sterility.
Incubation: 10 to 25 days.
Isolation: 3 weeks. 1 week after swelling subsides.
Syphilis	(G) Anemia, malnutrition, chronic nasal discharge and snuffles.	Diseases of bones, nerves, blood; destruction of any organs, paralysis.
(Congenital)

Communicable diseases may be conveyed by discharges, especially from nose and mouth, and in breath; also in vomitus, discharges from eyes and ears, feces, urine, and blood. May be contagious several days before serious symptoms appear in acute cases; and may be carried in throat and mouth many months and conveyed by persons showing no symptoms.

To Prevent Contagion. (1) Avoid exposing the child to any one who has a contagious disease. (2) Do not take young children (under seven, at least) into crowds, busy streets, city dust, or street cars. (3) Household employees, especially child’s nurse, cook, kitchen employee, or laundress, should be selected with regard to their health; a thorough health examination for the child’s caretaker, unless personally well known or professionally trained, is the only safeguard. (4) No one with a cold, sore throat or other symptoms of contagious disease should be with a young child or prepare its food. (5) Keep special handkerchiefs for each child and never use any one else’s for it. (6) Teach scrupulous individual use of cups, spoons, forks, wash cloths, towels, handkerchiefs, whistles, and not to use wash basin for brushing teeth. (7) Avoid pacifiers; wipe toys daily. (8) Clean the child’s finger nails daily, and always wash his hands before eating. (9) Attendant should always wash hands before preparing food, giving medicine, caring for eyes, nose, mouth, or wounds; and after care of diapers, toilet, wounds. (10) Milk and water supply should be carefully guarded; unless assured pure, milk must be pasteurized, water boiled. (11) Avoid cats or dogs for young children’s pets.

Disease germs can thrive in the mucus, in some tissues, or in the blood. They may enter (1) through the nose, (2) the mouth, (3) a break in the skin. The sick person may convey them (1) from the mouth, by coughing, by a kiss, or on cups, spoons, forks, napkins, towels; (2) in mucus from the nose, in sneezing, or on handkerchiefs; in discharges from eyes or ears; (3) in cases of intestinal infections, from intestinal discharges; (4) venereal disease, from break in skin, from open sore, from suppurating infected eyes; (5) from discharge of boils; (6) scales from skin probably only in smallpox or chicken-pox; (7) on fingers. (8) Germs of contagious diseases are sometimes carried in water, ice, milk, or dust. (9) Cats and dogs easily carry disease germs.

Contagious diseases are always dangerous, causing a large harvest of deaths and leaving lifelong defects in many survivors. It is not necessary that children should have any of them. Children should be carefully protected from exposure to any disease. Good hygiene raises vitality and increases the white blood corpuscles, which are the special protectors against disease germs.

If a child has been exposed to dust or crowds, or if contagious disease is prevalent, give a nasal douche and gargle with normal salt solution, 4% boric solution, or diluted listerine, before meals and at night. If exposed to disease, also disinfect face, neck, hands, clothes, shampoo the hair with tincture green soap, isolate, notify doctor; repeat after quarantine.

Care of Illnesses Prevalent in Childhood. Anemia. Pallor, languor, loss of weight, poor appetite. Give outdoor life, nutritious diet, cold baths, sun baths. Needs medical examination for cause.

Boils. Indicate low resistance. Applying hot fomentations wet in boric solution may prevent coming to head. If at head, apply hot fomentation five minutes; lance with sterilized needle. After removing contents, apply listerine, witch hazel or 25% alcohol, on sterile gauze; anoint with zinc ointment, and bandage to prevent re-infection. Poultices are unsanitary. Pus is infectious; prevent its touching skin, burn immediately, and sterilize needle.

Chap. Prevent by drying face and hands thoroughly after washing. Apply camphor ice or cold cream before taking outdoors, and at bedtime. Use corn meal or oatmeal in place of soap.

Cold. May be either a congestion or an infection. In any case isolate and treat first symptoms at once; give persistent care to cure quickly. Colds pave the way for more serious infections. Give oil laxative for one or two days. Apply few drops of glycerine, albolene, or liquid vaseline in nose every two hours and at bedtime. Use sterilized medicine dropper; warm oil slightly by heating in dropper over boiling water. For children over one year use nasal oil spray or nasal douche with physician’s prescription. Give hot leg bath or hot tub bath, wrapping well to produce slight perspiration; rub with 25% alcohol solution few hours later, or before rising, to close pores; keep well covered. Keep in bed while fever continues. If in head and eyes, apply cold cloth wet in weak boric or salt solution, over eyes and nose, changing every five minutes, in half-hour periods. Give all the water patient will take, at hourly intervals, or lemonade for children over eighteen months. For dry, parched mouth, rinse with weak salt water, give weak lemonade, or cracker to chew.

If accompanied by chills, keep in warm room, (68°) well ventilated. If without chills, and when fever has subsided, keep outdoors, well protected, but not dressed warm enough to perspire. If in chest, apply counter-irritant (adapted to age) to chest and back. If not recovered in a day or two, notify physician. For repeated colds, discover cause, improve hygiene; increase resistance by cold morning bath, at least to chest and back, and give cod-liver oil.

Colic. Give no food during the attack. Give a teaspoon of water (96° F.) with weak peppermint or soda mint dissolved in one ounce water; repeat every five minutes. Upright position, with patting on back, will relieve gas in stomach. For gas in intestine, massage gently, beginning at lower left side, and working backward along length of colon, always pressing and stroking toward end of colon. If constipated, or attack very severe, give warm enema (110° F.) with soap or normal salt solution. Apply hot fomentations, or hot stupe, made by thoroughly mixing twenty drops of turpentine in one pint water, to abdomen; or hot flannels or hot water bag, to abdomen, buttocks, and thighs. Keep feet warm. Change fomentation or stupe every ten minutes. When relieved, follow with cool hand rub (80°). Constipation in nursing mother will cause colic. Baby subject to colic should have two or three daily movements. Give less at feeding, with longer intervals, slower feeding.

Constipation. Prevent and treat by diet, exercise, and general hygiene. If these fail, have medical examination for possible anatomical defect or obstruction. For acute attack, give mineral oil, increase water, give abdominal exercises at intervals during day, gently knead abdomen, working along line of colon from right to left. The use of enemas and suppositories relaxes the intestinal wall, and induces a chronic condition. Salts, castor oil, cascara, and other drugs overstimulate intestinal secretions, irritate lining, and require continued, increasing use. Calomel may remain in system and cause serious illness; it should never be given to children. If necessary to use any special measures, adapt laxative from list (page 362). For chronic cases in older children, apply cold compress around abdomen at night until condition is improved.

Convulsions. Give leg or tub bath at 98° F. for ten minutes; mustard may be added. Be very careful that water is not too hot. Child may be put in with clothing on. Put cold cloth around neck and on head. Give prompt laxative and an emetic. Keep child in bed till recovered from shock.

Cramp in Intestines. Treat as colic.

Croup. Apply hot fomentation to chest for ten minutes, followed by cold compress. Give salt water emetic to cause vomiting and remove phlegm, if breathing is still difficult. If necessary, in severe case, give half teaspoon of syrup of ipecac to produce vomiting; apply counter-irritant to chest and back. Keep child well wrapped. If severe, prepare kettle of boiling water so child can inhale steam. Add two tablespoonfuls of compound tincture of benzoin, creosote or oil eucalyptus, or teaspoon of vinegar or ammonia. Use light blanket to cover kettle and head of child. See that kettle is not near enough to burn face. Be careful that child does not choke, and that clothing is not dampened. Wrap a piece of rubber sheeting or woolen blanket about shoulders, and remove when through steaming. For mild cases, or when child is relieved, place saucer with tincture of benzoin near child’s head, where fumes will be inhaled. Treat as for cold, on following day, with counter-irritants, and use menthol, oil nasal spray, or tincture of benzoin for inhaling. For children subject to repeated attacks, provide a special croup kettle.

Cough. Ascertain cause from physician and treat by his prescription. Avoid cough syrups, which are dangerous for children. Plain honey, figs, fig juice, are soothing. Use menthol inhaler. Apply salve of menthol and vaseline in nose at night, and a cold compress or mild counter-irritant on throat.

Diarrhea. Stop regular food. Give infants barley water, older children only special dietary. Give prompt laxative. Keep in bed. Call doctor promptly and save stools for his inspection.

Earache. Symptoms in infant include crying, and turning head from side to side. Apply counter-irritant behind and below ears. Place few drops of lukewarm phenol and olive oil mixture in ear, on sterilized cotton. Apply hot flannel, hot-water bag, or other dry heat.

Eczema. Apply salve or lotion, according to doctor’s direction. Avoid water or vaseline on affected places, as these are irritating. Keep clean with olive oil or cold cream. Give dietary treatment.

Eyes Inflamed. Bathe hourly with 2% boric solution or weak salt water. For cold in eyes, also apply vaseline at night and in morning to lids, avoiding eyes.

Headache. Frequently due to constipation, indigestion, eyestrain, excitement, fatigue, overheating. Ascertain and treat cause. Apply cold cloths, changing every five minutes, or hot cloths, changing every ten minutes, or alternate hot and cold, according to wishes of patient, to forehead and back of neck. Apply menthol pencil to forehead and base of brain. Massage back of neck, with strong pressure downward and toward sides. Inhale menthol, mild camphor, ammonia, or smelling salts.

Hiccough. Due to indigestion or overeating. Hold breath. Sip water slowly while holding breath. Give small lump of sugar. If severe and continued, induce sneezing or give emetic to remove cause.

Nausea. Give soda mint tablet in glass of hot water. If not relieved, give emetic. After vomiting, give glass of hot or cold water hourly, mildly salted or with soda mint, for several hours.

Poisoning. Keep poisons out of children’s reach. Nick cork of bottles containing poison, and tie red ribbon around neck. Keep list of common poisons and antidotes posted on door of medicine cabinet for ready reference.

Prickly Heat. Due to overheating from too much clothing or from weather. Reduce quantity of clothing. Avoid wool next the skin. Bathe several times a day with water 70°-80° F., adding one teaspoon baking soda to a quart of water. Powder affected places lightly with starch or baby powder (page 47).

Rheumatism. Found in all its forms in childhood. If chronic, may permanently injure heart. Give mild laxative. Keep in bed. Apply dry heat as directed to affected parts. Rub with alcohol (25% solution), witch hazel, or arnica. Improve diet, reducing purins and increasing alkali-forming foods. Electric treatments may be beneficial.

Sunburn. Prevent by use of canopy, sunshade, or hat, and by applying cold cream before taking out in sun or wind. To treat, apply cloths wet in sweet cream, cold cream, almond lotion. Avoid use of water on affected parts.

Fever. Keep in bed. Fever is not a disease but a symptom of poison in system. Reduce temperature gradually. Give cool sponge (75°-80° F.) with plain water, weak salt solution, or 25% alcohol solution, for ten or fifteen minutes every hour. Keep cool collar of wet cloth around neck, or on head, changing every five minutes. In severe cases, also keep icebag at head, hot-water bag at feet. Give abundance of cold water, cold fruit juice with little or no sugar, or small quantity of ice cream. Keep room cool (60°-65° F.). There is no danger of patient taking cold while temperature is high, but special precautions must be taken, as fever diminishes, to prevent chilling.

Sore Throat. Dissolve chlorate of potash tablet in half pint of water, and give spoonful every half hour, holding in mouth as long as possible. Gargle and rinse mouth with normal salt solution, boric acid, or listerine, without swallowing. For mild cases, apply cold compress to throat. For severe attack, use counter-irritant.

Stomach. Sour stomach or heartburn. Use soda mint tablet or saltspoon of baking soda in glass of hot water. For stomach-ache give same treatment, and massage by deep breathing and voluntary pulling in and pushing out abdominal wall by muscular effort; use mild trunk-bending and twisting exercises. If constipated, give prompt laxative.

Toothache. Apply listerine or oil of cloves or wintergreen on cotton to the cavity, and dry heat or counter-irritant outside, until dentist can be seen.

Worms. Indicated by disturbed sleep, grating teeth in sleep, picking at nose, poor or ravenous appetite, irritation at rectum. May sometimes be visible as fine white threads in stools. Can be accurately diagnosed only by microscopic examination. Avoid giving medicine except on doctor’s prescription. Reduce candy and meat in diet.

Injuries. Practice first aid until prepared to act promptly in any ordinary emergency. Call physician in all but mildest cases, to ascertain extent of injury, overcome shock, and prevent poisoning. Disinfect hands before treating any wounds.

Bruise, Bump, or Sprain. Apply very cold or very hot water, changing at proper intervals. Continue until swelling is reduced.

Burns. Never use flour or cotton on burns. Exclude air and prevent infection from dirt or water. Burns are easily infected or cause shock. For burns by dry heat, apply vaseline, baking soda, carron oil, or olive oil, and wrap in sterilized gauze to exclude air. For scalds, apply wet cloths of cool water (sterilized if possible), with baking soda or boric acid. Exclude air and be careful not to break blister. Treat blisters as burns.

If clothing is afire, smother by rolling on floor or wrapping in heavy coverings. Prevent fumes and smoke from entering lungs. If clothing is burned to skin, cut around it and soak off with olive oil. For fire in room, close windows and doors, and attempt to smother before using water. To go through smoke, put wet cloth over mouth and nose.

Cuts and Scratches. Hold under running cool water to thoroughly rinse out dirt. Wash with disinfectant. Take special care with wounds from rusty instruments. Scratches may then be painted with collodion, cuts covered with court plaster (do not moisten in mouth) or surgeon’s plaster.

Fall or Shock. Lay flat. Apply cold water to head, hot-water bag at heart and to feet. Cover warmly. Rub arms and legs toward heart, without uncovering. Apply mild smelling salts, ammonia, or camphor at nose. Never give alcohol without doctor’s order. Hot milk, tea, or coffee are safe stimulants.

Foreign Body in Ear. Do not attempt to remove by poking. Put in few drops of sweet oil, lay head down on that side, till doctor comes.

Foreign Body in Nose. Do not attempt to remove by poking. Let child blow nose, closing opposite nostril. Call doctor.

Foreign Body in Throat. If not easily removed with finger, hold child by ankles, head downward, and slap on back. If swallowed, give soft bread at once but do not give laxative. Remove fishbone with fingers.

Foreign Body in Eye. Do not rub. Encourage crying. Blow nose. If visible, remove with corner of clean handkerchief. If not visible, pull upper lid over lower, and move gently. Wash eyes with boric or salt solution. For injury, apply cold cloths wet in boric or salt solution.

Slivers. Remove with a sterilized needle, wash with antiseptic and bandage with zinc ointment or paint with collodion. Never use a pin. If very difficult to remove, apply hot fomentations.

Use of Water, Heat, and Light. Heat, cold, water and light are effective because of their action upon the distribution of circulation, rate of metabolism, the local and reflex nerves, the heart action, the chemical condition of the blood. Their therapeutic use has only in recent years become a science. Extensive study and experience is necessary for their efficient application. A few fundamental principles will guide in their ordinary use, but only a physician trained in hydrotherapy and thermotherapy can give directions meeting every factor in an individual case.

Applications affect not only the local part but also the parts with which it is reflexly connected. The volume of blood can be withdrawn from any part or to any part. The first effect of hot applications is stimulating; continued for more than ten or fifteen minutes (after the surface is reddened) is depressing. Cold is first depressing; continued slightly is stimulating, and long continued becomes depressing. Alternate heat and cold for three to ten minutes is the most stimulating.

Pain, inflammation or increased secretion in any part usually indicates local congestion of blood which needs to be withdrawn. Congestion in the head, indicated by headache or cold; or in the chest, indicated by chest cold; or in the abdomen or pelvic organs, can be reduced either by a general distribution of blood to the surface or by withdrawing the supply to the legs and feet. A hot bath or pack draws the supply to the surface; a hot leg bath or pack draws it to these extremities. The cool sponge following the hot water keeps the blood in these parts, besides reducing the temperature of the superheated surface and toning up the skin. Hot fomentations draw the circulation to the surface, away from the congested internal parts directly beneath or reflexly connected. Thus, heat applied to the forehead and base of brain reduces head congestion; or as fever is usually present, cold (50° F.) will have the same effect and at the same time reduce the temperature, while a hot-water bag at the feet will maintain the temperature if the fever is mild or absent. Congestion in the abdomen or pelvic organs is relieved by local applications of heat to these parts and to their reflex areas—the buttocks, thighs, feet and hands.

In using heat or cold, the application must be changed whenever its temperature approaches that of the body. Local hot applications may be continued until the surface is reddened—from five to twenty minutes. The surface is then sponged quickly with water, or 25% alcohol, at 70°-80° F., to prevent superheating of tissues. Cold general sponging in fever may be continued ten or fifteen minutes, one part sponged and dried at a time, patient covered with a light blanket; and repeated every hour. Local cold, as icebags or cold cloths, may be continued half an hour, and repeated at half hourly intervals. A cold compress is a mild counter-irritant. Water reaches tissues below the surface, and for deep-seated disorders is therefore more effective than dry applications, when practicable. Care must be taken to protect hair, clothing and bedding from dampness, by use of rubber cloth or oiled silk. For young children, temperatures must be less severe and changes more gradual than with adults. The nurse should test the heat of applications by applying to her own face.

Hot Tub Bath. For chills, convulsions, incipient cold, general depression without fever. If patient is constipated or had no movement in preceding twelve hours, precede by enema, as hot water increases absorption from intestinal tract. Give in warm room (70° F.), at 100° F., or higher for children over four years. One tablespoon mustard (in cheesecloth bag) per gallon of water increases effect. Wrap cold cloth around neck, and protect hair. Continue five to ten minutes, until skin is red, adding hot water carefully to slightly raise temperature. Give quick hand rub with water at 80° F. unless sweating is desired. Dry quickly, wrap and cover warmly. Giving water to drink will increase perspiration. After perspiring, rub with 25% alcohol.

Hot Leg Bath. For intestinal pain, headache, incipient cold, cold feet, convulsions. Conditions and temperatures as for tub bath. Keep patient well covered. Can be given with patient lying in bed, water in bucket on chair at side of bed. Rinse with lukewarm water, put on stockings, and keep hot-water bag at feet.

Hot Fomentations. To relieve local pain and congestion. Apply one or two thicknesses of flannel to place; lay on this a double flannel wrung out of boiling water, and cover with dry flannel and waterproof. Be careful that it is not too hot at first. In changing, prevent air striking part. Change every three minutes, and continue twelve minutes. Sponge quickly with water 70°-80° F.

Warm Tub Bath (90°-93° F.). For nervousness and irritability. May continue, maintaining temperature, for half an hour.

Dry Heat. For chills, neuralgia, rheumatic pain, earache. Use thermophore, hot-water bottle, hot flannel, salt, bran, hops, soapstone, flatiron wrapped in flannel, or Japanese handstove. In using hot-water bag, be careful it is not too hot; wrap in flannel, and watch for leakage. Water should be below boiling or rubber will be damaged. Press out air before putting in stopper. Remove when cool. If electric pad is used, turn off current when hot. Continue dry heat for half hour periods; sponge quickly with water 80° F.; repeat at half hour intervals if necessary.

Light. Light rays penetrate about two inches below the surface, and therefore continue the therapeutic effects of heat to the deeper tissues. Systematic sun baths may be given. Carbon electric light gives the same effect; it cannot be used to advantage, however, with children under four or five years. For pain in chest, sore throat, abdominal pain, may be used instead of hot water or dry heat. Concentrate the light and protect the skin from contact with bulb by a cone made of white paper. For earache, use the smallest size bulb. Apply for fifteen or twenty minutes, until redness is induced, then give quick cool sponge. May be repeated several times during day.

Cold Bath, Tub or Sponge. For fever. Cool as patient can react from, beginning at 85° and working lower. Give several times during day, continuing ten to fifteen minutes. Add 25% alcohol for severe cases.

Cold Compress. Useful as counter-irritant and stimulant in sore throat, cough, croup, cold in chest, constipation. Wring cloth out of cold water (50°); wrap on part; cover with flannel and with oiled silk or rubber sheeting. Leave on overnight. For greater effect, may be preceded by hot fomentation. For throat, apply from ear to ear, bring up behind ears and hold in place by tapes over head.

Cold Cloths for Local Congestion in Head or Back. Apply to temples, throat, base of brain, and to spine. Change every ten minutes, or sooner if warm. For severe congestion and pain, alternate hot and cold cloths, changing as soon as warm.

Feeding in Illness. The food is a great factor in recovery from illness, and should be regulated with much care. Do not urge eating. Sick animals refrain from eating, or seek grass or special herbs. Less food is needed when patient is in bed, except in wasting diseases. In any illness give simple, easily digested food, requiring minimum of chewing, providing much nourishment with minimum of effort for patient. In disease, provide anti-toxic diet, highly alkaline, with little or no purins, laxative (except in intestinal disorders), dainty, small servings, served hot, with variety from day to day. Note all symptoms and fit dietary to all conditions present. It is an error to stuff a cold, but rather it should be starved. Beef tea and meat broths contain very little nourishment, but harmful extractives; their stimulation is in part from extractives, in part from the salt and heat. Hot milk, toast-water with butter, clear vegetable broths, provide the stimulation, with a higher percentage of nourishment and minerals, and with none of the disadvantages of meat broths.

Colds. Reduce food almost entirely for one or two days. Follow general diet for illness, or as for constipation.

Constipation. (See page [171].) Increase oils, fruits, and fruit juice, especially on rising and at bedtime. Oatmeal is laxative to some children, constipating to others. Figs, prunes, and seedless dates may be cooked together or made into a paste. Pecan nuts, ground for children under five, may be used for sandwiches or with fig paste. Use olive oil and lemon juice for salad. Serve eggs raw. Avoid foods prescribed for diarrhea.

Diarrhea. Flour browned in oven lightly, then made into gruel, cooking twenty minutes; season with salt. Milk boiled, bread toasted; cornstarch pudding, blackberry juice, gelatine, buttermilk made with yogurt tablets; especially avoid purins, cellulose, raw milk, raw eggs, as well as laxative foods.

Fever. Moot question whether diet should be limited or increased. Reduce proteins, omit purins; provide salads, highly alkaline foods, as celery, spinach, baked potato, cantaloupe; allow gelatine, fruit juices, strained vegetable purées, pure ice cream, sherbets, yogurt buttermilk, whey, toast-water.

Sore Throat. Infection or from operation. Soft, soothing, healing food. Gelatine, honey, dipped or milk toast, fig paste, date butter, jellies, raw beaten egg, egg and milk, blanc mange, pure ice cream. Avoid hard, strongly acid foods, or those requiring any chewing.

Wasting Diseases. Increase diet to patient’s capacity, especially milk, eggs, spinach, salads, fruits, butter, olive oil.

The Sick Room. Furnishing, care, and cleaning should be as for nursery. For a contagious disease, disinfect room before and after patient uses. Attendant should wear cotton dress. Street clothes should not be allowed in sick room. Discretion should be used regarding visitors; no one should enter in case of contagion. Use separate bed linen and clothing for night and day. Turn pillows frequently and change position of patient. Use ring of cotton cloth to lift head and prevent bedsores. Reduce room temperature by hanging up wet sheets. Open dishes of chloride of lime will absorb dampness. Charcoal, occasionally changed, will absorb odors. Keep all medicines, glasses, and food covered, room orderly and well ventilated. In contagious diseases, attendant should disinfect hands, gargle and rinse mouth with antiseptic before eating; and before leaving the room, wash face and hands with weak bichloride solution and remove dress, cap, and shoes; a cap should cover the hair.

Bathing and Dressing. The sick child should usually have a bath twice a day, temperature and method depending upon his condition. This removal of waste will add to his comfort and hasten recovery. A sponge bath is less fatiguing than the tub. A salt bath (one third cup per gallon of water) is a tonic. It should not be used if the skin is irritated. Bran, starch, or soda baths relieve chafing, inflamed skin, prickly heat, irritation in eruptive diseases. To one gallon water use half a cup of clean bran, tied in cheesecloth and previously soaked; or a cup of ordinary raw laundry starch, or a tablespoon of baking soda. Alcohol bath, using one fourth alcohol, is cooling and hardening. Pure alcohol reduces heat too rapidly. Oil rub with cocoa butter, or olive oil may be used for cleansing in cold weather, for emaciation, or after bath in eruptive diseases.

Rinse mouth and clean teeth after each feeding, using boric solution, weak soda water, mild listerine or 1% menthol solution. Disinfect brush in 70% alcohol after using. In contagious diseases, or great weakness, use a mouth swab, and clean teeth with antiseptic gauze on toothpick, instead of with brush.

Maternal Nursing and Hygiene. Constipation. Purgatives are never to be used, and enemas employed only as a last resort. If diet and exercise fail, cascara sagrada or compound licorice powder may be used.

Heartburn. (Acidity of the stomach.) Sometimes develops. It may be prevented by avoiding nervousness, by taking less fat at meals, and drinking a glass of rich milk half an hour before mealtime; if it develops after a meal, a soda mint tablet or a quarter of a teaspoonful of soda bicarbonate will relieve it. The nausea sometimes present in the first four months is probably due to auto-intoxication from lack of elimination of toxins. Preventive measures include careful attention to diet, daily baths, and exercise. If it occurs, a cup of hot water slightly salted, or a piece of dry, hard toast taken before rising, will usually overcome it. Peppermint, acid from grape fruit, salty food, whole cloves held in the mouth, or a cold cloth laid over the abdomen, are relief measures. It is rarely present in the last four months.

Varicose Veins. May be prevented by avoiding fatigue, long standing, and by lying down several times a day, especially after meals, for a quarter hour, with feet elevated higher than hips. Tight bandaging or elastic stockings must be used, if veins become varicose; in severe cases, rest in bed is necessary.

Hemorrhoids. May be prevented by avoiding constipation, heavy exercise, overfatigue, and by lying down a few minutes after a movement. May be corrected by local applications, either of cold or hot cloths.

Pruritus. Local applications of lukewarm bran water several times a day, followed by dusting powder made by combining one teaspoon salicylic acid with one cup cornstarch, will relieve itching.

Hemorrhage. Patient should be put to bed, hips and legs elevated, with local applications of cold cloths or styptic cotton. Doctor should be called immediately.

Urine. Decrease in quantity (less than one quart a day), high color, odor, or sediment, should be reported at once to physician.

Abdomen. After fourth month anoint daily with cocoa butter or vaseline to give elasticity to skin.

Breasts. During last two months wash morning and evening with soap and warm water, drying thoroughly. Anoint at night with cocoa butter, gently draw out nipple. In the morning apply 25% alcohol.

Teeth. Rinse mouth after each meal and at bedtime with milk of magnesia or weak sodium bicarbonate solution, to neutralize acids.

Childbirth. Primitive women have only slight discomfort, because of natural outdoor living and unrestricting clothing. Minimum of pain requires well-developed pelvis, normal position of organs, strong abdominal muscles, previous good hygiene, moderate-sized baby, with normal presentation. Narrow, ill-shaped pelvis may be caused by rickets, tight binders or diapers in infancy, or to indoor life, long sitting, and tight clothing in girlhood, especially from twelve to sixteen years. Abnormal position of organs or of infant may be caused by tight clothing, heavy clothing supported from the waist, incorrect posture, long hours of standing during girlhood or womanhood. Weak abdominal muscles are due to corsets and lack of exercise. Hygiene includes regularity and rest at periods, freedom from excitation of the pelvic organs during pregnancy and lactation, an interval of two or three years between births, and a condition of reserve vitality at the beginning of maternity. An overweight baby is produced by overfeeding and lack of exercise during pregnancy. Abnormal presentation may be corrected by skilful medical care during pregnancy. Osteopathic treatment during pregnancy, by a skilful practitioner, may improve muscle tone.

The physician should be selected with special care, either a specialist or a general practitioner with an extensive successful obstetrical practice; and the nurse likewise. The physician should be consulted and the urine examined once a month until the last two months, then fortnightly. This is necessary to prevent toxemias, correct any abnormal position, and prepare for any possible complications. Absolute surgical cleanliness by physician and attendants is of the greatest importance at birth and during confinement. Silver nitrate solution for the baby’s eyes should not be neglected. If there are no probabilities of complications, if the local physician is competent and can be readily reached, and if the home can provide sterile conditions, strong artificial light and quiet, the home is preferable for confinement; otherwise the hospital is better. Midwives, unless from accredited foreign training schools, with local licenses, and of scrupulous cleanliness, are a dangerous investment; a competent physician is preferable. With prenatal medical care, an experienced physician, and aseptic care during confinement, it is a very safe experience. Thoroughly satisfactory anesthetics have not yet been discovered. With attention to hygiene from infancy, natural means will minimize pain.

Diet should be light during the first few days. Overfeeding may cause constipation and poor milk. Rest in bed for two weeks, and quiet life, with only light exercise, and chiefly out-of-doors, for the succeeding month, is necessary for complete recovery of the pelvic organs. A few weeks’ care and quiet at this time, even though the mother feels strong, may prevent months or years of invalidism. The physician should make examinations of both mother and baby four weeks and six weeks after birth.

Nursing. The baby should be put to the breast six to twelve hours after birth, when the mother has rested, and every six hours for two days; thereafter, according to schedule. This should be persisted in for ten days, at least, the milk sometimes not coming for a week. This is as important for the recovery of the pelvic organs of the mother as for the nourishment of the baby. The baby should be given water between the feedings, but no food, unless on the doctor’s order.

If the baby is unable to take the breast, through weakness or some malformation of the mouth, the milk should be drawn out with disinfected fingers or breast pump into a sterilized glass, and fed through a sterilized medicine dropper, or after two months, with a spoon.

If the nipples become sore or cracked, a glass breast shield with rubber nipple should be used. This is to be boiled for five minutes after using, and kept in saturated boric solution until needed. If the breasts are heavy, congested, or tender, a knitted breast binder should be worn, the breasts massaged from base toward the center for ten minutes between nursings. If they become caked, hot fomentations should also be applied for fifteen minutes before massaging or nursing.

Administering Medicine. Use as little medicine as possible. When prescribed, give exactly according to directions. Wipe mouth of bottle and examine label carefully, before and after pouring. Use clean spoon and disinfect after using. Remove cork with fingers, not with teeth. Avoid getting irritating substances into eyes or on tender, broken skin. Make a game of administering medicine and keep the child amiable, if possible. When necessary, hold nose, and put spoon back on base of tongue, to administer.

The Nursery Apothecary Chest. A few essentials should be kept at hand in a cabinet, protected from dust.

2-ounce bottle each:
liquid vaseline
liquid albolene
glycerine
carron oil
turpentine
camphor
oil eucalyptus
oil Wintergreen
castor oil
tincture green soap
carbolic 5%
listerine

1-ounce bottle each:
peppermint
olive oil with 3% phenol
syrup ipecac
soda mint tablets
chlorate potash tablets
collodion

Tube or box:
zinc ointment
analgesic balm
vaseline
cocoa butter

½-pound each:
mustard
sodium bicarbonate
boracic acid

½-pint bottle each:
grain alcohol
olive oil
compound tincture benzoin
witch hazel
milk of magnesia
mineral oil

Apparatus:

medicine dropper, sterilized, kept in sterilized jar
clinical thermometer
menthol inhaler
nasal spray; nasal douche
thermophore or hot-water bag
bulb syringe
court plaster; surgeon’s plaster, small size; antiseptic gauze, small size
antiseptic cotton; styptic cotton
sterilized bandages; 18-inch flannel squares; oiled silk, paper napkins
safety pins, needles, tooth picks, handbrush, scissors

In case of infectious disease, lysol, creolin, or fresh chloride of lime will be needed.

Emetics. Mild: lukewarm water with teaspoon salt. Stronger: tablespoon salt or teaspoon mustard in glass lukewarm water. Severe: 10 to 20 drops syrup ipecac (fresh).

Laxatives. Mild: mineral oil, milk of magnesia, olive oil; one teaspoon for babies, tablespoon at six years. For emergency, castor oil, preferably in capsule, or between layers of orange or grape juice. For immediate action, citrate of magnesia. For older children or adults, compound licorice powder may be used. Laxative oils should be given between meals; nutritive oils shortly after meals.

Antiseptics. These hinder development of germs. For internal use and on eyes, normal salt solution (1 teaspoon salt to 1 pint water), 2% boric solution (1 teaspoon to quart water), listerine 50%. For external use, saturated boric solution (1 teaspoon to pint water) listerine, 70% alcohol, witch hazel. Peroxide is uncertain. Use tincture of green soap in warm water for washing infected tissues. Use boiled or distilled water in making solutions. Put in sterilized bottles.

Disinfecting. Hands: scrub with hot water and tincture of green soap or lysol, clean and trim finger nails; for surgical cleanliness, scrub through several waters, soak one minute in 70% alcohol, and dry on sterilized towel. Linen from infectious patient: soak in solution of ½ ounce creolin to two gallons water for twelve hours before removing to laundry; boil at once. Dishes from infectious patient: burn food; put into covered kettle with soap powder; immediately boil twenty minutes; or keep in patient’s room; or use papier-maché and burn. Excreta from infectious patient (urine, stools, vomitus): put with equal volume of a solution made of equal parts saturated solution of chloride of lime and 2% solution acetic acid or vinegar; let stand quarter hour before disposing. Use tissue napkins, squares of cheesecloth or old linen for nose and mouth discharges. Put these and soiled dressings into paper bag and burn at once. Room: formaldehyde gas. Hot water and soap suds, strong sunlight, and fresh air are disinfectants.

Sterilizing. Needle: dip in 70% alcohol, or hold in match flame until red. Water: boil twenty minutes. Dishes: boil twenty minutes; keep in water with vessel covered, or in boric solution, until needed. Gauze, bandages: boil twenty minutes in saturated boric solution or 2% carbolic. Let cool slightly in water, wring out with disinfected hands or in sterilized towel. Or suspend in cheesecloth hammock tied to handles of wash boiler. Cover tightly and steam, with water boiling, thirty minutes. Press in sterile towel with hot iron, leave wrapped, and keep in covered receptacle until needed. Small squares for nursery use: cut and tack in bundles of five before sterilizing, store in a sterile, covered jar, and remove only as needed.

Counter-irritants. These draw the circulation to the surface, relieving internal congestion; they have not the chemical or metabolic effect of water and light. Mild: analgesic balm, mentholated vaseline, cold compress. Mustard plaster is more severe. Mix one part mustard and two parts flour, then bind together with white of egg or lukewarm water. Rub lard or vaseline into skin before applying. Leave on five to ten minutes. If necessary, repeat in six hours, using four parts flour. Kerosene, capsicum vaseline, red pepper, are too severe for children. Dry mustard may be rubbed behind ears for earache. Blistering has no value.

Patent medicines are expensive and dangerous. Avoid them, especially soothing syrups, cough or worm medicines, cold or headache cures, tonics. Many of these contain forms of opium or of coal tar products that affect the heart, and high per cent. of alcohol, and are positively dangerous. Hygienic measures are safe and more certain.

Choose a physician who favors hygienic treatment, and who knows how to use physiological measures—diet, hydrotherapy, massage, open-air treatment—with a minimum of drugs.