Period 1. Naming. “This is thick. This is thin.”
Period 2. Recognition. “Give me the thick. Give me the thin.”
Period 3. The Pronunciation of the Word. “What is this?”
There is a way of helping the child to recognize differences in dimension and to place the objects in correct gradation. After the lesson which I have described, the teacher scatters the brown prisms, for instance, on a carpet, says to the child, “Give me the thickest of all,” and lays the object on a table. Then, again, she invites the child to look for the thickest piece among those scattered on the floor, and every time the piece chosen is laid in its order on the table next to the piece previously chosen. In this way the child accustoms himself always to look either for the thickest or the thinnest among the rest, and so has a guide to help him to lay the pieces in gradation.
When there is one dimension only which varies, as in the case of the rods, the objects are said to be “long” and “short,” the varying dimension being length. When the varying dimension is height, the objects are said to be “tall” and 73 “short”; when the breadth varies, they are “broad” and “narrow.”
Of these three varieties we offer the child as a fundamental lesson only that in which the length varies, and we teach the differences by means of the usual “three periods,” and by asking him to select from the pile at one time always the “longest,” at another always the “shortest.”
The child in this way acquires great accuracy in the use of words. One day the teacher had ruled the blackboard with very fine lines. A child said, “What small lines!” “They are not small,” corrected another; “they are thin.”
When the names to be taught are those of colors or of forms, so that it is not necessary to emphasize contrast between extremes, the teacher can give more than two names at the same time, as, for instance, “This is red.” “This is blue.” “This is yellow.” Or, again, “This is a square.” “This is a triangle.” “This is a circle.” In the case of a gradation, however, the teacher will select (if she is teaching the colors) the two extremes “dark” and “light,” then making choice always of the “darkest” and the “lightest.”
Many of the lessons here described can be seen 74 in the cinematograph pictures; lessons on touching the plane insets and the surfaces, in walking on the line, in color memory, in the nomenclature relating to the cubes and the long rods, in the composition of words, reading, writing, etc.