—Walk to the cabinet and take a box of counters in your hands.
—Run to the sofa, seize the sofa-pillow, and run around the room with it, holding it in your arms.
—Roll your handkerchief into a ball, toss it into the air and try to catch it before it falls to the floor.
Lessons with Experiments
The function of the verb can be still more interestingly emphasized by suggesting actions designed to increase the child's knowledge in the direction of elementary science. Here the teacher, instead of executing simple movements, performs experiments, which on the same day or on succeeding days the child can imitate guided by the directions in the commands.
Subject:
stir, mix, beat, flavor (mescolare, emulsionare, stemperare).
Commands:—
—Take a bowl half full of water and drop into it a half cup of flour; stir with a spoon until the mixture is thick.
—Place a table-spoonful of vinegar and a table-spoonful of olive-oil in a clean bowl; beat them together until an emulsion is formed.
—Place a tea-spoonful of chocolate and a tea-spoonful of sugar in a cup and mix them thoroughly. What color was the chocolate? What color was the sugar? What color is the mixture?
—Take a little milk in a cup and taste of it; add a drop of vanilla extract. Then taste of the milk again. Do you taste the vanilla? In the same way flavor a glass of water with the vanilla. Flavor another glass of water with vinegar.
Subject:
dissolve, saturate, be in suspension (sciogliere, fare la sospensiona, saturare).
Commands:—