Nature Study
Finally, all appreciation of literature and art depends upon a love of and some knowledge of nature. Fairy stories and mythology especially are so dependent upon nature for their inner meaning and significance as scarcely to be intelligible without some knowledge of natural processes and laws. Of course, it is true that art in its turn idealizes nature and fills her beautiful form with a beautiful soul; so that the child who is being developed on all sides needs to take his books and his pictures out of doors in order to get the full good of them.
Art and Nature
No amount of music, art, and literature can make up for the free life in the fields and under the sky which all these arts describe and interpret. If he should be so unhappy as to have to choose between nature and art, it would be better for him to choose nature, because then, perhaps, art might be born in his own soul. But there is happily no need for such a painful choice. He can sing his little song out of doors with the birds and notice how they join in the chorus. He can paint evening sunsets with the pine-trees against it far better out of doors than indoors with copy perched before him. He can look down the aisles of the real woods to watch for the enchanted princess, or for the chivalrous knight whose story he is reading. Art and nature belong together in the unified soul of the child. Well for him and for the world in which he lives if they are never divorced, but he goes on to the end loving them both and seeing them both as one.
CHILDREN'S ASSOCIATES.
If the child was intended to grow into a man of family, merely, family training might be sufficient for him, but since he must grow into a member of society, social training is as necessary for him as family training. Failure to recognize this truth is at the bottom of the current misconceptions of the Kindergarten. There are still thousands of persons who suppose it is only a superior sort of day-nursery where children may be safely kept and innocently employed while the mother gets the housework done.
The Kindergarten