Dec. 16.] THE NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE. 3697

kitchen utensils, simple science apparatus, feathers, insects, fish and other
animal forms, shells, fern and palm leaves, grasses and rush s, celery and
rhubarb sticks, fruits and vegetables generally.

The course in drawing should provide for some elementary practice in
colour-discrimination, colour-matching, and colour-harmony.

With the view of providing further opportunities for the cultivation of
taste in form and colour, and of enabling pupils to gain an elementary
knowledge of the laws of arrangement, simple exercises in space-filling and
the formation of patterns should find a place in the course of drawing for
each standard. Exercises in elementary design, which may be regarded
as affording opportunities for the application by the pupil of his knowledge
of form and colour to decorative purposes, should be worked in conjunction
with the exercises in free drawing. Pupils, indeed, should be taught to
regard each exercise in drawing as an exercise in composition and space-
filling. Some attention should be given to lettering, especially block and
Roman lettering.

Opportunities for suitable practice, adapted to the capacity of the
pupils, in the manipulation and use of rulers, set-squares, compasses, and
protractors, are to be afforded throughout the course. Drawing with these
instruments should include easy exercises in the accurate setting-out of
lines, angles, and simple geometrical figures drawing to scale in plan and
elevation, and very easy exercises in solid geometry. All drawings to
scale should invariably be done from actual measurements made by the
pupils themselves. The instrumental drawing should be associated as far
as possible with the practical work in arithmetic and with constructive
work in paper, cardboard, wood, &c.

No subject can be recognized as a subject of handwork in classes of the
Senior Division that would not also be recognized for corresponding classes
under the Regulations for Manual and Technical Instruction. Handwork
where reckoned separately for the purposes of a certificate of proficiency
or of competency in Standard VI must be a subject entitled to be so recog-
nized, but may not be a branch of drawing or science within the meaning
of the ordinary requirements in these subjects. In any cases where doubt
may arise as to the proper relation of programs presented under these
different headings the Inspector shall decide with due regard to the circum-
stances of the school and the sufficiency of the programs to meet a reason-
able interpretation of the regulations.

NATURE-STUDY AND ELEMENTARY SCIENCE.

32. The purpose of nature-study is to train children in the careful
    observation of surrounding objects and common phenomena, and to set
    them to ask themselves questions such as “What does this mean, and
    how does it act, and why?” Even should it not be possible, as in small
    schools under the charge of one teacher, to assign to nature-study a sepa-
    rate place on the time-table, and by means of lessons on objects, on natural
    history, and in elementary science to give a definite course of instruction of
    this kind, yet the idea and spirit of it may be carried out in other ways.
    The most important parts of the lessons on geography may be thus
    described; some of the best subjects for exercises in oral or written
    composition may be led up to by questions based on the children’s own
    observation in their ordinary life, or in their rambles about the district; the
    information given in many of the reading-lessons may be tested, confirmed,
    supplemented, and reinforced by nature-study; drawing and modelling
    may serve as vehicles for nature-study and thereby gain an added interest.
    In short, there is hardly any subject in the school course into the
    teaching of which the ideas that underlie nature-study may not enter.

In schools of Grade 4 and higher grades, where it is expected that
provision shall be made for a definite course of nature-study or elementary
science, the remarks just made apply with equal force; even the hand-
work, which may seem at first to compete with it for a place on the time-
table, will be found to give material aid to nature-study. This will be
most clearly seen in those branches of handwork which are of the
character of applied science, such as agriculture, cottage-gardening,
dairy-work, for which the habits of careful observation acquired in
nature-study are the only sound foundation.

It would be well, therefore, for the teacher, when drawing up the
program of work in the several subjects of the syllabus, to have in
mind a scheme of nature-study, and the various parts of the instruction
should be so co-ordinated as to pursue this scheme continuously through-
out the school course.

Nothing can be considered as nature-study unless it includes an
actual study of things themselves by the individual children; models,
pictures, and books may be valuable aids, but are not substitutes for it.

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