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Home Geography for the Third and Fourth

TH

Grades

Lucy M. Dunigan

HE first geography that should be taught to the child is Home Geography. By means of home geography the child's mind is stored with concrete information with which he can afterward relate the new and otherwise unappreciated facts, which he will learn of unknown places. Better text-books and a wealth of supplementary reading are aids to the teaching of geography. With emphasis shifted from facts, to the causal relation between facts, an exercise which once was a draft upon the memory alone, has now become a cultural force, which trains the mind to habits of reasoning which will be of lifelong value.

Home geography is not a text-book subject. The local environment of each school makes uniformity impossible. Each teacher must organize the material to fit the needs of her community. There are, however, general principles which help us not only to define the limits of home geography, but to present it to the children in a logical

manner.

Everything in the course should be truly geographical. In order to stress the geographical facts one must know just what constitutes geography. Some say that geography is a "Study of the Earth as the Home of Man." Others say the emphasis should be put upon the human element and define it as "A Study of Man in his Home, the Earth."

There are two classes of topics into which home geography should be grouped. These are the social topics and the physical topics. A child must know life relations and the interdependence of one family upon another. He should know what this community supplies the outside. world, and for what it must depend upon other countries and other communities, in order that he may have the necessities of life. The physical topics call for a knowledge of the earth.

The home is one of the simplest of social topics, which should be studied, because it furnishes concrete illustrations of many of the phases of geography. The town, city or county community in which the family resides forms a second social topic.

Physical topics call for outside work and for this reason many field trips should be planned for the home geography class. Children should be led to see that which is near them first, and then advance into the foreign fields.

The following course consists of the study of the three necessities of life, namely, shelter, food and clothing.

Rapeer-Teaching Elementary School Subjects

Freeman-The Psychology of the Common Branches

Klapper-The Teaching of Geography

Morris-Home Life in all Lands

Carpenter-Geographical Readers

Adams-Commercial Geography

Andrews-Seven Little Sisters

Dodge and Kirchwey The teaching of Geography in Elementary
Schools

Charters-The Teaching of the Common Branches
Fairbanks-Home Geography for Primary Grades.

I The Home.

1 Name the district in which you live. Show a map. Make one on the sand table. Draw one on the board. Help the children to interpret the map. State what this district was formerly. (Farm land, park, etc.) Tell the direction of your home from your school. Name the direction toward which you walk when you come to school. On the map of the district find the street on which you live. Always teach directions out-of-doors.

1 Size and extent of this district.

Boundaries. Take field trips to the boundaries. Observe the way streets are paved, if they are paved, and notice that they are higher in the center. Give reason for this. Visit park if there is one, and notice physical features (gently rolling land, large trees, etc). See factories, foundries, hospitals, freight depots, railroads, public buildings, churches, cemeteries, car lines, storage houses, lots for private or community gardens, etc. Visit stores. Visit places of historical interest.

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III Food

1 List products used for food that are raised near your home.

1 Home gardens. When started? Preparation of the ground. Soil ready for seed. Planting. Cultivation and care during the growth of the plants. Harvesting. Consumption. Market. Sale or exchange of the surplus.

1 Usefulness of this garden to the outside world. 2 Community gardens.

2 Truck farms.

1 Called market gardens.

2 Location near the city, away from the districts of high taxation, where the market for the produce is easily accessible in a short time. Easy and quick transportation.

3 Methods of cultivation. Compare with home gardens.

4 Problems of labor and problems of skill.

5 The part the truck gardens play in supplying the large cities with vegetables and fruits. Gardens of the South send us early vegetables, and send them earlier than we could produce them at home. Later the districts far to the north of us send the fresh vegetables that are in season there, so that our season for fresh vegetables, strawberries, etc., begins earlier and is prolonged until later than we can raise the same products at home.

3 Dairy farms.

1 Location near the city. Why? List products from this farm that will not keep. Those that will keep. Sometimes cheese and butter will keep a long time. (Study the home and industries of Heidi the Swiss maiden.)

4 The large farm. List the products raised.

1 The economy of having a well-balanced farm.

2 Location away from the cities but where the transportation is good.

3 Size.

4 Methods of fertilizing and preparing the soil, planting, harvesting and disposing of crops.

1 Good roads, how prepared and cared for, funds secured to keep roads in repair, cooperation of neighbors, community spirit even in isolated regions.

2 Animals raised on a large farm that are used for food: Cattle, sheep, hogs. Fowl used for food: Chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys. Animals used to carry food to us: Horses and mules.

(Go to the Philippine Islands. See the water buffalo, the pony and Chinese coolies that are used there for beasts of burden.)

5 List the food that comes to us from foreign lands. 1 Tea from Japan.

2

Coffee and cacao from South America.

3 Tropical fruits.

IV Clothing

1 Wool comes from the pelt of sheep. Sheep raised for wool need a different geographic environment from those raised for meat. Different varieties of wool need different geographic conditions. (See Kanan the Arabian Boy. Find out how he helped to raise the sheep that give us the fine wool that is raised on the margin of the desert. Make a type study of wool. Correlate it with history and literature.)

2 Cotton.

3 Silk. See separate outline of France and study this country that sends us silk. Find out why less of the silk making is done in the homes than formerly. 4 Linen.

5 Furs. These come from our north and Siberia.

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10 Education.

1 Good schools. When a boy leaves school he serves as a conscript in the French Army. Every boy must have two years of military training.

V Industries. 1 Farming.

1 Many small farms, but all are well cultivated.
2 Owned by the common people. Nearly every
farmer owns his own land and feels that a part
of France belongs to him. For this reason few
Frenchmen leave France.

3 Hills are terraced. All space is utilized.
4 Men, women and children work in the fields.
5 People do not live on farms, but in small villages
nearby, which are connected with the farms by
hard roads, lined with tall trees.

6 Houses in these villages.

1 Walls are made of mud mixed with straw, white-washed except near the ground, where a coating of tar keeps out the dampness.

2 Roofs of red tile or thick reels of straw laid close and cemented together by nature with moss and flowers.

3 Each house has stable and outsheds. Stable connected with house.

4 Interior of the house.

1 One room, or if more, kitchen is the principal room. Brick floors, fireplace at one end, bed in the corner, hams and sides of bacon hang from the ceiling. Loom for weaving cloth near the fireplace.

2 Manufacturing. In the cities and in the homes. 1 France sends us wine, silk, fine cutlery, ribbons, made in homes on hand looms, lace, lisle thread gloves and stockings, cambric, clocks, spectacles and china.

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III Clothing.

1 Cotton, brightly colored.

2

No shoes and stockings.

3

Ornaments.

IV

Homes.

Huts, low walls, made of clay. High, conical roofs, thatched with palm leaves, no windows, small doorway faces the street. One room in the house used for a sleeping room.

V Settlements.

1

Small group of huts.

2

High wall surrounds the settlement.

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3

Huts nestle in a grove of banana trees.

2 Table, chair, bed, fireplace, where a large kettle hung; cupboard (everything the uncle owned was in this).

VI

Chief of the village, Mpuke's father.

1 Tall, muscular, well-built.

2

Body is covered in a ridiculous fashion with red, white

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and yellow chalk. Looks like clown in the circus.

3 Black rat-tails at the chin.

4 Large hat of grass.

5 String of charms.

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2 Barla (little bear) and Schwanli (little swan). IX

Schwanli was white and Barla was brown.

Chamois.

1

Use a wooden spear.

2 Blunt knives.

The elephant hunt.

1 Men slip up on elephants.

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3 Elephants make a great noise and run.

4 Men cut and skin the dead animals.

5 Women and children bring baskets into which the meat is put.

6 An oven is made in the ground.

7 The meat is baked here for three days.

8 This hunt takes place during the early part of the day. X Men go to war with neighboring tribes. Why? 1 Paint faces and bodies.

3

2 Women and children are busy sharpening weapons. Boys remain at home to protect the women and children. XI Victors bring their allies with them. 2 A great feast is held.

1 Cooking is done out-of-doors.

2 Food consists of baked hippopotamus meat, baked elephant, manioc pudding (manioc takes the place of flour). Meat is put in earthern jars. A quantity of peppers and palm oil is poured over it, to make gravy; fruit palm wine.

3 Men eat first. Women and children eat that which is left.

The Philippines

I Trip to the Philippine Islands.

1 Under the control of the United States.

2 Longest single ocean voyage we shall take. Fifteen days from San Francisco to Manila.

II Places of interest we may visit.

Many islands, active volcanoes, hot springs, many lakes (some sulphur-colored), rivers, snow-covered mountains, forests with luxuriant tropical plants and vines, where we will see strange animals, birds of variegated and beautiful plumage, but poor songsters, interesting cities and villages.

III People. There is no Philippine nation. The people are divided into tribes, over eighty in number. Speak seventy-five languages.

1 Civilized people near the coast.

1 Men, black-eyed, black-haired, brown-skinned
working men; bare-footed, dressed in pantaloons
and shirt of thin material.

2 Women, lips red, hair combed straight back,
teeth blackened, always chewing betel nut, a
product of the arnica plant, clothes are brightly-
colored skirts to the knees, no stockings, sandals.
Pina cloth handkerchiefs about the neck.
3 Children wear thin clothes, go to American
schools, learn to speak the English language.

2 Natives of the interior are savages.

1 Wear no clothing, live in a primitive way; villages of huts that look like nests high in the trees or on high poles; tattoo bodies, black woolly hair, noses flat, lips thick, dwarfs; weapons, bows and arrows; hunt wild goats and apes, love music, have instruments, flutes of bamboo, guitars, drums.

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VI 1

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1 Close to sidewalks. Two stories high. No glass windows to keep dust out, screened. Sometimes oyster shells are used for windows. Built around a courtyard, where there is a flower garden with seats along the walk, shaded by large banana trees.

2 Lower floors used for kitchen, servants' quarters and stable.

3 Upper floors, living rooms. Balcony extends over the street.

4 Market place of a little town.

1 Sheds and booths made of poles covered with straw matting, along narrow streets.

1 Women and girls squat on low mats and sell goods.

1 Vegetables: onions, lettuce, egg plant, cabbage, potatoes, peppers, squashes, tomatoes and gin.

2 Edible birds' nests.

5 Factories.

3 Chickens, turkeys, duck, fish.

4 Bananas, cocoanuts, betel nuts.

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1 Sugar drying, tobacco, factories where they make flat bands, straps for sandals, ropes for harness, and clothes-pins, mats, rattan chairs; bamboo makes cups, dippers, tableware, furniture.

6 Amusements.

1 Cock fighting, pony racing, bicycle racing, playing upon musical instruments, religious carnivals (especially at Christmas time, when weather is finest).

Native villages.

Homes.

1 Houses thatched with nipa grass. (House seemingly on stilts, use a ladder to climb up to the door.)

2 People sleep in hammocks, cook and live out-ofdoors.

3 Women wash clothes in rivers with water to their waists.

2 Crops.

1 Cocoanut groves. 2 Hemp.

3 Tropical fruits. 4 Sugar cane.

5 Rice.

1 Fields in low, marshy lands flooded during planting season.

2 Cultivated with plow that is a crooked stick of wood on a handle, a piece of iron on the bottom and drawn by a buffalo.

3 Women and girls assist in harvesting rice. They pound husks from the grain.

3 Food. Consists chiefly of rice. It takes the place of bread and potatoes.

1 Rice, boiled bulbs of the bamboo, fruits, bananas, oranges, lemons, papayas, limes, pineapples, figs, grapes, cocoanut. (Mother and sister prepare copra from the dried fruit of the cocoanut. From

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IX

1 Locust plagues visit the islands every two or three years. They come in swarms by the millions.

Storms are many and of great violence.

1 When a storm is coming a signal is run up over a look-out tower.

2 Crier is sent about the streets to warn the people, for roofs of houses, as well as loose articles, are in danger of being blown away.

Life of an Arabian Boy

I Kanana, an Arab, a Bedouin Boy.

1 Born upon the deserts. Of the tribe of Beni Sad, of the seed of Ishmael.

2 His father, the chief of the tribe, was called The Terror of the Desert.

3 Appearance: brown skin, black hair. II Desert thought more of making warriors than shepherds. 1 There were many robbers on the desert, who lived by theft and plunder.

2 Many caravans fell into the hands of such men and perished.

3 Kanana refused to take the lance when he was old enough, so he was called a coward.

1 No name was more bitter to an Arab. It meant traitor.

III Customs of the people.

1 Boy rolled around in the sand and sunshine until he was five years old.

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1 He wore no clothing but a twisted leather cord tied around his waist.

2 For five years he helped the women of the father's

tent.

1 Shaking goat's skin, filled with cream, until it turned to butter.

2 Watching the kedder upon the fire.

3 Drying buttermilk to be ground into flour.
4 Digging komma, which grows like truffles
under the sand.

3 After he was ten years old, for three years the
boy watched the sheep, goats and the camels.
4 After he reached the age when Ishmael was sent
away with Hagar by Abraham, he (the boy) was
supposed to drop all menial labor and take his
place among the men and make a position for
himself according to his fighting qualities.

5 Few occupations were open for a boy unless he
had won laurels with a lance.

IV Every year for three months, from planting time to harvest time, the Beni Sads encamped upon a river bank on the outskirts of the Great Desert.

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As the price of paper made itself very evident in the bills presented to the school board, we primary teachers. resolved to do our bit toward reducing it. One of the board members being a prominent dry goods merchant, we easily secured his assistance. His clerks were instructed to save all the paper coming from the ribbon bolts, and at intervals we called for it. All lengths and widths could be used, and aside from doing a patriotic service, we had the added satisfaction of a far more liberal supply of paper than we would have felt justified in having purchased for us.

The widest adapts itself very nicely to folding and construction, medium widths are excellent for copying and practise, while even the very narrowest is useful. We made both foot and yard lengths of this, marking the inches, first under supervision, and later as work to be done independently at the seat. A square of medium width, hektographed in tiny squares with two selected crayons, furnishes fascinating seat work, as a "perfectly boo'ful checkerboard" is the result.

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