Primary Handwork Part 5

A cardboard roof is in many ways easier to build. In a house similar to the one shown in Fig. 25 two gables are used, and the roof slopes to front and back. The framework can be very simply made. At the two gable ends place uprights made of two pieces of wood joined in the form of an inverted T. (See Fig. 26.) These should be nailed to the box. A ridgepole may then be nailed to the upper ends of the uprights. If the house is not large, no other framework will be necessary. If the slope of the roof is long enough to allow the cardboard to sag, light strips of wood extending from the ridgepole to the outer edge of the box may be added. If a single piece of cardboard of sufficient size is available, it may be scored[1]

and bent at the proper place and laid over the ridgepole, with the edges extending beyond the box to form the eaves. Or, two pieces may be used, one for each slope of the roof, each piece being tacked to the ridgepole.

Chimneys may be made from paper and colored to represent bricks or stone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 27.--Colonial kitchen. Columbia, Missouri.]

The outside of the house may be treated in several ways. It may be sided after the manner of frame houses by tacking on strips of paper or cardboard lapped in the proper fashion. It may be covered with paper marked in horizontal lines to represent siding, in irregular s.p.a.ces to represent stone, or in regular s.p.a.ces to represent brick, and finished in the appropriate color. Or, a coat of paint or stain may be applied directly to the box.

VARIATIONS IN HOUSE PROBLEM

A playhouse for its own sake is a justifiable project for primary children and one which may be repeated several times without exhausting its possibilities. Each time it is repeated the emphasis will fall on some new feature, and the children will wish to do more accurate work.

In the lowest grades very simple houses of one or two rooms may be built for story-book friends, such as the "Three Bears" or "Little Red Riding Hood," with only such furniture as the story suggests. In intermediate grades the house may have an historical motive and ill.u.s.trate home life in primitive times or in foreign countries, such as a colonial kitchen in New England, a pioneer cabin on the Western prairies, a Dutch home, a j.a.panese home, etc. In upper grades it may become a serious study in house decoration.

As the motive for making the house changes, the character and quality of its furnishings will change. The block furniture described above will give way to more accurate models in either wood or paper. Some excellent suggestions for paper furniture for advanced work may be found in the _Manual Training Magazine_.

As skill in construction increases, a wish for something more realistic than the box construction will arise, and the elements of house framing will be studied with great eagerness.

=The House of the Three Bears.= (See Fig. 28.)--This house was made early in the year by a cla.s.s of first-grade children. The walls were papered in plain brown paper. The carpets were woven mats of paper. The chairs, table, and beds were made according to the methods already described in the playhouse outline. The stove and the doll were contributed. The bears were modeled in clay. The children played with the house and its contents throughout the year. The bears were broken and made over many times--a process which not only afforded great pleasure, but also developed considerable skill in modeling.

=Another Bears' House.=--This house, shown in Frontispiece, was made in the spring, near the end of the school year, by a cla.s.s of first-grade children all of whom were under seven and many of whom were very immature.

The story of the Three Bears was taken up after Christmas, told and retold, read, and dramatized by the children. Teddy bears were brought to school. Many bears were modeled in clay, each child making the set of three many times.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 28.--House for the Three Bears. First grade. Columbia, Missouri.]

The children laid off s.p.a.ces on the table for individual Bears' houses and made furniture for these as their fancy prompted. The furniture was made of wood after the general style described above. Later, carpets were woven for these individual playhouses. Each carpet was woven to a given dimension, making it necessary to use the rule. This was their introduction to the rule as a tool for measuring. Every child in a cla.s.s of forty made one or more pieces of furniture and wove one or more small carpets from rags. Nearly all made some bedding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 29.--Cornstalk house. Built by second-grade cla.s.s.

Franklin, Indiana.]

Later, four boxes were secured and arranged as a house. The openings for doors were marked off during school time, but were sawed out by a few children who remained during the noon intermission. This is the only part of the work which was not done during regular cla.s.s time. The papering was done by two or three of the most capable children, while the rest were deeply absorbed in weaving. All made borders. Certain borders were selected for the house, and several children worked together to make enough of the same pattern for one room. Selections were then made from the carpets and furniture already made by the children.

The roof was made chiefly by one boy who "knew a good way to make it." The porches were also individual projects by pupils who had ideas on the subject and were allowed to work them out.

The children became very familiar with every phase of the story and attacked any expression of it with the feeling, "That's easy." They wrote stories, _i.e._ sentences about bears. Each child at the close of the year could write on the blackboard a story of two or more sentences. They made pictures of bears in all sorts of postures with colored crayon and from free-hand cuttings. They modeled the bears in clay over and over again, keeping up a large family in spite of many accidents.

=Cooperative Building.=--Figures 11, 12, and 13 show three rooms of a four-room house built by the first and second grades working together. The living room and bedroom were furnished by first-grade children. The dining room, kitchen, and bath were furnished by the second grade. Four boxes were used. (See diagram, page 35, Fig. 14.) Each room, except the bath, was a separate box. After a general plan had been agreed upon by the teachers, the boxes were carried to the several rooms and each cla.s.s worked quite independently. When the rooms were finished, they were a.s.sembled on a table in the hall and the roof put on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 30.--A flour mill. Built by fourth grade. Columbia, Missouri.]

=The Flour Mill.=--The flour mill, shown in Fig. 30, was built in connection with a study of the general subject of milling by a fourth-grade cla.s.s. The cla.s.s visited a flour mill. They were shown the various machines, and the function of each was explained to them. They made hasty sketches of the machines and a rough diagram of their arrangement on the floors. They got the dimensions of the floors and height of the ceiling. An empty box was remodeled to approximate the dimensions of the building. Small representations of the machines were made and placed in the proper relation to each other. No attempt was made to show more than the external proportions in the small representation.

The work served its best purpose in keeping the children thinking definitely about what they had seen. The attempt to express their thoughts in tangible form deepened the mental impression, even though the tangible results were crude and lacked many details.

The conveyer being of special interest, two boys worked out a larger model which ill.u.s.trated the band-bucket process. This is shown in Fig. 30, at the right of the mill. Small cups were made of soft tin and fastened to a leather strap. The strap was fastened around two rods, placed one above the other. The lower rod was turned by a crank fastened on the outside of the box. Two or three brads driven into the lower rod caught into holes in the strap and prevented slipping. The machine successfully hoisted grain from the lower box to one fastened higher up, but not shown in the picture. The model was very crude in its workmanship, but it showed the ability of fourth-grade boys to successfully apply an important principle in mechanics, and it gave opportunity for their ingenuity to express itself. The work was done with such tools and materials as the boys could provide for themselves, and without a.s.sistance other than encouraging suggestions from the teacher. This bit of construction accompanied a broad study of the subject of milling, including the source and character of the raw materials, the processes involved, the finished products and their value.

CHAPTER VI

THE VILLAGE STREET

Playing store is a game of universal interest. Making a play store is a fascinating occupation. These are factors which cannot be overlooked in any scheme of education which seeks to make use of the natural activities of children.

The downtown store stands to the children as the source of all good things which are to be bought with pennies. It is usually the first place outside the home with which they become familiar, and its processes are sure to be imitated in their play. In their play they not only repeat the processes of buying and selling, but try to reproduce in miniature what they regard as the essential features of the real store.

If they are allowed to play this fascinating game in school, it may, by the teacher's help, become at once more interesting and more worth while.

Curiosity may be aroused through questions concerning what is in the store, where it came from, how it got there, what was done to make it usable, how it is measured, and what it is worth. In seeking answers to these questions, the fields of geography, history, and arithmetic may be explored as extensively as circ.u.mstances warrant and a whole curriculum is built up in a natural way. After such study, stores cease to be the _source_ of the good things they offer for sale. The various kinds of merchandise take on a new interest when the purchaser knows something of their history, and a new value when he knows something of the labor which has gone into their manufacture.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 31.--Box house and stores. Grades one, three, and two.

Columbia, Missouri.]

Being a subject of universal interest, it may be adapted to the conditions of the various grades. It being also impossible to exhaust the possibilities of the subject in any single presentation, it may profitably be repeated with a change of emphasis to suit the development of the cla.s.s. For example, in the second grade, the study of the street is chiefly a cla.s.sification of the various commodities which are essential to our daily life, and a few of the main facts of interest concerning their origin. Those a little older are interested in the processes of manufacture and the geography of their sources. In playing store, weights and measures, the changing of money, and the making of bills take on an interest impossible in the old-fashioned method of presenting these phases of arithmetic. Discussions and narratives supply oral language work, and descriptions, letters, and notes provide material for written exercises.

The cla.s.s may be divided into groups, each group contributing one store to the street, or the attention of the whole cla.s.s may be centered on one store at a time, as the immediate conditions suggest. If the former method is used, as each store is finished it may be used as subject matter for the entire cla.s.s, while the important facts concerning it are considered.

The first permits a broader scope; the second a more exhaustive study. In either case visits to the real stores studied are important supplements to the work.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 32.--A village street. Third grade. Columbia, Missouri.]

=General Directions.=--Discuss the stores on a village street. Which are most important? Why? Decide how many stores the cla.s.s can build, and choose those most necessary to a community.

If self-organized groups[2] are allowed to choose the part they are to work out, both interest and harmony are promoted and leadership stimulated.

Use a box for each store. Each group is usually able to provide its own box. Paper inside of box with clean paper, or put on a coat of fresh paint. Make appropriate shelving and counters of thin wood.

Stock the store with samples of appropriate merchandise as far as possible. Supplement with the best representations the children can make.

They should be left to work out the problem for themselves to a large extent, the teacher giving a suggestion only when they show a lack of ideas.

=Suggestions for Details of Representation.=--_Clay Modeling._--Clay may be used to model fruits and vegetables, bottles and jugs for the grocery; bread, cake, and pies for the bakery; different cuts of meat for the butcher shop; horses for the blacksmith shop and for delivery wagons. Clay representations may be made very realistic by coloring with crayon.

_Canned Goods._--Paper cylinders on which labels are drawn before pasting serve well for canned goods. Cylindrical blocks may be cut from broom sticks or dowel rods and wrapped in appropriately labeled covers.

_Cloth._--Rolls of various kinds of cloth should be collected for the dry goods store. Figures may be cut from fashion plates and mounted for the "Ready to Wear" department.