The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Our Work.

House of Education, Ambleside.--The results of the Christmas examination have now been received, and are as usual very gratifying both to the students and the staff. Mr. Barnett, H.M. Assistant Inspector of Training Colleges, writes as follows:--"The papers submitted were certainly on the whole very good. All bore the marks of very careful teaching and intelligent appreciation. . . . I should think the writers were very well prepared for teachers' work. The Time Table question was well answered by all--a very good test of an intelligent understanding of a teacher's work. There was perhaps one fault to be remarked in all the Time Tables but one--the absence of handwork with tools--which is nowadays usually regarded as necessary, though it is by no means general or even very common."

CLASS I. 1. Kate S. Wood. 2 and 3. Ada Kelsey, Sophie Smyth.

CLASS II. 4. Helena Gray. 5. Gertrude Mew. 6. Florence Mucklow.

Report from the National Health Society for the examination on Hygiene, held at Ambleside, December 11th:--Kate S. Wood and Florence Mucklow passed with distinction. The following have passed: Gertrude Mew, Sophie Smyth, Ada Kelsey, Helena Grey.

Mr. Geldart writes:--"The six students who left Ambleside at Christmas, sent in their Natural History Note books. All of these shew great interest in the subjects treated, and much care both in the notes and the drawings, and everyone of the books shews both progress and improvement during the year. Some of the drawings of flowers, which appear for the most part to be pure brush-work, are really beautiful, and there was one capital sheet of snail shells. Sophie Smyth heads the list for both amount and excellence of work; but Florence Mucklow runs her very close with drawings of plants, in which, what Ruskin calls their "gesture" is very well caught. . . . Altogether these books are very creditable to the students, and I have had much pleasure in going through them."

J. W. McPherson, B.B., A.R.C.SC.L., Lecturer on "The Forces of Nature" at the Oxford University Extension Lectures, sends the following report:--"The most noticeable feature of this course was the unusually high quality of the paper-work, the correctness and directness of the answers proving that the essayists read hard between the lectures, and that they had had good previous training in the art of expressing themselves. Had not the very serious prevalence, in Ambleside, of the Influenza, necessitated the abandonment of the examination, I should have had no hesitation in recommending the following for distinction:-- E. Evans, J. H. Hollings, E. Lamphier, J. Martin, K. Hills and C. D. Hills--all were students with the exception of the Misses Hills."

Mothers' Educational Course.--More mothers have lately joined this class, and the former members are working diligently and well.

Parents; Review School.--The examination papers will be sent on April 11th. Several enquiries have been received about the model of the tabernacle, and how to make it. A good diagram, 49 in. x 36in. (2/6) can be obtained from the Religious Tract Society, number 289. It gives the interior of the tabernacle, and Holy of Holies, pillars and curtains, all the furniture, and three priests. It is suggested that the model is made of millboard 8.5 by 21.75 inches, which can be painted with gold. Children can construct the candlestick with wire, and model the pattern on it in modelling paste. The history in Class III. is not to be worked literally. As the pupils only begin this term to study contemporary French history, it was thought advisable that they should recapitulate the English and French histories, when they touched one another. As Henry VIII. is not taken this term, the essay had better be "Christopher Columbus."

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ERRATUM.

Will each reader kindly alter the passage from Mr. Ruskin which appeared in the February number. "Dove" to be changed to "Love," and "spirit" with a capital "S." Also the French poem "Se" for "Le couche," and "Ta" for "Sa petite lampe," and "Cessaid" for "Cettais" in the last line.

Typed by happi, July 2018; Proofread by LNL, May 2021