The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Our Work

House of Education.--There are now twenty-one students in residence. Those who left at Christmas are now happily settled. One pleasing feature of the work is the number of teachers who leave pupils of sixteen and seventeen to work for twelve months on the lines laid down in Home Education.

Parents' Review.--Contributions (always welcome) should reach the Editor by the first of the month. They may be addressed either to Miss [Ethel] Forsyth, P.N.E.U. Office, 28, Victoria Street, Westminster, or to the Secretary, House of Education, Ambleside.

House of Education Natural History Club.--Notes by M. S. Hodgson.

In Ambleside our calendar for February 1st, 1894, is as follows:--

Wild Flowers.--Golden saxifrage, rue-leaved saxifrage, gorse, celandine, barren strawberry, willow, dandelion, groundsel, chickweed, mercury, red nettle, primroses, holly, box, hazel, willows, black-popular.

Garden Flowers.--Snowdrops, crocuses, jessamine, Christmas roses, wall-flower, daffodil, aconites, hepatic, squills, pyrus japonica, berberis, mezereum, pho-do-dendron, snow-on-the-mountains, forget-me-not, daisies, and a few others.

Oaks, beeches, Wych elms, and trees generally have altered considerable during the last fortnight, most of them are opening their buds: many bushes are showing tips of green along the roadsides, while arums, Welsh poppies, adoxa, etc., are making beautiful green patches under the walls and hedges. We have also seen a few hairy caterpillars, a tortoise-shell butterfly, a hedge snail (Helix nemoralis) and a few bees. Jackdaws, rooks, and starlings paired. Will the members of our club, who care to do so, kindly send us their lists for February 1st either from England or abroad, as the case may be. We should all like to compare our lists both for February and March.

The following notes are addressed to those students who are at present living near the sea. It will not be possible for me even to attempt to describe the treasures you are certain to find. I can only help you by showing you a little how to help yourselves. First of all, I strongly advise you to make firm friends with the fishermen if you wish to know something about the ways and appearance of the inhabitants of the sea. When you notice the boats coming in, lose no time, but as quickly as you can, run down and see what has been caught.

If you examine the refuse from the shrimp nets, you will find enough to occupy you for some time; it is usually full of strange looking objects; sea-mice or tiny cuttle-fish will certainly strike you as being very quaint creatures indeed. In this way I have seen many kinds of crabs and crustaceans, numbers of shell fish, all sorts of fishes and many kinds of sea-weed. As soon as the fishermen see that you are really and truly interested in what they bring in, they will often save things for you that would otherwise be thrown overboard when washing the nets before coming on shore. The delightful part of being near the sea is that at every tide you may expect to find something fresh, only a shell perhaps, or a bit of sea-weed, a stone or a fossil. Whatever it is, let it interest both yourself and the children; make out its name, and, if worth keeping, label it, and keep it neatly and safely for use in giving your "Object Lessons." It will take you many months before you exhaust your little stretch of coast; you will soon learn to distinguish the commonest things in your neighborhood from those that you see less frequently; keep two lists in your note-book, one for the common and the other for the rare specimens you get; note down carefully the place and date of each find, and as much as possible watch the thing where they live; don't tear anemones off the rocks or keep live things in basins, you will understand quite enough of them without doing this. For giving a lesson you will find heaps of things that can be carried home without injury, exhaust this supply first.

For information about this subject you will find The Seashore, 2s. 6d., S.P.C.R., very useful; also Common Shells of the Seashore, 1s., Fredrick Warne and Co. Crustaceans and Spiders, 1s., Lowrey and Co., is a very useful book indeed if you wish to know something about crabs. I strongly advise you to take in Science Gossip, 5s. a year post free, John T. Carrington, 1, Northumberland Avenue, London, W.C. The new series promises to be very good.

A melancholy interest will ever be attached to Mrs. Powell's book, "These Little Ones," reviewed last month. We are grieved to hear that Mrs. [Alice] Powell passed away a few days before the notice appeared. Mrs. Powell has been a warm supporter of the Parents' Review for four or five years, and we regret deeply that such a gifted writer should have been taken away from the good work she was doing here

Free lectures to members of the Union and their friends will be given in April and May on "The Ethics of Beauty" by Miss Alice Taylor, and "The Rational Teaching of the Pianoforte" by Mrs. Spencer Curwen. Courses of Lectures will also be held (for which special fees will be charged at a low rate) on "Ibsen and Wagner," "Physiology," "The principles of modern education applied to the Art of Painting," and, possibly a course of Training Lessons by Mrs. Walter Ward in Kindergarten methods. Early application for tickets to be made to the secretary, P.N.E.U. Office, 28, Victoria Street, London, S.W.

Typed by Perry The Good, July 2018; Proofread by LNL, May 2021