In presenting these "First Studies of Plant Life" the object has been to interest the child and pupil in the life and work of plants. The child, or young pupil, is primarily interested in life or something real and active, full of action, of play, or play-work. Things which are in action, which represent states of action, or which can be used by the child in imitating or "staging" various activities or realities, are those which appeal most directly to him and which are most forceful in impressing on his mind the fundamental things on which his sympathies or interests can be built up.

There is, perhaps, a too general feeling that young pupils should be taught things; that the time for reasoning out why a thing is so, or why it behaves as it does under certain conditions, belongs to a later period of life. We are apt to forget that during the first years of his existence the child is dependent largely on his own resources, his own activity of body and mind, in acquiring knowledge. He is preeminently an investigator, occupied with marvelous observations and explorations of his environment.

From the preface