ing pit along one side of the yard. The running track will not require any special expense except the smoothing, although if the track is cindered and rolled, it will be an advantage. The track should be some ten feet wide and if possible one hundred yards long. This track will be found highly serviceable not only for the larger boys, but for the younger children as well. Students of child life have discovered that interest in running has reached its height at the age of ten or eleven years, and has a tendency to decline after that age. An almost endless number of relay races and other forms of track events. can be arranged if this simple device is provided for. Jumping pits Finally, the rural-school playground should have at least one, and probably several jumping pits. The pits should be filled with sand, which ought at all times when in use to be kept well stirred, and soft, so as to avoid the jar that comes from striking after the jump. The approach to the pit should be supplied with a regular take-off board for the broad jump. As a companion device, there should be a pit provided with standards carefully set for the high jump. If it is objected that all this equipment costs so much that it is out of the range of possibility in the average rural school, it may be answered that with the neighborhood help available, the entire equipment could probably be installed for less than one hundred dollars. It is doubtful whether any other one hundred dollars invested by the community in the education of its children will bring larger results or greater happiness than this investment in the school playground and its apparatus. And even if public funds are not at present generally available for the equipment of the school playground, the case is, nevertheless, far from hopeless. New movements usually must be initiated by private enterprise. Cost of apparatus Many of the best school playgrounds and how met now in use were prepared and the apparatus provided through the efforts of enthusiastic teachers and pupils. School sociables, entertainments, auctions of articles made in the manual-training shop or the domestic-science course, and canvasses for funds by the pupils, are some of the means that have been successfully employed for this purpose. Often a "neighborhood day" can be arranged in connection with some school program, and a large amount of work on the grounds and apparatus carried out without cost. many cases, material even, has been freely given by patrons or friends interested in the playground. An enthusiastic, well-informed teacher can furnish a play ground for his school if he will. The teacher must know plays and games In This all means that the teacher must himself know how to play. He should know plays and games as he knows his arithmetic and geography, and be able to instruct on the playground as well as in the class room. He should be familiar with playground apparatus, and know the best types and their cost. He should be able to direct in the laying out of a baseball court, and to supervise the erection of swings, giant strides and teeter boards. The books of rules governing the games suitable for the school should be as much a part of his library as any other reference works. Nor should this preparation and knowledge be in any sense perfunctory or professional. The teacher should love play for its own sake, and believe in it as an important part of education, both for himself and his pupils. FOR TEACHERS' DISCUSSION AND STUDY I. Do the children of your school know how to playhave they a rather wide range of plays and games adapted to their age and sex? 2. Have you taught your pupils any new games? What books of games and plays are you familiar with? Were you ever taught games and plays? 3. Have you ever found pupils quarreling or fighting principally because they had nothing better to do? Are the children safer morally when engaged in play than when loitering about? 4. Is your school ground suitable for games and plays? If not, could it not be improved to make it so? 5. Do you not believe that you could arrange to have your school equipped with a reasonable amount of play apparatus as described in the chapter? Would it be a good plan to start the project with a school sociable in order to raise a fund? 6. You can, of course, arrange for a running track, jumping pits and the like with absolutely no expense, if you can obtain the help of a number of the larger boys of the school to do the work. Will it not pay you to do at least this much as a start? 7. Do you plan to inform yourself on the matter of plays and games and their rules, so that you can direct, referee, or even coach for them? 8. Do you, yourself, like games and plays? Should a teacher play with the pupils? |