"The first vital principle is that the teacher of young children must provide for them life in miniature, i.e. she must provide abundant raw material and opportunities for acquiring experience."

The practical translation of this in the words of the teacher of to-day is, "I must choose furniture, and requisition apparatus." The teacher of to-morrow will say to her children, "I will bring the world into the school for you to learn." The Local Education Authority of to-day says, "We must build a school for instruction." The Local Education Authority of to-morrow will say, "We must make a miniature world for our children."

The world of the Nursery School child probably requires the most careful thought in this respect: a large room with sunlight and air, low clear windows, a door leading to a garden and playground, low cupboards full of toys, low-hung pictures, light chairs and tables that can be pushed into a corner, stretcher beds equally disposable, a dresser with pretty utensils for food; these are the chief requirements for satisfying physical needs, apparent in the actual room. Physical habits will be considered later, under another heading.

Outside, in the playground, there should be opportunities for physical development, for its own sake: swings, giant strides, ladders laid flat, slightly sloping planks, and a seesaw should all be available for constant use; if the children are not warned or given constant advice about their own safety, there is little fear of accidents.

Thus the purely physical side of the children is provided for, the side that they are, if healthy, quite unconscious of; what else does experience demand at this stage?

Roughly classified, the raw experience of this stage may be divided into the experience of the natural world of living things, the world of inanimate things, and the social world. For the natural world there should be the garden outside, with its trees, grass and flower beds; with its dovecot and rabbit hutch, and possibly a cat sunning herself on its paths; inside there will be plants and flowers to care for; the elements, especially water, earth and air, are very dear to a young child, and it is quite possible to satisfy his cravings with a large sand-heap of dry and wet sand; a large flat bath for sailing boats and testing the theory of sinking and floating; a bin of clay; a pair of bellows and several fans to set the air in motion. There is always the fire to gaze at on the right side of the fire-guard, and appreciation of the beauty of this element should be encouraged.

The world of inanimate things includes most of the toys that stimulate activity and give ideas. The chief that should be found in the cupboards, round the walls, or scattered about the room, are bricks of all sizes and shapes, skittles, balls and bats or rackets, hoops, reins, spades and other garden tools; pails and patty pans for the sand-heap; pipes for bubbles, shells, fir-cones, buttons, acorns, and any collection of small articles for handling; all kinds of vehicles that can be pushed, such as carts, barrows, prams, engines; drums and other musical instruments; materials for construction and expression, such as chalks, boards, paints and paper.

For experiences of the social world, which is not very real at this individualistic period, come the dolls and doll's house, horses and stables, tea-things, cooking utensils, Noah's ark, scales for a shop, boats, soldiers and forts: a very important item in this connection is the collection of picture-books: they must be chosen with the greatest care, and only pictures of such merit as those of Caldecott, Leslie Brooke and Jessie Wilcox Smith should be selected. Pictures form one of the richest sources of experience at this stage, as indeed at any stage of life, and truth, beauty and suggestiveness must be their chief factors.

The toys should be above all things durable, and if possible washable.
Broken and dirty toys make immoral children.

Besides the material surroundings there are opportunities, the seizing of which gives valuable experiences. These belong to the social world, and lie chiefly in the training in life's social observances and the development of good habits. This side of life is one of the most important in the Nursery School, and needs material help. The lavatories and cloakrooms should be constructed so that there is every chance for a child to become self-reliant and fastidious. The cloakrooms should be provided with low pegs, boot holes, clothes brushes and shoe brushes: there should be low basins with hot and cold water, enamel mugs and tooth brushes for each child, nail brushes, plenty of towels, and where the district needs it, baths. The type provided by the Middlesex Education Authority at Greenford Avenue School, Hanwell, gives a shower bath to a whole group of children at once, thus making a more frequent bath possible. Perhaps for very small children of the Nursery School age separate baths are more suitable. This is a question for future experience on the part of teachers. There should be plenty of time for the children to learn to wash and dress themselves.

In the school-room there should either be tablecloths, or the tables should be capable of being scrubbed by the children after each meal. Their almost inevitable lack of manners at table gives an invaluable opportunity for training, and again in such a case there should be no question of haste. The meals should be laid, waited on and cleared away, and the dishes washed by the children themselves, and they should be responsible for the general tidiness of the room. This involves tea-cloths, mops, dusters, washing bowls, brushes and dustpans.

In the Transition Classes and Junior School the furniture and apparatus can be to a great extent very much the same, their difference lying chiefly in degree. It is a pity to bring the age of toys to an abrupt conclusion; in real life the older children still borrow the toys of the younger ones while there are some definitely their own: such are, jigsaw and other puzzles, dominoes, articles for dramatic representation, playing cards, toys for games of physical skill, such as tops, kites, skipping ropes, etc. Such prepared constructive materials as meccano—and a great mass of raw material for construction, generally termed "waste." There should be a series of boxes or shelves where such waste products of the home, or of the woods, or of the seashore, or of the shop, might be stored in some classified order: the collective instinct is stronger than the more civilised habit of orderliness: here is an opportunity for developing a habit from an instinct. There should also be materials for expression, such as clay, paper, chalk, pencil, paints, weaving materials, cardboard, and scenery materials; and such tools as scissors, cardboard knives, needlework tools, paste brushes, and others that may be necessary and suitable. The rooms should be large and suitable for much moving about: the most usual conditions should be a scattered class and not a seated listening class. This means light chairs and tables or benches where handwork can be done; low cupboards and lockers so that each child can get at his own things; broad window-sills for plants and flowers and a bookcase for reading and picture books. Here again good picture-books are as essential as, even more essential than, readers in the Transition Class. They will be a little more advanced than in the Nursery School, and will be of the type of the Pied Piper illustrated, or pictures of children of other lands and times. Some of Rackham's, of Harold Copping's, of the publications by Black in Peeps at Many Lands, are suitable for this stage. Readers should be chosen for their literary value from the recognised children's classics, such as the Peter Rabbit type, Alice in Wonderland, Water-Babies, and not made up for the sake of reading practice.

The pictures on the walls should be hung at the right eye-level, and the windows low enough for looking at the outside world—whatever it may be. The teacher's desk should be in a corner, not in the central part of the room, for she must remember that the children are still in the main seeking experience, not listening to the experience of another. They should have access to the garden and playground, and all the incitements to activity should be there—similar to those of the Nursery School, or those provided by the London County Council in parks. The bare wilderness of playground now so familiar, where there is neither time nor opportunity for children to be other than primitive savages, does not represent the outside world of beauty and of adventure.

The lower classes of Junior School should differ very little in their miniature world. Life is still activity to the child of eight, and consequently should contain no immovable furniture. There will be more books, and the children may be in their seats for longer periods; the atmosphere of guided but still spontaneous work is more definite, but the aim in choice of both furniture and apparatus is still the gaining of experience of life, by direct contact in the main. Such is the Requisition Sheet to be presented to the Stores Superintendent of the Local Education Authority in the future, with an explanatory note stating that in a general way what is actually required is the world in miniature!