Ruby Kathleen Polkinghorne Toy-Making in School and Home

Annotation

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility. The girl takes pains to carry out her work (neatness is often the sole aim put before her), the boy finds methods. The girl hovers round the well-known place, the boy makes a bee-line to fresh fields. See how this affects reading: the girl still hankers after What K aty Did, What Katy Did Newt, while the boy of her age is reading Jules Verne or Ballantyne or Henty, or if there is open access to shelves in the Free Library near him, you see him finding books on Airships, Submarines, Carpentry, or Engineering. We started our voluntary classes with these ideas in mind, and at first allowed girls to choose an indoor occupation in the two winter terms instead of outdoor games. Many girls preferred games, but others chose Art or First Aid or Cookery or Handwork or Needlework. They had to work at least a term at the chosen occupation. We felt that the girls gained great benefit from the hobbies, not only in the additional happiness of working at what they enjoyed, but in an increase of freshness of mind for other work. This year we have gone still farther and have given each girl one period of voluntary work in addition to a whole afternoon for games or gardening; moreover, the four lowest forms have each one period of class work in toy-making yet even now the children say that the time is too Short. It is really amusing to see a change of classes in the woodwork-room the first class dare not and cannot stay a minute after the bell has rung, for the second class is in and already at work.