I. BRINGING THE FRESH AIR IN. 1. What do we mean by fresh air? Why
must the air we breathe have oxygen in it? 2. Is the air in the room
now the best you can have in it? How is the air moving? 3. Is there
always the same amount of air in the room? Then, if there is more
fresh air, there must be--bad air? If there is less fresh air, there
must be--bad air? What is the quickest way to let the bad air out and
the fresh air in? Why are you given recess? 4. What is a draft? Are
drafts dangerous? 5. Will night air hurt you? What air can you have in
the house at night except night air?
II. HEARING AND LISTENING. 1. Have you ever slept in a house close to
a railway? What did you notice whenever a heavy train went by? What
made the bed tremble? 2. If you have stood very near a moving train,
how did your ears feel? Why? 3. How far do sound waves travel after
they enter the ear? Could a person be deaf who had two perfect ears?
Where would the trouble be? 4. Draw a picture to show the parts of
your _left_ ear, and name each part. 5. How do you take care of your
ears? 6. Comment on doing each of these things:--firing a bean shooter
at anyone; throwing gravel or sand; firing off a cap or torpedo close
to some one's head; boxing a person on the ear; running a nail cleaner
or pencil point into your ear; putting on the baby's cap so that the
ears are folded forward; asking your teacher to repeat her question.
7. Have you tried to train your ears? How?--and why? 8. Find out about
some business, or occupation, in which it is necessary to have very
keen hearing, and write a little story about it.
III. SEEING AND READING. 1. Are you seated now in the best way for
reading or not? Why? 2. Why is it well to look up often, as you read?
3. How far from your eyes ought you to be able to hold this book to
read it easily? If you cannot, what should you do? 4. Draw a picture
of someone's eye, as you see it, naming the parts. 5. Draw a picture
of your eye as it would look if you could see the eyeball from the
_left_ side, and name the parts. 6. What takes the sight message to
the brain? 7. How does the nerve of the eye (the _optic nerve_) get
its messages? What, then, is _light_? If the light waves enter the
ear, can they make you hear? Why not? 8. When a baby is born, what
care should be taken of its eyes immediately, and why? 9. Have you
ever played any games in which the sharpest eyes won? What were they?
10. Write a little story about the picture on p. 59.
IV. A DRINK OF WATER. 1. Why do we want to drink water? How would you
know that your body must have a great deal of liquid in it? 2. Do you
know where the water you drink at school comes from? If you don't, try
to find out; and find out also just how it is brought to the school
and why it flows up to the faucets. 3. If you get drinking water from
a well, either at home or at school, tell where this well is--how near
the house or the out-buildings. Do you think that any waste from these
buildings could drain into the well? Why? 4. At your sand table or
from a sandpile in the yard, lay out a farmyard, showing where the
house, the barn, the chicken yard, and the pig-sty, also the privy
vault, are. Now locate the well so that it cannot receive drainage
from any of these places. 5. What is the danger in using drinking
water from a stream? 6. How could the germs of typhoid fever get into
the milk we drink? 7. What do we mean by _fermented_ drinks? Name
some. What is in these drinks that is so very harmful?
V. LITTLE COOKS. 1. Do you bring luncheon to school? What do you like
to have for your luncheon? Talk about this in class with your teacher,
and find out what things are best for school luncheons. 2. How is your
luncheon packed? Why ought it to be neatly done? 3. How long do you
take for luncheon, or for dinner at home? Is this time enough? 4. What
do you do right after eating? Is this what you ought to do? Why? 5.
What foods do you know how to cook? Write out the recipe for something
you have made, showing what you mixed and how you did it; and in what,
and how long, you cooked it. 6. Give three reasons for cooking food.
7. How is fried food so often made indigestible? 8. Are sweet foods
good or harmful? What does sugar come from? How is it made? 9. Write a
little story about one of these things: My First Lesson in Cooking;
Our Taffy Party; How I Kept Flies out of the Kitchen; How We Boys
Cooked Breakfast (or Supper); My Marketing.
VI. TASTING AND SMELLING. 1. If anyone asked you how a lemon tastes,
what would you say? What would you say about sugar? Salt? Pepper?
Pickles? Strawberries? Cheese? Onions? Radishes? How did you learn
about each of these? 2. What does your tongue do besides receiving
tastes? Note in the picture (p. 86) how strongly your tongue is
rooted; point to the tip of it in the picture. 3. How does your nose
help your throat and your lungs? How else may it help you? 4. Draw a
picture to show how air reaches the lungs. 5. What are _adenoids_? How
may you know if you have adenoids? If you have, what ought you to do?
Why? 6. Where do the men who want to smoke in the open trolley car
have to sit? Why? If children breathe tobacco smoke, what effect will
it have on them? Why is smoking a foolish habit? How is it often
harmful?
VII. TALKING AND RECITING. 1. When you are reciting in class, do you
think how your voice and the words sound to the other people in the
room? Show the class how you can make your speech sound just as you
want it to. 2. Give three ways in which you can take care of your
throat and voice. Put your hand on the place where your voice is made.
How is it made? 3. On your own picture of the throat, show where those
little folds of skin are (the picture on p. 86 shows, of course, only
the fold of skin, or _vocal cord_, on the right half of the windpipe).
VIII. THINKING AND ANSWERING. 1. With two or three of your classmates,
play telephone;--one must be "Central" and one "Information" at the
central office, and one must receive your message and answer it. A
number of the other children may join hands to make a long "wire" on
each side of "Central"; they will repeat the message softly from one
to another all down their "wire." 2. Now, suppose that you all
represent the telephone system in the body. Could you act out this
"Body-Telephone" call:--The eye sees a burning match on the floor, and
sends the message to its center in the brain; this center consults the
memory ("Information") as to what to do. Memory recalls that burning
matches are likely to set fire to other things and ought to be put
out. So the brain sends a message to the muscles of the foot to get to
work and stamp out the flame. In this play, what will you each call
yourselves? 3. Make up some other "Body-Telephone" plays. 4. What are
some of the messages that are being carried by your nerves, that you
know nothing about? 5. Think how many messages a baby stores away
before he is ready to answer them; what are some of these? Why can he
not answer them at once? What makes his brain and nerves and muscles
grow? How can you take the best care of yours? 6. In the picture on p.
96, point to the brain; to the spinal cord. How near the surface of
your back is your spinal cord? What keeps it from being easily
injured?
"ABSENT TO-DAY?"
I. KEEPING WELL. 1. Why do our bodies need "housecleaning"? How do we
get rid of the waste part that is a gas? Of the part that is water?
What carries the carbon dioxid to the lungs? What carries the waste
water to the sweat tubes and the kidneys? What other waste is there to
be gotten rid of? 2. Suppose that you and your chum each have an equal
chance to take a bad cold from someone else; your chum catches it, and
you don't. What might be one reason why you don't? Place your hand
over your liver. How can you keep it in good working order? 3. What is
the bladder? Why is it so very necessary to empty the bladder
regularly? When you perspire freely, how does that help the kidneys?
II. SOME FOES TO FIGHT. 1. You have seen moldy bread? What is, the
mold? What makes it spread? 2. Suppose you take some pieces of moldy
bread or potato and turn a glass jar or bowl over them. Catch a few
flies and put them under the glass, and leave them to crawl over the
moldy food. After a day, put the flies under another glass with some
pieces of fresh bread or potato. If you find that the fresh food
quickly becomes moldy, how will you think that the mold germs came to
it? (If you keep the jars in a warm place, the germs will grow faster,
and you won't have so long to wait before you can see the mold.) 3.
What other kinds of germs do flies carry? How do they carry them? 4. A
Board of Health caused a liveryman to be fined because he allowed a
manure pile to remain behind his stable. Why was his act a
misdemeanor? From what do flies come, and how do they grow? 5. On your
way to and from school, what have you noticed that could breed or
attract flies? How could these things have been avoided? 6. The next
time you go into a butcher shop or grocery store, notice how the
things are kept and be ready to tell the class what you think about
it. 7. In what ways may germs be carried, besides by flies? 8. What do
we mean by the "Great White Plague"? Why is it called this? What are
people doing to try to cure it? 9. What can you do to help prevent it?
10. Why ought you to stay away from other people when you have a cold?
What do you need most in order to get well? 11. Do you always have
your own towel to use? Why should you? 12. Write a little story about
the picture on p. 112.
III. PROTECTING OUR FRIENDS. 1. Is there a Board of Health in your
town? If not, what takes its place? See if you can find out some of
the things that the Board or the Officers have done for the town. 2.
What do we mean by _quarantine_? What is the _quarantine station_ in
ports where passenger steamers land? See if you can find out about any
time when a city or port was guarding its people against an infectious
disease. 3. Have you been vaccinated? How was it done? Why was it
done? How do we all know that it is a very wise thing to have done? 4.
How can you help the Health Officers to keep your town a healthful
place?