Handbook of nature-study for teachers and parents : Based on the Cornell…
"Handbook of nature-study for teachers and parents" by Anna Botsford Comstock is an educational handbook on nature study written in the early 20th century. It guides teachers and parents in fostering children’s careful observation, curiosity, and affection for the outdoors. Blending philosophy with practical, ready-to-use lessons, it shows how to teach about animals, plants, weather, and stars, and how to weave nature-study into everyday schoolwork. The opening of the book traces how
Cornell University’s nature-study effort grew from an agricultural improvement movement into a statewide program that supported teachers with leaflets, clubs, and extension teaching, leading to this expanded compilation. It defines nature-study as simple, truthful, first-hand observation and explains what it should do for children (useful knowledge, imagination, aesthetic sense, companionship with nature) and for teachers (renewal, better discipline, comfort in saying “I do not know”). It then offers crisp, practical guidance: keep lessons short and fresh; favor living subjects and fieldwork; equip classrooms with simple cages and aquaria; use lenses and stories well; take a humane, sensible stance toward life and death; and connect nature-study naturally with language, drawing, geography, history, arithmetic, gardening, and agriculture. The section on using the book introduces the “teacher’s story” plus observation outlines, and Part II begins bird study with the familiar hen, starting from feathers as weatherproof clothing and the basic parts of a feather. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Read or download for free
For an overview of the different reading options, see our Reading Guide
| Reading Options | Url | Size | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Read now! | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78142.html.images | 2.9 MB | |||
| EPUB3 (E-readers incl. Send-to-Kindle) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78142.epub3.images | 113.2 MB | |||
| EPUB (older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78142.epub.images | 113.2 MB | |||
| EPUB (no images, older E-readers) | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78142.epub.noimages | 1.6 MB | |||
| Kindle | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78142.kf8.images | 115.0 MB | |||
| older Kindles | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78142.kindle.images | 114.3 MB | |||
| Plain Text UTF-8 | https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/78142.txt.utf-8 | 2.3 MB | |||
| Download HTML (zip) | https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/78142/pg78142-h.zip | 113.0 MB | |||
| There may be more files related to this item. | |||||
Similar Books
About this eBook
| Author | Comstock, Anna Botsford, 1854-1930 |
|---|---|
| Title | Handbook of nature-study for teachers and parents : Based on the Cornell nature-study leaflets, with much additional material and many new illustrations |
| Original Publication | Ithaca: Comstock Publishing Company, 1911, pubdate 1916. |
| Credits | Carol Brown, Aaron Adrignola and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) |
| Language | English |
| LoC Class | QH: Science: Natural history |
| Subject | Nature study |
| Category | Text |
| EBook-No. | 78142 |
| Release Date | Mar 8, 2026 |
| Copyright Status | Public domain in the USA. |
| Downloads | 945 downloads in the last 30 days. |
| Project Gutenberg eBooks are always free! | |