฿It is not the author's aim to here provide a definite course of lessons to be given in a perfunctory way or in a fixed order, hut rather to furnish suggestions based on practical work in the schoolroom that may be of value to those who have carefully examined the preceding pages of this book and become familiar with the experiments described. The suggestions are based on the experience of teachers who have been using the system here advocated for several years and testing it in various ways, and therefore it is hoped that they may be of value to any earnest worker who is not fully satisfied with her efforts in teaching color up to date. Consequently a brief outline of work is suggested for the earliest. years, according to a definite order, and then further suggestions and experiments are introduced, somewhat in the order in which they may naturally present themselves.
The time has passed when it is necessary to offer any argument for the study of color in the schoolroom. Every child begins his school life with many color impressions which he has been acquiring since the day when his baby fingers first stretched toward some bit of color, and his development demands a clear presentation to him during the earliest school years of the fundamental facts concerning color upon which all later work must be based.
A glass prism is one of the first requisites in the appliances for teaching color, and a prism which may be bought for a few cents will work wonders in the hands of an interested teacher, although a more perfect instrument, such as is sold with physical apparatus, will give colors which are better defined.
Experience in many schoolrooms has proved that a spectrum can be shown somewhere in the average room at some hour in every sunny day, especially in the longer days of spring and summer, and it is well to have the prism when not in use so fixed as to project the spectrum into the room much of the time, so that it may become familiar to the younger children.
