Other martyr nations have had their hosts, their legions, of friends. Other stricken peoples have had bountiful prodigal help. But Armenia has been virtually cut off from outside aid, isolated, left to bleed, to suffer, and to die. A little more and an entire Christian nation will have perished from the earth. These two million five hundred thousand Armenians can be saved from final starvation only as America appreciates their awful condition, extends them the helping hand of fellowship and sympathy, and multiplies a thousandfold her divinely inspired benefactions. Armenia, once happy, contented, and self-supporting, is now a land swept by death and filled with tragedies that are too deep for tears. "The mind grows numb," a writer testifies, "and the heart, sick from a constant recital of tales of such horror as it is difficult to believe the twentieth century could hold. The poor, wizened, monkey-like babies that have been held up before my eyes are the worst spectacle of all." One Armerican consular agent reports that in his daily walk from his house to his consulate he counted twelve persons who had died from starvation the preceding night. Give now, give to-day, and there will be childish lips in Armenia that will pray for you, there will be mother hearts that will bless you, there will be men who will remember your act of brotherhood and humanity to the end of their days. Help feed these people. Help bind up their wounds. It is little to do and the reward is great and sure. Truly they who give to Armenia will be laying up treasure in Heaven, and they too, no less, will be laying up the richest and brightest treasure in their own hearts. "And the King will say unto them: 'Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, for I was hungry and ye gave me to eat, thirsty and ye gave me to drink . . . naked and ye clothed me And they will say: "When saw we thee naked, or hungry, or sick, or in prison and ministered unto thee?" And then will come that sublime and inexpressibly beautiful answer: "Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me." Look at the picture on this page. Can you not hear each child repeating the same pitiful words, "I'm hungry! I'm hungry!" His ears are stopt who will not hear the children's cry for help. He would be a Pharisee, indeed, who could pass by on the other side. Upon these children, or such as these, helped back REBECCA STRUTTON, San Diego, Calif. Can you see this awful tragedy going on from day to day and not do some thing to help? No matter how many other claims there are upon you, reserve something for these poor dying people and send it quickly. Every dollar you contribute will go direct to the sufferers without a penny deducted anywhere along the line for expenses. Address The J. H. Shults Co., Manistee, Mich. And what thou doest do QUICKLY! GENERAL SUGGESTIONS FOR THE APRIL PROGRAM By Dr. Jenny B. Merrill New York City Easter has come and gone but possibly as the children return to kindergarten, the experiences of vacation week, if there has been one, will have made Easter more real to them than it was as they approached it. A backward glance as well as a forward glance is advisable. There are sure to be in many cases, little Easter treasures to show the sympathetic kindergarten mother-perhaps an Easter chick, or a candy egg, a faded flower, a pretty Easter card, or a toy bunny. Each and every tiny treasure can be made “a point of contact," and also “a point of departure.” To any young teacher not familiar with such technical terms as these, let me say, they simply mean that you reach the child's mind best by starting where he is;-you obtain "a point of contact" with the child's mind by first being sympathetically interested in what interests him for the moment. Then you lead the child from that point a little farther on the road that stretches ahead towards a goal you have in your mind but that he has not. Then "the point of contact" has become "a point of departure." Now, what is your aim for this, another new month? First, to let it be a new month for yourself even though you have lived the month of April many times! Indeed is it not a new month to us in very truth as we go to the railroad stations all over the land to cheer our brothers on their new journey abroad? Is it not a new world? Must we not renew our strength at the very Fountain of Life if we are to be cheerful and hopeful as we meet the children day by day? Can we talk of flowers and sunshine or will April this year be all clouds and rain? "April, month of smiles and tears, Joys and sorrows, hopes and fears." Whatever our woes, let us watch for the glimpses of sunshine and make much of them. To do this with our little ones, God's great out-ofdoors schoolroom will help us most of all. Hence to accomplish our aim for the month we will start our spring walks, we will try to find the wild flowers, the birds, the shadows in company with the children. We will visit their home gardens and learn from their wiser parents, or if need be help start a garden if only in a little corner of the yard. We will tell of the greater need of planting every foot of ground if our President's message has not already been under stood. We will praise if it has already been regarded. If we are in towns we will help find available lots for gardens, or in some cases suggest an old box. Even an old straw hat can be made to hold a child's garden! Try it. This is the month to watch the birds returning, learning to recognize a few by name, to watch them building nests. It is the month to watch for the earthworms, for the ants, for the frogs, or at least the polly wogs-a truly wonder month for the children and for us. Then a day will come when we must all stay indoors and watch the clouds and listen to the "tap, tap, tap" of the rain, and possibly the clap, clap of thunder! Will the bright rainbow come too? Perhaps so. We will play about it with our prism and name its wonderful colors, singing our rainbow song many a day. Six bright golden fairies came Perhaps we may tell the old, old story of Noah and the Ark and learn of the promise, "I do set my bow in the cloud." Mrs. Jesse Merrick Smith, (nee Miss Mabel McKinney) is deeply interested in kindergarten work in China and Japan. On March 14, she entertained "The Chinese Club" of Teachers' College at her home on Riverside Drive, New York City. The addresses before the club were as follows: Kindergarten Nature Work, Miss Alice E. Fitts. Some Progressive Lines in Kindergarten Method, Prof. Patty S. Hill. Froebel's Writings, Dr. Jenny B. Merrill. Dr. Merrill will speak at Mt. Holyoke College on April 7 in the interest of the Daily Vacation Bible Schools. The Y. W. C. A. of the college has supported a Vacation Bible School for several years in a needy quarter of New York. WHAT IS A UNIVERSITY? A university is not to be confounded with a college, however large or however ancient, or with a college and a surrounding group of technical or professional faculties or schools. A university is any institution where students, adequately trained by previous study of the liberal arts and sciences, are led into special fields of learning and research by teachers of high excellence and originality; and where, by the agency of libraries, museums, laboratories, and publications, knowledge is conserved, advanced, and disseminated. Nicholas Murray Butler PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS ON AN APRIL PROGRAM By Dr. Jenny B. Merrill New York Jenny B. Merrill, Pd. D. FIRST WEEK-Birds and Their Eggs Circle Conversation or Story. Monday, April 1. Here is a problem! Will the children come with chicks and candy eggs? With Easter joys to talk about, or will they be full of "April Fool Day?" Will it be a sunshiny day or will the children be caught in a shower, all unprepared for the new month? Let the event suggest the morning talk. Be natural but lead on, adding a new story or listening to the children gladly if they have much to tell after the holiday. Start a new leaf on the calendar. If a story is needed in the morning circle or later in the day or week tell of the "egg-rolling" on the President's lawn on Easter Monday. Where does our President live? In Washington in The White House. (Show a picture of the house if possible.) Right in front of President Wilson's house the grass grows green in April. There is a little slope like this (Draw a slope on the blackboard or make one on the sand table, or with your hand. There are many ways to illustrate). Who has seen a grassy hill or slope in the park? Our good President and his wife know that little children like to play on the grass, and they know that many little children near where they live, have no grass to play on. So on Easter Monday, they invite many little children to come and play on the grass near the White House. Because it is Easter Monday, they have bright colored eggs for the children to roll on the grass. Wouldn't you like to be in the fun? I am sure you would. Perhaps by and by. You can make a picture about rolling eggs on the grassy slope. What will you draw? What colors will you want? Can we have egg rolling here on our sand table? How? 2. Sing the Easter songs. 3. Find Gift Balls. 4. Marching or rhythms. 5. Drawing. Illustrate story. Draw and color eggs. Lead the children to suggest colors. 5. If a perfect egg form is desired, prepare beforehand several card board eggs and let children trace around one. If Montessori material is used, fill in the egg shaped hole in one of the metal plates. The hole in the card board made by cutting an egg out may be used as well as the metal plates. 6. Recess out of door frolic. 7. Lullaby-rest period. 8. Games. Hiding balls as Easter eggs. Hunting for them. Many kindergartners secure small candy eggs, wrap them in wax paper and have a regular "egg hunt" on Easter Monday. End with "the quiet game." 9. Paper cutting. Put a sheet of colored paper and a pair of scissors in front of each child, telling them to cut whatever they please quietly. Observe who starts, who imitates, who does not know what to do. It has been an exciting day. Let it close quietly without much talking. Let the silence be felt. If any are talkative, say, shall we see who can work quietly until it is time to go home? Here is an envelope to put all the pieces you wish to keep. Here is the waste basket for all the bits you do not want to keep. Here is a brush and pan in case any scraps fall. Who knows how to use it? I will see. I like tidy children. 10. Farewell song. Coo-coo-coo I won't live with you But later the dove found a dear little girl rocking her baby brother and singing so sweetly that she said Coo-coo-coo May I live with you? Play the pigeon house game. Dramatize the story of the dove as told above. Build freely with blocks or outline with sticks. Use seeds for eggs. Model eggs and nests of clay or plasticine. Suggest other occupations as paper cutting, drawing or making chains of spring colors and let groups work as they prefer. It may be the crow or blackbird will be mentioned by the children. Planting has begun and even the "scare crow" may be an object of interest. If the children have seen a scarecrow let them tell what it is for in their own way. Play "scare-crow" in the ring. It will make fun. The balls may be placed on the floor around the scare-crow and children may creep up to get them and then run away as they pretend to be frightened! All will laugh heartily and laughing is good for our lungs and for our spirits too! Friday. Review but not formal drilling but re-living anything the children ask for. Practise on any new songs is desirable, adding a second stanza if desirable. Have a bird concert. "Spring once said to the nightingale, See Mrs. Hubbard's Collection. Usually teach short songs, preferably of one stanza. 6. Drawing windows with colored crayons like those in a church. Talk of a Rose Window. Draw a steeple. If there is time for more occupation work, give out paper circles, fold in quarters or eighths and cut little pieces out here and there. Then open. Play this is a round church window. The cuts repeated will be symmetrical. 7. Games-Dramatize going to church. Children tell how to arrange chairs. Have a choir. Recently I saw a little girl in the Horace Mann Kindergarten of Teachers' College, N. Y., place chairs for a church all by herself. Then she stood up on a chair in front of the others, evidently remembering the minister. At this point the kindergartner suggested singing a hymn and afterward church was out. Allow children to choose other games if there is time. 8. Home going, with goodby song. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The Aquar ium. The aquarium should be placed on a table where the children can observe closely. They should be allowed to feed the fishes. They love to imitate the movements of both fishes and tad-poles. Let them suggest how to do so. Play the circle is a pond. Count the fishes in the aquarium. Let us have just as many in our pond. Teach a song from Mother Play or find a new one in your song books. (See Valentine & Clayton's Daily Songs for sale by Kgten Magazine Co.) For gift work, give the children their choice of sticks to outline the aquarium if it is a square one. Colored sticks of the inch length may be used for fishes. If there are plants in the aquarium, let green sticks be given; later cut fishes out of paper and mount them on a circle if the aquarium is in a globe. Children love to draw the pebbles too at the bottom. For games, repeat "Little fishes in the pond." Play also any other games that relate to water or fishes. Also suggest quiet games as fishes are so quiet as they move in the water. Teach swimming and diving movements. If children live in the country, they may tell you about fishing. Show pictures of as many kinds of fish as you can and tell which are good for food. Tell about the request that we eat more fish food. Why? Children are hearing more and more about the war. It is better to talk to them about what we can do to help than about shooting. If children are inclined to talk of shooting, practice throwing balls at a target or into a box. Roll balls to hit another ball. Play with nine pins. Tell about spearing fish because we must catch fish to eat. Men learn to aim quickly. Kindergartners must use judgment, omitting or using such points as suit the age and environment. Some children may have fathers who are fishermen. In the city a walk to a fish market or stand may be of interest. Again it may in many cases be best to concentrate upon a globe of gold fishes. Friday. Review day. Children choose from the week's work. Practice songs. Model fishes in clay. FOURTH WEEK Monday. Usual friendly talk about home doings. each day of tad-poles if possible. "Taddy pole and polly wog, Lived together in a bog Where they went to swimming school. Each a most decided frog." This may be all very simply illustrated after the story is told. Country children do not always know the relation of tad poles to frogs. The important thing in kindergarten is to observe in the aquarium the changes. Children have keen eyes and will observe eagerly if given freedom. Let them run to the aquarium whenever they wish. Once a kindergartner let her little folks cut tad poles out of black paper and place several between two sheets of transparent paper, pasting the edges so that the children could let the tadpoles "swim." It was novel and interesting for children always like things to "move." The children love to squirm and wriggle about in the circle like tadpoles; then sit quietly like a frog; then spring forward, resting a second between each hopping movement. There will be days in April when the showers come and the children will always enjoy imitating the patter as previously suggested. Drawing, outlining with sticks and rings, sorting seeds, modeling in clay, making gardens in the sand are the occupations suitable for April. Try to follow the child's lead part of the time at least and let him set a problem and solve it if he can with a suggestion when it seems needed. Accept crude work and yet keep an ideal in mind. If the weather points to the possibility of an early May party, work on May day decorations during the two closing days of April. May baskets to be filled on May day with real or paper flowers must be ready for May day. REPORT OF THE I. K. U. CONFERENCE to Mar. 2, 1918 BY JENNY B. MERRILL, PD. D. The yearly meeting of the department of superintendence of N. E. A. has been growing in interest and importance during the last few years. Every grade of school and college is interested in good supervision, knowing it to be vital to progress, to the welfare of both teacher and child. Wise supervision also affects home and community life so that we are not surprised to find The Parent-Teachers' Association and the National Congress of Mothers holding conferences at the same time and place that there may be a breathing, as it were, of each other's atmosphere. A few years ago, the International Kindergarten Union, feeling that its own isolated annual meeting is too valuable to relinquish, determined also to hold a conference at the time of the N. E. A. meetings. Kindergartners naturally turned to Miss Lucy Wheelock to inaugurate these new conferences and to do all in her power to re-interest our superintendents in the kindergarten, for it must be admitted that many were beginning to be severe critics of some of the best known kindergarten methods. Miss Wheelock has most ably fulfilled this new function. We are all as kindergartners deeply indebted to her and to those who have rallied to her call. This year was no exception at Atlantic City. The program was of keener interest than ever because of the expected report from Miss Curtis who was known to have braved the war zone and to have returned from France in safety with a message of importance for the children of America as well as those of France and Belgium. The kindergarten conference was held in Rose Room, Traymore Hotel, one of those magnificent hotels of Atlantic City which the Mayor of the city had proudly welcomed us to enjoy at the opening |