LANGUAGE SERIES FIRST BOOK BY C. ALPHONSO SMITH, PH.D., LL.D., L.H.D., AND LIDA B. MCMURRY Formerly Primary Training Teacher, State Normal, DeKalb, Illinois JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY RICHMOND, VIRGINIA HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRAN GIFT OF GINN & CO. COPYRIGHT, 1919, By B. F. JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY All Rights Reserved Two-book Series, 1921. PREFACE As some one has said, the task of the teacher of English is twofold: (1) To loosen the bounden tongue. (2) To train it to move aright. In the elementary school these two aims should be made the basis of the work. Both are to be secured by oral exercises. Such work includes: training and practice in connected talking; careful articulation and pronunciation; exercises on common errors in speech (mostly through games and habitual use); enlargement and refinement of the vocabulary. The Smith-McMurry Language Series has made these four phases of language work basal. The word most constantly in use in the books is "Tell," and the questions asked are so framed as to train the child to "tell" in a connected manner. All children have something to say, for each day brings them a host of experiences that demand expression. The part of the teacher is to give the children the chance to relate these experiences under the right conditions. Instead of allowing the children to indulge in disconnected and garrulous conversation, she must provide opportunities for talking to some definite purpose; she must supply the situations which make language teach ing vital. In the Smith-McMurry Language Series these situations are based on the natural interests of childhood and youth; they include outdoor life, and the inspirational side of adult life. The children, however, are not asked to express the feelings and thoughts they will have when they become men and women, but the feelings and thoughts they have now, as children. The situations call for story-telling, original stories, dramatization, pantomime, and description. They train in the habitual use of correct speech; they provide instruction in capitalization, punctuation, and other details of form. In short, their aim is "to loosen the bounden tongue, and to train it to move aright." The authors and publishers are indebted to the Page Company and Mrs. Laura E. Richards for the use of "Mother's Riddle"; to Houghton Mifflin Company for "The Robin's Rain Song," by Celia Thaxter, "The Rabbit's Nest," by John Burroughs, "A New Year Song," by Lucy Larcom, selections from Hiawatha, by Henry W. Longfellow, "The Four Winds," by Frank Dempster Sherman, "Christmas Everywhere," by Phillips Brooks, a stanza from a poem by W. D. Howells, an extract from Walden, by Henry D. Thoreau; to Charles Scribner's Sons for "The Wind," "My Bed Is a Boat," "At the Seaside," "Farewell to the Farm," "Travel," and "Marching Song," by Robert Louis Stevenson; to P. V. Volland Company and Wilbur D. Nesbit for "A Song for Flag Day"; to Robert Loveman for "A Rain Song"; to Henry Holcomb Bennet for "The Flag Goes By." THE AUTHORS. CONTENTS CHAPTER I-III. PICTURE STUDY PAGE 9-10 XX. HOW TO WRITE NAMES OF PLACES XXI-XXII. A RIME... REVIEW OF QUESTION MARK XXIII-XXIX. STUDY OF BEES. . . USE OF "Too" 3 69-71 |