The nursery school / by Margaret McMillan.

  • Margaret McMillan
Date:
[1930]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The nursery school / by Margaret McMillan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    recreation ground trees. We were not allowed to go as a school into the empty ground, but we saw the grass. It was a real open-air school. Now it is far better equipped, but we do not see so much grass or sky. At night our boys slept out in the shelter. They saw for the first time the fairness and the splendour of the night sky. They looked at the dawn. They would have, I think, some great ideas on building and architecture in later life, for they would know the great originals. There is an arcade or covered way round all our buildings. Paved underneath, it is a good place to play in; to sleep in also. One note of warning may be added. Of all rooms to be avoided in the Nursery School plans the assembly- room is the most dangerous. Here, in this central room all children are massed at certain hours in most schools; but this massing is a serious danger for little ones. One of the secrets of avoiding infection is to avoid breath-contact at all times. In the two-year shelter the children must be spaced well for meals, and must never be allowed to huddle together at any hour or place. Nothing can better illustrate for us the need not only for a new order of building, but for new habits and observation, than the continual risk of infection and outbreak of contagious disease that so often follows entertainments, children’s parties, assemblies, and the close contacts that accompany these. Also the cloak-room should be an open-air place, at least for dry clothing. Wet clothing must be dried, but hung later in an open-air place. In the last hour of the day the need for vigilance is greater than at other times. Children should not sit about in outdoor clothes. They should dress only to go home. That they meet, in large numbers, only in the open, is one great safeguard of the Nursery School.
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