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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    crocuses are with us then, and daffodils begin to peer. But with March the great pageant begins. It should be. freely offered to the eyes of little children, for no painted apparatus will take the place of massed colour. The golden sweep of tulips or daffodils a-blow, pre¬ paring us for a greater sweep and depth of colour by and by; the fire of geranium, bright fields of marigold, and rivers of blue veronica and larkspur. Lilies of all kinds; even Eastern lilies that scent the garden, lilies of spring, summer, and autumn. Many lovely things bloom freely in our city gardens. It is only a question of getting the garden idea to replace the fixed idea of indoor things, of cut flowers, bulbs in pots, and little boxes of flowers—all good in their way, but giving no adequate impression to the child of the real nature of living colour. When he has been in the garden, and only after he has been there, should a child try to recognize the colours in his boxes and tablets and match them. The first impression is the original, without it any colour-work is artificial and vague. Perfume. This is not unimportant, for smell is a function on which health and safety depend as well as a pleasure. It is a sense, too, that has deeper associa¬ tions with lasting memory than any other. The three-year-olds love to smell flowers. I cannot tell whether they smell wandering scents such as violets or sweet briers, for they do not yet speak of all their experiences, but I think it likely, since they love to smell the cut flowers whose scent is not nearly so sweet as the breath of living blossoms. Young children also observe flowers and make naive remarks on them as soon as they can speak a little. A delicate three-year-old little boy, often ill, whom I carried one day to see a dark-spotted lily, appeared to enjoy the scent very much, It is like me,” he said,
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