If he is successful in this, he will make them love the school and its teacher. It should be the constant aim and object of the instructer to make learning pleasing and useful, and his school attractive and agreeable. He should love his profession, and strive to make every one happy that may be committed to his care.

SECTION XI.

THE BEST METHOD OF TEACHING SPELLING AND

READING.

CHILDREN should know the names of the letters as soon as they are able to pronounce them. The names of these signs or characters may be learned by the infant mind as soon as it learns the names of its parents, its pictures, its toys, or the name of the cat or the dog. The child commences acting and learning from the first moment of its existence, and soon acquires a knowledge of the names and some of the qualities of the objects with which it comes in contact. If infants could have the letters in large size on strips or blocks of pasteboard, or on any small articles which they might be permitted to handle, and which might be presented in connexion with pictures of animals and birds,

they would soon learn and

pronounce the names of the letters, in the same way that they learn and pronounce the names of any of the signs or objects they first meet with. Thus, by bringing the letters under the notice of infants in the form of amusements or in close connexion with their playthings, they are early and unconsciously learned, without loss of time on the part of the parent or child. The letters are learned, too, not as an unpleasant task (which is always the case both to teacher and child if not learned when young), but as a desirable exercise. Infants, it is well known, are fond of exercising their little organs of speech, and parents are pleased with these promising efforts, and are always heard pronouncing names to be repeated by the delighted little prattler; and quite young children manifest pleasure in noticing the objects which may be selected for their attention. Now, the names which the parent pronounces to learn the child to articulate, should be the names of the letters of the alphabet; and among the objects which are selected to busy and amuse the child, should be the letters of the alphabet. If this were so, parents would find that what was necessary to know was learned, as it were, insensibly and with delight, and taught without labour.

If this is not done by the negligent or absent parent, and the child is sent to school ignorant of its alphabet, the teacher may perform the task in a few days, and in a pleasant manner, though a very different one from that which is generally adopted in our common schools. The usual

method of teaching children their letters, is to make them stand by the side of the master, and say A-eh, B-eh, C-eh, D-eh, E-eh, and so on to the end of the row, at most but three or four times a day. If there are three or four children by the side of the master, for the purpose of saying down their letters, but one is required to look on at the same time. In this way children spend from four to six months in learning the letters of the alphabet.

The way of teaching children their letters, which has always been found pleasant and successful, is, holding up in the sight of all the children two or three letters of considerable size, and whose union spells the name of some familiar object. For example, let the letters O X, standing under the picture of an ox, be shown to the children. The names of the letters are pronounced by the teacher, and by the children in concert after him. When the names of these two signs are known to the children, the teacher may tell them a story about the ox. By being interested with the idea which the letters represent, it will be almost certain that the children remember their names. The two letters may then be given to each of the children, who return to their seats, pleased with the signs which have been connected with such a pleasing idea or story. After a suitable interval the teacher may examine them, and if the names of the letters are remembered, they may be taken away, with a promise of showing them others, in

connexion with a picture and a story, in a short time.

The teacher again asks the attention of the children, and shows them the three letters b, o, y; one of them the same they had in the first lessson, that he may try the memory. The picture of a boy is seen over the letters; and after the children have learned the names of the two signs b, y, the teacher relates a story of a little boy he once knew or heard of. The children return to their seats with the two letters of which they have just learned the

names.

This method of teaching the alphabet demands but a few moments of time from the teacher, and makes it a delightful employment for himself, for he sees the young minds before him taking their first steps in knowledge, and at the same time their little features lighted up with joy in their new enterprise. In one week's time he may make every child familiar with all its letters. How much time, and labour, and impatience, and compulsion on the part of the teacher, and dislike, and fretting, and hatred on the part of the pupil might be saved, if instructers would permit children to get knowledge in school in the same manner that Nature teaches them out of it!

After the child is able to give the name without hesitation to each letter in the alphabet, it should begin to learn the powers of letters, when united in syllables. Here teachers and scholars find difficulty; and here many errors and bad habits, which

go with the child in all its after-studies and performances, take their origin. The powers of letters change with their connexion and position. From this circumstance many of the letters have several sounds, and some of them more than one hundred different, distinct sounds or powers. The child cannot be expected to perceive the great variety of different sounds in each letter, and to give to the letters of the syllable those particular sounds, which their connexion or position, or the arbitrary standard of pronounciation, may require. This can be done only after much study-after a long study of the etymology of the language; yet to some degree the child is required to do this who merely knows the names of the letters.

In distinguishing and placing those different sounds is the difficulty. The child sees that the letters, by being brought together in syllables, have changed their names; for to the child the name of the letter is its sound. To obviate this difficulty, and to take away this uncertainty in the mind of the child respecting the correct sound of the letter it may be pronouncing, teachers should select a number of dissyllables, in each of which the letters have the same sound. When the child has learned to pronounce these, it has acquired one of the powers of these letters. After this, syllables of three and four letters may be spelled and pronounced by the child. The letters of these syllables should have the same powers they formerly had when standing in dissyllables. The pupil will find these words

N