OPEN AIR SCHOOL IN A FOREST

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 13 August 1907, Page 4

OPEN AIR SCHOOL IN A FOREST

BOYS AND GIRLS DIG TO LEARN GEOGRAPHY. Sir William Treloar, the Lord Mayor of London, and the aldermen and councillor*, who apent a week In Germany, visited the remarkable institution founded and carried on by the municipality of Chariottenburgh, • prosperous town of a quarter of a million inhabitants which forms the western part of Greater Berlin, but is a separata borough.

This is the "school in the woods," where, during the spring, enmmer and autumn months sickly children receive. •very morning and afternoon lessons in the open air. The school consists of a large enclosure in Grunewald Forest, on the western outskirts of Berlin, where there is the purest fresh air, and the piae trees provide plenty of shade for the pnpils of both sexes, who are select- ] ad from the elementary schools of OharVottenburugh by medical men. The. children receive in these idyllic sylvan suurroundings Instruction from female teachers specially selected to amy on this beneficent work The curricurem is not identical with that of the elementary schools, special attention being devoted to games of all kinds. Swings are provided for the weaker children who are unable to run •boot with their companions, and gym- , aatte apparatus enable both boys and • girls to have healthy physical exercises I a addition to those obtained by running ; about beneath the trees.

Digging is utilised as an aid to geography lessons. The Lord Mayor and fort; were able to inspect the miniature tnt perfectly proportioned earthworks representing the Riesengebirge aid othsr European mountain ranges. Othwr earthworks near by showed tht eourses of the "Rhine and Elbe. The institution is to serve as a model for similar open-air schools to be estab-

lishtd by Berlin and other German muni' dpalitiet.