In The Nature-Study Idea, Liberty Hyde Bailey articulated the essence of a social movement, led by ordinary public-school teachers, that lifted education out of the classroom and placed it into firsthand contact with the natural world. The aim was simple but revolutionary: sympathy with nature to increase the joy of living and foster stewardship of the earth. With this definitive edition, John Linstrom reintroduces The Nature-Study Idea as an environmental classic for our time. It provides historical context through a wealth of related writings, and introductory essays relate Bailey's vision to current work in education and the intersection of climate change and culture. In this period of planetary turmoil, Bailey's ambition to cultivate wonder (in adults as well as children) and lead readers back into the natural world is more important than ever.

Easy-to-implement nature study lessons designed for homeschoolers, co-op groups, and traditional classes, each activity helps students observe and discover for themselves through a firsthand experience with nature. With scientific information, diagrams, and journaling prompts, this book inspires a love for nature and makes teaching it accessible to all educators.

In the early twentieth century, a curriculum known as nature study flourished in major city school systems, streetcar suburbs, small towns, and even rural one-room schools. This object-based approach to learning about the natural world marked the first systematic attempt to introduce science into elementary education, and it came at a time when institutions such as zoos, botanical gardens, natural history museums, and national parks were promoting the idea that direct knowledge of nature would benefit an increasingly urban and industrial nation. The definitive history of this once pervasive nature study movement, TeachingChildren Science emphasizes the scientific, pedagogical, and social incentives that encouraged primarily women teachers to explore nature in and beyond their classrooms. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt brings to vivid life the instructors and reformers who advanced nature study through on-campus schools, summer programs, textbooks, and public speaking. Within a generation, this highly successful hands-on approach migrated beyond public schools into summer camps, afterschool activities, and the scouting movement. Although the rich diversity of nature study classes eventually lost ground to increasingly standardized curricula, Kohlstedt locates its legacy in the living plants and animals in classrooms and environmental field trips that remain central parts of science education today.

This text comprises a rare piece of work by L. H. Bailey, originally published in 1903. A thought-provoking treatise on the numerous considerations to be taken into account during the teaching and studying of natural sciences, this is a classic educational work and its core philosophies are still relevant to the modern era. Liberty Hyde Bailey was a master of horticulture and botany, and founded the American Society for Horticultural Science. This rare book is proudly republished here complete with original illustrations and a new introductory biography of the author.

In the 1870s the noted Harvard University zoologist Louis Agassiz created the Anderson School of Natural History, which set out to teach natural history from the direct observation of natural phenomena. 'Nature-study' took this idea and aimed it at the elementary level. Colleges in the U.S. designed new nature study programs that focused on instructional classes for rural schools. One such program was developed at Cornell; designed and taught by Anna Botsford Comstock and Liberty Hyde Bailey. Liberty Hyde Bailey wrote that the "Nature Study Idea" will not only teach science but for a child will: "open the child's mind to his natural existence, develop his sense of responsibility and of self-dependence, train him to respect the resources of the earth, teach him the obligations of citizenship, interest him sympathetically in the occupations of men, quicken his relations to human life in general, and touch his imagination with the spiritual forces of the world."