Show JS YEAD OLD arm arr throughout all this preliminary instruct alon winifred was encouraged to take all the outdoor exercise possible and soon was the peer of the boya of her age in the neighborhood at wrestling or throwing or catching a ball from that time winifred s life became a prolonged play of the game of let s pretend sometimes she and her moth er would be somebody and often each would be herself and an alter ego that Is mrs stoner would play one minute that she was herself and the next aln ute that she was her dear friend neallo and winifred would alternate between being herself and her dear friend lucy in this way they often could get up rath er a sizeable party when about to make some new exploration into the realm of knowledge perhaps nothing la more illuminative in mrs stoner s book than her account of how she taught the child mathematics 0 AMAZING have been the intellectual achievements of winifred sackville stoner jr a kenyear old pittsburgh girl that investigators persuaded her mother and chief teacher mrs tred sackville stoner to write the whole etory of the child a education in a book this unusual little girl is already prepared tor college in addition to studying astronomy and some other branches she speaks eight languages she can recite a thousand beems and she has written nearly five hundred poems and jingles herself winifred plays the piano well with no lessons except the game of making up stories on the piano ehe can read over a page of Sc huberts serenade close the book and play it accurately and with much expression she can also hear a difficult selection played and BO keen Is her concentration she can immediately sit down at the piano and play it winifred draws well and dalnas admirably like drowning one would imagine she will hardly which to choose for her life work music art or writing but ehe la very decided as to what i ae to do earn and abuy and be the editor of a great childrens magazine in tracing winifred a development chronology cally it may be bald that she used polysyllables poly syllables in conversation at the age of one year read at the age of sixteen months wrote her own name on hotel registers and began keeping a diary at the age of two learned ithe musical notes and played simple airs on the ipland and amazed adepts at spelling at three learned the latin declensions and conjugations jaa singing exercises and received a diploma in esperanto at tour wrote stories and jingles for the newspapers spoke eight languages translated mother goose rhymes into esperanto learned tho alti two step and three step at five learned the outlines of greek roman and scandinavian mythologies at seven composed a poem naming and locating all the bones in the human body at eight and was elected president of the junior peace league of america at ten how can readers account for the fact that winifred Is a perfectly normal happy child romping singing loving and lovable gay as the ca nary she la giving the freedom of the entire house and teaching to whistle and to keep perfect time to all the music that she whistles winifred has a hundred dolls As fast as she learns anything she imparts it to her dolls and pets she Is ardently devoted to sports she swims races plays ball dances and physically ehe Is as well as ehe Is mentally her little muscles are strong as armor bolts she Is as large as an ordinary twelve year old girl and can walk five miles with out the least fatigue winifreda Wini freds father Is a colonel and a surgeon in the marine hospital service of the united states now he Is stationed at pittsburgh from him winifred undoubtedly gets her splendid physical care and she Is a perfectly well child she Is practical like her father and possesses all her mothers love of art and music and the gift ot writing no less remarkable Is the little alria mother mrs stoner in her book natural education seems to find nothing in little winifreda Wini freds devel that might not be attained in any healthy naturally bright child it this Is conceded for the sake of argument it would have to be admitted would have the ad that very very few children vantages of the extraordinary cleverness of a bora teacher such as winifreda Wini freds in fact mrs has employed methods peculiarly her own it might be caad that mrs stoner has given ten bears of constant labor to the education of her daughter labor that was not merely constant but and imaginative as well that was intelligent for the whole secret of winifred e learning has wn ane play spirit whatever she was taught 4 W it came to her not aa toll but as play she lived tn a land of fairies and giants and gnomes in explaining her system mrs stoner starts out with the assumption that every child Is born with a distinctive tendency or talent and that this will always bear fruit it discovered and cultivated in babyhood it Is the mother s part to discover in infancy and to try to develop it just as much as to keep its body clean and see that it has the proper food the mothers obligation begins before birth and imposes upon her the duty of keeping herself so healthy and serene both mentally and physically that the baby will not have to start out with handicaps on its very first day not being able to sing mrs stoner chanted the lines from virgil 8 aeneid to put the baby to sleep and taught the child s negro burse to do the same she declares that the meter la very soothing and that she has seen many another child yield to the somnolent influence of anna cano aul primus ab when winifred was six weeks old her mother began reciting selections from the english poets the baby s favorites seemed to be Tenny sons crossing the bar and macaulay s horatius Horat lus at the bridge by the time winifred was a year old she could repeat crossing the bar and scan the first ten lines of the aeneid the mother invented a game in which she would roll a ball to the baby and say arma winifred would roll it back and say and in this way the latin words and meter were fixed in the babas memory fram the very beginning the mother would carry her baby about the house point out chairs tables etc and pronounce their names carefully she found it was just as easy to teach the baby to say train as to say choo choo car and just as easy to teach her to say dog as to say doggie she surrounded the baby with colored pictures to teach her colors mrs stoner would take a box of variously tinted larns she would play she was mother red and baby would be mother green and they would look into the yarn for their children those of green tints of course being the babies of mother green wenifred s first toy was a red balloon which was tied to her wrist where she could admire it fach day thereafter for several weeks there would be a balloon of different color and shape until the child to know whether a balloon was light round red green and would go up and come down she was never permitted to bear anything but the best english although the mother was not finicky about vigorous expressive elang As soon as the child had learned to speak eng reasonably well her mother began teaching her spanish by the time she was five she had learned to express herself in eight languages mrs stoner declares however it she had it to do over again she gouid teach esperanto firsts aa e winifred bad tailed to get any sort of grasp on the subject she says until the mother was in despair fearing the child s mind might be lopsided at a chautauqua meeting in new york however the mother met prof A R a woman mathematics teacher who soon put her on the right track professor hornbrook explained that airs stoner had been successful in teaching music art poetry history and languages because she herself loved those studies and had failed to teach mathematics because she bad not brought the fairy interest into it she volunteered to send weekly outlines of work which mrs stoner was to employ according to her own ideas mother ard child then began playing games with small objects such as beans and buttons these objects would be placed in a box and they would take turns drawing them out to see which could get the most at a single grab when helping the maid shell peas they would try to see how many peas there were in two or more pods in this way were to make greater progress they played par chesl with small dice and got practice from adding up the spots first they used two dice but finally they used five and winifred was soon able to add all the spots without conscious effort they played all sorts of games which would require simple addition and multiplication in learning subtraction they would have battles with tin sol adlers and marbles and whenever a cannon shot would topple over a given number ot soldiers winifred was able to decide how many were left standing without stopping to count cancellation became a battle one of them play ing the numbers on one side of the dividing line and the other playing the other there never were any quizzes because winifred was taught to get results and was not taught rules she values of money by the actual use of coins and the values of market products by going to market herself to learn pharmacists weights and measures winifred played at keeping drug store and sold things to her mother and so it went through the whole subject until at last the gm became fascinated with the funny doings of mr X and got interested in algebra winifred never suffered the humiliation of physical punishment when she did well the good fairy would hide goodies under her all low and when she was bad the fairy failed to appear it she was ten minutes tardy about some task that meant ten minutes lost which had to be taken out of her next recreation time she soon learned that offenses could bring about their own unpleasant consequences while good behavior meant tangible reward she was never permitted to stay at a single task when the point of fatigue had arrived A striking instance of mrs stoners methods as well as an illustration of the child s intellectual bias Is the story of and the bumblebee in her zeal to study the insect at first hand she picked one up the natural consequences followed while she was yet suffering winifred described her experience in these lines one I 1 saw a bumblebee bumbling on a rose and as I 1 stood admiring him he stung me on the nobe my nose in pain it swelled so arge it looked like a potato so daddy said but mother thought more like a tomato and now dear children this advice I 1 hope you 11 tale from me and when you see a bumblebee just let that bumble be like her mother winifred believes in woman suffrage she has written several poems in behalf of equal franchise rights which have been published in various newspapers and magazines her valentines for suffragettes are decidedly clever and have helped the cause ia i M f i t A |