Show m goow OLD 1 y IV 51 C S f ROBERT I 1 t 1 al 4 9 F 0 il 1 I 1 I 1 14 3 W t esst ca V 0 AMAZING have been the intellectual achievements of winifred sackville stoner jr a ten year old pittsburgh girl that investigators persuaded her mother and chief teacher mrs bam winifred Sack sackville vilIe stoner to write the whole story of the childs education ta ih E a book this unusual little girl Is already 4 prepared tor for college in addition to studying astronomy and some other branches slig sh speaks eight languages she can recite a thousand i poems a i 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 plano piano she can read over a page of Sc huberts sere serenade rl a de close hiie the book and play it accurately and with much expression she can also hear bear a difficult selection played and so keen is her concentration she can immediately sit down at the piano and play it winifred draws well and paints admirably like BT browning owning one would imagine she will hardly know which to choose for her life work music art or writing but she Is very decided as to what the she expects to do winifred to Is going to earn and buy and be the editor of a great childrens magazine in tracing winifreda Wini freds development chronologically it may be said that she used polysyllables poly syllables in conversation at the age of one year read at the me age months wrote her own name on hotel registers and began kee keepings pinga diary at the age of 0 two learned the musical notes and played simple airs on the piano and amazed adepts at spelling at three learned the latin declensions and conjugations as singing exercises and received a diploma in esperanto at tour four wrote rote stories storie s and jingles for or the newspapers spoke eight languages translated mother goose rhymes into esperanto learned the waltz 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 jn in th the human body at eight and was elected president of 0 the junior peace league ot of america at ten how can readers account tor for the fact that wi winifred is a perfectly normal happy child romping singing loving and lovable gay as the canary she Is 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 hall ball dances and physically she Is as well as she Is mentally her little muscles are strong as armor bolts she la is as large as an ordinary twelve year old girl and can walk five miles without the least fatigue winifreda Wini freds father Is a colonel and a surgeon in the marine hospital service of the united states now he be is stationed at pittsburgh from him winifred undoubtedly gets her splendid physical well child she to is and she is a perfectly care practical like her father and possesses all her mothers love of art and music and the gift 0 of writing no less remark remarkable abl e is the little girls mother mrs stoner in her book natural education to find nothing in little winifreda Wini freds development seems that might not be attained in any healthy naturally bright child it this Is conceded tor for the sake of argument it would have to be admitted few children would have the advantages very very that ot of the extraordinary cleverness of a teacher such its as winifreda Wini freds in tact fact mrs born methods peculiarly her own has employed stoner might be said eald that mrs stoner has given ten it education ot of her ot of constant labor to the fears merely constant but labor that was not daughter intelligent and imaginative as well that was whole secret ot of winifreda Wini freds learning has for the whatever she was taught wn the ploy play spirit 7 v it A V T A 77 it came to her not as toil but as aa play she lived in a land of 0 fairies and giants and ana gnomes in explaining her system lira birs stoner starts out with the assumption that every child Is bom with a distinctive tendency or talent and that this will always bear truit fruit it discovered and cultivated ln in babyhood it is the mothers part to discover this his 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 rn mentally itally 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 aeneid to put the baby to sleep and taught the childs negro nurse to do the same she declares that the meter Is very soothing and that she has seen many another child yield to the somnolent influence of arma anna virum que cano Trola equi aul primus ab orts when winifred was six weeks old her mother began reciting selections from rom the english poets the babas favorites seemed to be Tenny sons crossing the dar bar and Macaula Macau lays yB horatius Horat lus fus at the bridge by the time I 1 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 anna winifred would roll it back and say Virum que and in this way the latin words and meter were fixed in the babas memory from the very beginning the mother would carry her baby about the house point out chairs ebaire 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 Mr would take a box of variously tinted yarns she would play she was mother red and baby babiy would bo be mother mathei green and they would look into the yarn tor for their children those of green tints of course being the babies of mother green winifreda Wini freds first toy was a red balloon which was tied to her ter wrist where she could admire it each day thereafter tor for several weeks there would be a balloon of different color and shop shape e until the child epe speedily edily came to know whether a balloon was light round red green and would go up and come down she was never permitted to hear anything but the best english although the mother was not finicky about vigorous expressive slang As soon as the child had learned to speak english reasonably well her mother began teaching her spanish by the time she was five she had learned to express herself la in eight languages mrs stoner declares however it if she had it to do over again sho she would teach esperanto first throughout all this preliminary instruct tion winifred was encouraged to take all ills outdoor exercise possible and soon was the peer ot of abe boys of her age ia fit the neighborhood at wrestling or throwing or catching a balt ball from that time winifreda Wini freds life became a prolonged play of the game of lets pretend sometimes she and ner her mother would be ba somebody and often each would bep be herself and an alter ego that Is mrs birs stoner groner would play one minute that she was herself and the next nert minute that she sha was her dear friend nellie and winifred would alternate between being herself and her dear friend ancy gey in this way they ney often could get up rather th a sizeable party when about to make some new exploration into the realm of 0 knowledge perhaps nothing is more illuminative in mrs airs stoners Sto ners book than her account of how she toight taught the child mathematics winifred had tailed failed to get any sort of grasp on t the he subject she says until the mother was in despair tearing fearing the childs mind might be lopsided at a chautauqua meeting in new mew york however the mother met prof A R hembrook ok a woman mathematics teacher who soon soom put her on the right track professor hambrook Hom brook explained that mrs stoner had been successful in teaching music art poetry history and languages becse because she herself loved those studies and had failed to teach mathematics because she had not brought alre fairy interest into it she volunteered to send weekly outlines of work which mrs biro stoner was waa to employ nc according cording to her own ideas mother ara child then begun began playing games with small objects such as beans eind 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 rudimentary lessons in addition were taught to make greater progress they played parchell par chesl chest with small email 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 simple addition and multiplication in learning subtraction they would have battles with tin soldiers and marbles and whenever a cannon shot would topple over a given number of soldiers winifred was able to decide how many were left stopping to count cancellation became a battle one of them playing the numbers on one ona side ot 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 learned the 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 ing drug store and sold things to her mother and so it went through the whole subject until at last the arl 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 titania would hide goodies under her pillow and when she was bad the fairy tailed failed to appear if she was ten minutes tardy about some task that meant ten minutes lost which bad to be taken out ot of her next recreation time she soon learned that offenses could bring about their own unpleasant consequences while good behavior meant tangible yan Jan giblo gible reward she was never permitted to stay at a single task when the point of 0 fatigue had arrived A striking instance of bf mrs stoners Sto ners methods as well as an illustration of the childs intellectual bias Is the story of winifred and the humblebee 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 ay I 1 saw a bumblebee humbling bumbling on a rose and as s I 1 stood admiring him he stung me on OIL the nose my nose in pain it swelled so large it looked like ilka a potato so daddy said but mother thought more like i a tomato and now dear children this advice I 1 hope tale take tal e from me and when you see a bumblebee just let that humble bumble be like her mother winifred believes in woman suffrage she has hag written several poems in behalf of equal franchise rights which have beaw published in various newspapers arid and magazines her valentines for suffragettes are decided decidedly y clever and have help edthe cause |