282 NOTE ON SCHOOL ARRANGEMENTS AND APPARATUS. Although it is important to every school that i should be in a healthy locality, yet as infants are more liable to be affected by surrounding influences, and as they are, as a general rule, more delicate than elder children, peculiar care should be exercised in selecting a site for the Infant School. A high situation with a dry subsoil is to be preferred. The principal room should be lofty, well lighted and ventilated, and the floor not raised more than one or two steps above the general level of the playground, as much danger and delay is caused where many infants have to pass rapidly into and out of school by flights of steps. One class-room, at least, is indispensable; and where the school is large, two or more may be needed. To accommodate one hundred pupils, the school-room should be forty feet long, twenty wide, and fourteen high, with a class room fifteen feet square. The windows should be large, placed high to secure free ventilation, and, where practicable, facing the north, to avoid the direct rays of the sun entering the room. Every Infant School should have a play-ground attached, which should be carefully drained and levelled. A surface of flagging is the best, being dry, clean, and durable. A flower border should surround the play-ground. The only fixed gymnastic apparatus necessary is a rotatory swing, consisting of a stout pole well secured. in the earth, and rising perpendicularly to the height of eighteen or twenty feet, with a revolving spindle inserted in a socket at the top, to which four ropes are suspended. A slide, consisting of two inclined planes meeting at an angle of 120°, and having protecting sides about eighteen inches high, furnishes a safe and amusing exercise to the younger children. The accompanying plan will shew the general arrangements of the school. The gallery consists of a series of raised steps, each eighteen inches wide; the two lowermost six, the two next eight, and the rest nine inches high. The sides 1 of the gallery should be protected by wainscoting rising four feet above the level of the steps. The lesson posts are intended to hold the pictures and reading tablets; they are five feet high, and drop into sockets in the floor, so as to be removable when the whole floor is wanted for exercises. They are provided with sliding clamps, to hold the tablets; and each has a monitor's seat placed near it, as shown in the margin. The walls of the school-room should be wainscoated to the height of four feet. A continuous desk and seat should be fixed round the school-room, and when there is space enough, a few parallel desks may also be placed in the centre of the floor, between the lesson posts. The best mode of heating the schoolroom is by throwing in warmed air from a proper apparatus ; but when this is not practicable, and open fires are resorted to, the air for ventilation A. Lesson Post. B. Monitor's Seat should be admitted from a point as near the fire as possible, as by this means a more equal heat is diffused in the room. The apparatus necessary for an Infant school consists of an Arithmeticon or ball frame; tablets, with the alphabet, and spelling and reading lessons; Prints illustrative of Natural History, trades, national costumes, and other subjects; books, maps, and pointers ; together with a collection of natural objects for training the perceptive faculties of the children. THE END. |