A MODERN SPELLER Second Year BY KATE VAN WAGENEN PRINCIPAL PUBLIC SCHOOL No. 2, BOROUGH of the Bronx New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1909 All rights reserved PREFACE DICTATION DAY BY DAY is published with the hope that it may appeal to the teacher of the average child. A careful supervision of the work of little children has led the writer to believe that too much is often attempted during the first few years of a child's life. In the large cities, the standard cannot be what a few children, under exceptional circumstances, are able to accomplish, but what the child of ordinary capacity is able to master. Therefore the first principle of these books is absolute Simplicity. A second principle that finds expression here is Repetition. All small, troublesome words — the bane of composition work are repeated again and again, in every grade of the series. In these books, the unnatural arrangement of columns of words is reduced to a minimum. The old-fashioned method of teaching children to read, by compelling them to learn lists of words, is happily abolished, and the day is not far distant when a similar method of teaching spelling will also be relegated to the “Land of Forgotten Things." "The Rock-a-By Lady" and the "Dutch Lullaby" by Eugene Field are used by permission of Charles V |