Children's room

“ The absurd notion that children can only be taught in a room, must be exploded. I have done more in one hour in the garden, in the lanes, and in the fields, to cherish and satisfy the budding faculties of childhood, than could have been done in a room for months. Oh, mankind have yet something to learn about teaching children! ”

“ The dropping of a book or overturning of a chair, the walking about do not disturb the young student's train of thought; and while I do not wish to be quoted as advocating a noisy room, but on the contrary would work for a quiet one, day in and day out, I do feel that allowances must be made for noises that are not intended to be annoying, and that we should not sacrifice to the ideal of deathly stillness the good we hope to do through the child's love for the room in which he feels free to express himself in a natural, friendly atmosphere. ”

“ Teach the children what a library reading room means. If in the first days there is a disposition on the part of any boy to be rough or unruly, or if a group of girls make a visiting-and-gum-chewing rendezvous of your tables, don't waste any time in Sunday-school methods of discipline, trying to keep a hold on the child at any cost to the library. A sentence in a report of Pratt Institute children's room is worth adopting as a guiding principle. "The work of the children's room should be educative, not reformatory." ”

“ She should live in her room before its existence, locating every door and window, the height of the windows from the floor, every corner and cupboard, the relation of her room to the other departments of the library. In proceeding to furnish the room she will learn what to adopt and what to avoid by visiting other children's rooms and asking if the tables and chairs are the correct height, if the exit is satisfactorily guarded, what working space is necessary for a certain circulation, whether the electric light fixtures are easily broken, and many other things. ”

“ That in a library whose work with the children has been confined to the general delivery desk, and the divided attention of clerks whose time an adult public would monopolize, there is to be set aside a commodious apartment to be known as the Children's Room ”

“ The children's room is only one room in a great dignified library. As the newspaper room, the catalog room, and all the rest are fitted up with furnishings suited to their peculiar needs, so the children's room is furnished with tables and chairs and books suited to its constituents. ”

“ If there were such a thing as a meter to register sound to be hung in a children's room beside the thermometer, I should not be alarmed if it indicated a pretty high degree, provided I could look around the room and observe the following conditions: a large room, full of contented children, no one of whom was wilfully noisy or annoying, most of them being quietly reading, the ones who were moving about asking in low tones the children's librarian or each other, perfectly legitimate questions that were to help them choose the right thing. ”

“ It has been proven that furnishings and color produce either desirable or disastrous effects upon the sensitive minds of children. As all children's rooms are usually a combination of bedroom, play room, and study, it is well to keep in mind colors, design, arrangement, and practicality for all purposes.
To most children, a spotty or too often repeated design is distracting. Blues and violets soothe, while reds, yellows, and sometimes greens are exciting and stimulating colors. ”

“ The selection of adult books in all classes, especially in biography, travel, history and literature is too limited in the children's rooms of many libraries and should be enlarged to the point of making the shelves of classed books look more like those of a library and less like those of a school room. ”

“ I also have to say that our children's room is 45 feet away from the adult department and we do not permit young people under 14 to roam about the building, we keep them strictly in their own room. As soon as young people are admitted to the high school, we at once admit them to the entire library even if they should be under 14 years of age. ”

“ In a busy children's room she is rarely able to provide enough assistants to do the necessary routine work and help each individual child select his reading, therefore it becomes necessary for her to direct the children's reading through large groups and to adapt for this purpose methods used by other educational institutions. ”

“ Every effort is made to keep the good will of the older boys and girls, and it is only with these that there is any suggestion of trouble. The children's room, especially since we have had a children's librarian, is under perfect discipline. There are dissected maps, quiet games, and stereopticon views on their tables beside Caldecott's and other picture books and they are so well entertained that there is no occasion for mischief. ”

“ The best playground is the home yard, where mother can keep an oversight; where other children can come so she knows the playmates, and where the child is kept in sympathy with home influences. For indoor play, there should be a room kept sacred to the uses of childhood. In this way both adults and children have more freedom, with less conflict of comfort and convenience. For children under three or four years this room will naturally be the nursery ”

“ As for the furniture, we ought to buy two long tables and some kindergarten chairs. Then we ought to furnish one upstairs room with about four little beds and the rest of the things that go in a bed room. Then we would have a place for any of the children that weren’t feeling very well. There is a nice large yard behind the house where they could play in summer or even in winter when the weather wasn’t too cold. ”

“ We have one room in a crowded tenement district where the right young woman has produced unusual order. The children come in and go out happy and interested in their books, and there is little need for reproof. This is due largely to the fact that we started in with a determination to have reasonable order and the children learned that to use the room it was necessary to be orderly, and they are much happier and get more from the library. ”

“ Let a child who lives in a cramped little flat where one can hardly set foot down without stepping on a baby come into a wide, lofty, spacious room set apart for children's reading, and, other conditions in the library being as they should the mere effect of the unwonted spaciousness will impress him and have a tendency to check the behavior that goes with tenement- house conditions. We of the profession are so impressed with the atmosphere that should pervade a library, that a very small and unpretentious collection of books brings our voices involuntarily to the proper library pitch. ”

“ And yet, while the "sound meter" of the children's room would register farther up, it might really be more orderly than the other room, for every child might be using his room as it was intended to be used, while the adult department might contain a couple of women who came in for the express purpose of visiting, and yet who knew how to whisper so softly as not to be invited to retire. We must remember that, if children make more noise, they do not mind each other's noise as adults do. ”

“ The less furniture a nursery contains the better, for much furniture obstructs the free circulation of the air, and, moreover, prevents a child from taking proper play and exercise in the room—an abundance of which are absolutely necessary for his health. ”

“ If children are numerous, and bedrooms few, this third room may have to be taken for schoolroom purposes, or, at best, may have to be used by boys and girls in the holidays, or when lessons have to be prepared, and in this case it would require quite different treatment to what it would receive were it merely a pretty sitting-room, as it should most undoubtedly be. ”

“ The kindergarten system is largely used in the school-room when, as is sometimes necessary, children are sent at an earlier age than five, to learn obedience and habits of discipline, which cannot be observed so strictly in the nursery. In the well-to-do English home the school-room is a delightful spot. It is generally one of the best rooms in the house, chosen for its brightness, its pleasant aspect, and general convenience, and in the lives of most children it is a place of real happiness, and to the girls of the family full of delightful memories. ”

“ Children suffer not only from the number of presents they receive, but from that over-crowding of modern rooms that so 178 often makes it necessary to use the school-room and nurseries as an outlet for the overflow of the house. ”

“ The use of the reference room, or reference desk, is a thing to be taught as much as the books themselves, and in this matter those libraries in which there is not an entirely separate children's room may have an advantage. ”

“ Don’t let this be done, dear readers, until you are absolutely crowded out, because you will be miserable, and because you can never tell that the room may not be wanted as a sanitorium; an upstairs sitting-room, a refuge for our grandchildren, should we have married children, and should they be coming to stay with us, and bring their babies in due course of time; while the room having been decorated and furnished as a nursery is that and nothing else, and would have to be completely altered, should we settle to do away with it altogether. ”

“ Sometimes the town library has a building large enough to admit of a separate room for the children, and books and readers in such numbers as would make the use of this room desirable, but there is not money enough to pay the salary of an attendant to watch the room. Here indeed is a blessing in disguise. This idea that the children must be watched all the time, that they cannot be left alone a minute, is fatal to all teaching of honor and self-restraint and self-help. ”

“ Let the window, or what is better, the windows, of a nursery be very large, so as to thoroughly light up every nook and corner of the room, as there is nothing more conducive to the health of a child than an abundance of light in the dwelling. A room cannot, then, be too light. The windows of a nursery are generally too small. A child requires as much light as a plant. Gardeners are well aware of the great importance of light in the construction of their greenhouses, and yet a child, who requires it as much, and is of much greater importance, is cooped up in dark rooms! ”

“ In that room every bright and pretty thing should be gathered, and certainly nothing more quickly attracts the attention of children than a choice collection of flowers. To find these all about the house, but especially in the nursery,—their own peculiar domain,—secures a taste for them far more surely than to see them kept exclusively in the green-house, or in rooms set apart for their culture and nothing more. ”

“ Between those who, on the one hand, take themselves so very seriously, pondering with anxious care what probable effect on the child's future career as a reader the selection of a blue or a green mat for mounting the picture bulletin would have, and those who look upon the children's room merely as an interesting plaything, driving the big boys away in disgust by encouraging visitors who exclaim, "Oh, what cunning little chairs and tables! ”

“ Nursery.—Today the nursery is looked upon as an essential apartment in a house where children abide, and from a hygienic standpoint, it may justly be called a sensible room, for children after they walk should not sleep in the mother's room. Whether the room is large or moderately small it should, by an means, have plenty of ventilation, the more windows the better. ”

“ But marvels in the way of ingenious planning have been evolved where necessity, the mother of invention, has ruled; and assuredly there is no greater necessity than a healthful bedroom.
The children's bedroom in the house of six to eight rooms is likely to be utilized as a nursery or playroom on rainy days or in winter. It should have an abundance of sunlight. The largest and best room of all should be used by the heads of the household. To reserve the choicest apartment for the chance guest is an absurdity that sensible people have abandoned. ”

“ In each room is a high narrow cupboard about one quarter of the necessary size for all that education demands; most education authorities provide some good pictures, but the best are usually hung on the class-room wall behind the children, and all are above the children's eye level. "Oh, teacher, my neck do ache!" ”

“ A play-ground ought to be attached to an infant school; where, in fine weather, for every half-hour they spend in-doors, they should spend one in the open air; and, in wet weather, they ought to have, in lieu of the play-ground, a large room to romp, and shout, and riot in. To develop the different organs, muscles, and other parts of the body, children require fresh air, a free use of their lungs, active exercise, and their bodies to be thrown into all manner of attitudes. Let a child mope in a corner, and he will become stupid and sickly. ”

“ Children undress and scramble into one bed.)
(Street noises all discontinue, back of room opens out on to the orchard and the music of first scene is heard with dancing children. Everychild comes into the room with her rosy lamp. The three children sit up in bed and rub their eyes. Everychild glides all about the room and looks at the squalid place in dismay, then goes up and smiles at the children.) ”

“ Those who came from homes where they have had no restraint of any sort, and have too recently come to the library to have acquired reading-room manners; and those who know very well how to conduct themselves, but enjoy making a disturbance. We do our best to help the former to learn how to conduct themselves quietly—the essential means of course is to interest them in books and to make them feel the friendliness of the room. ”