Physical training for the elementary schools, gymnastics, games, and rhythmic plays

Foreword

The interest in physical education is a feature of the general conservation movement that has aroused the American people in recent years. Surely there is no greater national resource than the health and physical vigor of the people. This movement has taken four leading forms in our schools :

1. Better sanitary and hygienic conditions in school buildings.

4. Physical training as a means of physical development.

Play is nature's method of developing the nervous and muscular mechanisms that give control of the body. As children advance in age, they turn from the spontaneous friskings and gambolings of all young life, to games of cooperation involving intellectual and social elements. The mere joy of muscular exercise is forgotten in the effort to secure the object of the game. Imitation, emulation, rivalry, the most persuasive human motives are enhsted. But games have moral values quite equal in importance to their physical values. Cooperation, courtesy, self-control, a spirit of fairness are vital in wellconducted games. Hence the modern school is provided with a spacious playground equipped with suitable apparatus ; for it is recognized that air, sunlight, companionship, and play are essential conditions of growth and development.

In all ages, rhythmic exercises have appealed to the sons and daughters of men. The very constitution of our nervous and muscular systems demands alternate tension and relaxation. When the^e are accurately timed, there is absence of fatigue and the maximum of physical benefit. That these activities are enjoyed is nature's testimony that they are normal and wholesome, if carried on in moderation and with due regard to the proprieties of life. They give smoothness, grace, and harmony to the carriage and movements of the body. For girls they are probably the best form of physical training.

iv FOREWORD

If man lived in the open air, as his ancestors lived for countless generations, the ordinary industrial and social activities of life would probably secure adequate bodily development. But man now leads an artificial life. His occupations are largely indoors. Bad air, noise, dust, soot, lack of exercise, and other conditions of city life demand a larger measure of vitality, physical endurance, and constitutional vigor than the spontaneous activities of childhood afford. Even our school life is artificial ; the enforced confinement, the longcontinued sitting, the cramped postures demand positive corrective measures. These are to be found in the light gymnastics, adapted to schoolroom conditions, that fill the lungs, quicken the circulation, square the shoulders, improve the carriage, establish muscular control, and invigorate the whole system.

This book undertakes to furnish to the teacher specific directions for all these forms of physical activity. It is believed that teachers with Httle training in this field may by faithful study of these directions secure most gratifying results alike in the physical improvement of the pupils and in the general toning-up of the entire school life — even if they spend upon this work in schoolroom and playground no more than the *' one hour per week " required

by the school law of Illinois.

DAVID FELMLEY.

Illinois State Normal University, Normal, Illinois.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Especial acknowledgment is due to Miss Lora M. Dexheimer for her untiring assistance and encouragement which alone have made the book possible ; to Miss Ethel S. Drummond for collecting and arranging the music for the rhythmic plays ; to Miss Gertrude Baker for testing and verifying the gymnastic lessons and rhythmic plays.

The inspiring teaching of Dr. Louis Collin and Dr. William Skarstrom has been of great value in the writing of the gymnastic lessons.

Thanks are due also to A. Flanagan & Company for the permission to use the music for '* Ladita'* and ** The Mountain March (Norwegian).''

LYDIA CLARK.

Normal, Illinois,

February, 1917.