The child's day E-Book

Woods Hutchinson

• Herausgeber: Woods Hutchinson
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

GOOD MORNING I. Waking Up II. A Good Start III. Bathing and Brushing
BREAKFAST
GOING TO SCHOOL I. Getting Ready II. An Early Romp III. Fresh Air - Why We Need It IV. Fresh Air - How We Breathe It
IN SCHOOL I. Bringing the Fresh Air In II. Hearing and Listening III. Seeing and Reading IV. A Drink of Water V. Little Cooks VI. Tasting and Smelling VII. Talking and Reciting VIII. Thinking and Answering
‘ABSENT TODAY?’ I. Keeping Well II. Some Foes to Fight III. Protecting Our Friends
WORK AND PLAY I. Growing Strong II. Accidents III. The City Beautiful
THE EVENING MEAL
A PLEASANT EVENING
GOOD NIGHT I. Getting Ready for Bed II. The Land of Nod
QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

Leseprobe

THE CHILD’S DAY

BY

WOODS HUTCHINSON

First digital edition 2017 by Maria Ruggieri

GOOD MORNING I. Waking Up II. A Good Start III. Bathing and Brushing

BREAKFAST

GOING TO SCHOOLI. Getting Ready II. An Early Romp III. Fresh Air - Why We Need It IV. Fresh Air - How We Breathe It

IN SCHOOLI. Bringing the Fresh Air In II. Hearing and Listening III. Seeing and Reading IV. A Drink of Water V. Little Cooks VI. Tasting and Smelling VII. Talking and Reciting VIII. Thinking and Answering

‘ABSENT TO-DAY?’I. Keeping Well II. Some Foes to Fight III. Protecting Our Friends

WORK AND PLAYI. Growing Strong II. Accidents III. The City Beautiful

THE EVENING MEAL

A PLEASANT EVENING

GOOD NIGHTI. Getting Ready for Bed II. The Land of Nod

GOOD MORNING I. Waking Up II. A Good Start III. Bathing and Brushing

I. Waking Up

If there is anything that we all enjoy, it is waking up on a bright spring morning and seeing the sunlight pouring into the room. You all know the poem beginning, ‘I remember, I remember the house where I was born; The little window where the sun Came peeping in at morn.’ You are feeling fresh and rested and happy after your good night’s sleep and you are eager to be up and out among the birds and the flowers. You are perfectly right in being glad to say ‘Good morning’ to the sun, for he is one of the best friends you have. Doesn’t he make the flowers blossom, and the trees grow? And he makes the apples redden, too, and the wheat-ears fill out, and the potatoes grow under the ground, and the peas and beans and melons and strawberries and raspberries above it. All these things that feed you and keep you healthy are grown by the heat of the sun. So, if it were not for the sunlight we should all starve to death. While sunlight is pouring down from the sun to the earth, it is warming and cleaning the air, burning up any poisonous gases, or germs, that may be in it. By heating the air, it starts it to rising. If you will watch, you can see the air shimmering and rising from an open field on a broiling summer day, or wavering and rushing upward from a hot stove or an open register in winter. Hold a little feather fluff or blow a puff of flour above a hot stove, and it will go sailing up toward the ceiling. As the heated air rises, the cooler air around rushes in to fill the place that it has left, and the outdoor ‘drafts’ are made that we call winds. These winds keep the air moving about in all directions constantly, like water in a boiling pot, and in this way, keep it fresh and pure and clean. If it were not for this, the air would become foul and damp and stagnant, like the water in a ditch or marshy pool. So, the Sun God, as our ancestors in the Far East used to call him thousands of years ago, not only gives us our food to eat, but keeps the air fit for us to breathe. In still another way the sun is one of our best friends; for his rays have the wonderful power, not only of causing plants that supply us with food, the Green Plants, as we call them, to grow and flourish, but at the same time of withering and killing certain plants that do us harm. These plants, the Colorless Plants, we may call them, are the molds, the fungi, and the bacteria, or germs. You know how a pair of boots put away in a dark, damp closet, or left down in the cellar, will become covered all over with a coating of gray mold. Mold grows rapidly in the dark. Just so, these other Colorless Plants, which include most of our disease germs, grow and flourish in the dark, and are killed by sunlight. That is why no house, or room, is fit to live in, into which the sunlight does not pour freely sometime during the day. The more sunlight you can bring into your bedrooms and your playrooms and your schoolrooms, except during the heat of the day in the summer time, the better they will be. The Italians have a very shrewd and true old proverb about houses and light: ‘Where the sunlight never comes, the doctor often does.’ So, you see that Nature is guiding you in the right direction when she makes you love and delight in the bright, warm, golden sunlight; for it is one of the very best friends that you have indeed, you couldn’t possibly live without it. In one sense, in fact, though this may be a little harder for you to understand, you are sunlight yourselves; for the power in your muscles and nerves that makes you able to jump and dance and sing and laugh and breathe is the sunlight which you have eaten in bread and apples and potatoes, and which the plants had drunk in through their leaves in the long, sunny days of spring and summer. So, throw up your blinds and open your windows wide to the sunlight every morning; and let the sunlight pour in all day long, except only while you are reading or studying, when the dazzling light may hurt your eyes, and for six or seven of the hottest hours of the day in summer time. Perhaps your mothers will object that the sunlight will fade the carpets, or spoil the furniture; but it will put far more color into your faces than it will take out of the carpets. If you are given the choice of a bedroom, choose a room that faces south or southeast or southwest, never toward the north.

II. A Good Start

When you are really awake, and have had a good look to see what kind of morning it is, you will feel like yawning and stretching, and rubbing your eyes four or five times, before you jump out of bed; and it is a good plan to take plenty of time to do this, unless you are already late for breakfast or school. It starts your heart to beating and your lungs to breathing faster; and it limbers your muscles, so that you are ready for the harder work they must do as soon as you jump out of bed and begin to walk about and bathe and dress and run and play. When you jump out of bed, throw back the covers and turn them over the foot of the bed, so that the air and the sunlight can get at every part of them and make them clean and fresh and sweet to cover you at night again. Though you may not know it, all night long, while you have been asleep, your skin has been at work cleaning and purifying your blood, pouring out gases and a watery vapor that we call perspiration, or sweat; and these impurities have been caught by the sheets and blankets. So, after a bed has been slept in for four or five nights, if it has not been thrown well open in the morning, it begins to have a stuffy, foul, sourish smell. You can see from this why it is a bad thing to sleep with your head under the bedclothes, as people sometimes do, or even to pull the blankets up over your head, because you are frightened at something or are afraid that your ears will get cold. Your breath has poisonous gases in it, as well as your perspiration; and the two together make the air under the bedclothes very bad. Now you are ready to wash and dress. But before you do this, it is a good thing to take off your nightdress, or turn it down to your waist and tie it there with the sleeves, and go through some good swinging and ‘windmill’ movements with your arms and shoulders and back.

(1) Swing your arms round and round like the sails of a windmill; first both together, then one in one direction, and the other in the other.

(2) Hold your arms straight out in front of you, and swing them backward until the backs of your hands strike behind your back.

(3) Hold your arms straight out on each side, clench your fists, and then smartly bend your elbows so that you almost strike yourself on both shoulders, and repeat quickly twenty or thirty times.

(4) Swing your arms, out full length, across your chest five or ten times.

(5) Swing forward and down with your arms stretched out, until the tips of your fingers touch the floor.

(6) Set your feet a little apart, swing forward and downward again, until your hands swing back between your ankles.

When you come back from these down-swings, bend just as far back as you can without losing your balance, so that you put all the muscles along the front of your body on the stretch; and then swing down again between your ankles. This will help to tone up all your muscles, and limber all your joints, and set your blood to circulating well, and give you a good start for the day.

III. Bathing and Brushing

Now you are ready to wash and dress. You can easily take off the gown, or garments, that you have worn during the night; but there is one coat that you cannot take off one that is more important and useful and beautiful than all the rest of your clothes put together, no matter of how fine material they may be made, or what they have cost. Do you remember the old Bible story about Joseph and his ‘coat of many colors’? Perhaps you’ve wished you had one just as nice. Now, the fact is, your coat is more beautiful even than Joseph’s; and, as for its uses, it is the most wonderful coat ever made! This coat of yours changes its color from time to time; sometimes it is pink, sometimes red, sometimes a soft milky white, and sometimes a dull dark blue, or purple. I wonder if you guess what it is. Sometimes it is dry and sometimes wet, sometimes it is hot and sometimes cold, sometimes rough and sometimes smoother than the softest silk, just run your hand gently over your cheek! Now you have guessed my riddle. This ‘wonderful coat’ is your skin, which covers you from top to toe. It fits more closely than any glove, and yet is so easy and comfortable that it never rubs or binds or hurts you in any way. Will the wonderful coat wash? Yes, indeed, and look all the prettier. In fact, to keep it white and clear you must bathe often, not only your hands and face, but your whole body. Your skin is a strainer, you know. It is a ‘way out’ for some of the gases and waste water from the blood. What will happen, then, if you don’t wash your skin? The little holes, or pores, that the sweat comes through may become clogged. The strainer won’t let the poison out, and so it will stay inside your body. Then, too, if you do not wash the skin, the little scales that are peeling off the outside coat will not be cleared away. You have noticed them, haven’t you, sometime when you were pulling off black stockings? You found little white pieces, almost as fine as powder, clinging to the inside of the stockings. These little scales are always rubbing off from your skin. So, every morning it is good to splash the cool water all over yourself, if you can, as the birds do in the puddles. You don’t need a bathtub for this, though of course it is much pleasanter and more convenient if you have one. Pour the water into a basin and splash it with your hands all over your face, neck, chest, and arms. Then rub your skin well with a rough towel. Next, place the basin on the floor; put your feet into it and dash the water as quickly as you can over your legs. Then take another good rub. But you must not do this unless you keep warm while you are doing it, and your skin must be pink when you have finished. If you are chilly after rubbing, you should use tepid, even very hot, water for your morning bath. In summer, you can bathe all over easily; but in winter, unless your room is warm, it is enough to splash the upper half of your body. Once or twice a week you should take a good hot bath with soap and then sponge down in cool water. See how the birds enjoy their bath; and you will, too, if you once get into the habit of bathing regularly. Now let us take a good look at this coat and see if we can find out what it is like. The other day I saw some boys playing basketball. They wore short sleeves and short trousers. Four were Indians, and five were white boys, and one was a negro. The skin of the white boys seemed to shine, it looked so white; and the negro’s shone in its blackness; but the Indian’s looked a dull rich dusky brown. Yes, you say, they belong to different races. But what causes the difference in their color? Little specks of coloring matter, or pigment, which lie in the outer layer of the skin. Even white skins contain a little pigment, they are not a pure white. A Chinaman’s skin has a little more of this pigment, so that it looks yellow; an Indian’s has still more; and a negro’s has most of all, making him black. Sunlight can increase the amount of pigment in the skin. The people who live in the torrid zone have much darker skins than those who live where the days are short and cold. You have noticed, yourself, that when you expose the skin of your face or arms to the hot sun, you become freckled, or tanned. This tanning, or browning, of the outer layer of the skin protects the more delicate coats of skin below from being scorched or injured by the strong light. When you are playing, and running with your schoolmates, you see that their faces grow very red, and even their hands. Why is this? Because the heart has been pumping hard and has sent the red blood out toward the skin. The red color shines through the outer part of the skin. The pigment in the Indian’s skin, or the negro’s, prevents the red blood underneath from shining through, as it does through yours. The skin, you see, is made up of different layers. When you burn yourself, you can see a layer of skin stand out like a blister. It is white; but if the blister is broken, underneath you see the coat that is full of tiny blood vessels, so tiny and so close together that this whole coat looks red. The skin, like every other part of the body, is made up of tiny animal cells. In the outer coat, they become quite flat like little scales and then wear off; and their places are taken by the newer cells that are growing from beneath. The skin grows from beneath, and bit by bit it sheds its old outer coat. This is how it keeps itself nice and new on the outside and ‘grows away’ the marks of cuts and burns. Now hold up your hand and look across it toward the light. What do you see? It looks fuzzy, doesn’t it? Ever and ever so many tiny little hairs are on it. The other day a little boy asked me what made his skin look so rough? I looked, and saw that all the little hairs were standing on end, so that his skin looked like ‘goose-flesh.’ It was because he was cold. The muscles at the roots of the hairs had shortened, so that they pulled the hairs straight up and made the skin look rough. What part of the body has a great deal of hair on it? The head, of course. Isn’t it strange that you have such long hair on the top of your head and none at all on the soles of your feet or the palms of your hands? The hair on your head protects you from cold and rain and the hot sun; but hair on your palms, would only be in the way. Now look at the ends of your fingers. There the skin has grown so hard that it forms nails. If you look at your toes, you will see that the same thing has happened there. These nails are little pink shells to protect the ends of your fingers and toes. You see what a wonderful coat it is that you are wearing. Does the skin coat keep you warm? Yes, and not only that, but it keeps you cool, too. You have often seen little drops of water on your skin, when you were very hot. This sweat, or perspiration, as we call it, cools the body by making the skin moist. You know how cold it makes you to be wrapped in a wet sheet. Well, the skin cools you in just the same way, when it becomes wet with sweat. The sweat comes from the blood under the skin; so, that, as we saw before, by letting this moisture pass through, the skin acts as a sieve to let out the waste from the blood. Then, too, the skin covers and protects all the other parts. It is thin where it needs to be thin, so as not to interfere with quick movements, as on the eyelids and the lips; and thick where it needs to be thick, to stand wear and tear, as on the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. I remember once taking a sliver of shingle out of the back of a little boy who had been sliding down a roof. I had to sharpen my knife and press and push and at last get a pair of scissors to cut out the sliver. It was just like cutting tough leather. But even if we do sometimes get cuts and burns and bruises, yet our skin coat protects us far more than we really think. It keeps out all sorts of poisons and the germs of blood-poisoning and such diseases. These enemies can attack us only through a scratch or cut in the skin, for that is the only way they can get into the blood. The skin is better than any manufactured coat, too, because, if it is torn or scratched, it can mend itself. Does your skin ever talk to you? No, of course not; yet it tells you ever so many things. Shut your eyes and pick up a pencil. As you touch it, your skin tells you that it is round and smooth, and pointed at one end. You can feel the soft rubber on the other end, too. Is it wet? No. Is it hot? Of course, not. Now place a book in the palm of your hand. Is it flat or round, light or heavy, rough or smooth? All these things your skin tells you through little nerve tips, which are scattered thickly all over it. Still another thing the skin does; if you touch anything sharp or hot, it says at once that it hurts. If your clothes are tight or uncomfortable, the skin soon lets you know. You see it is always on the lookout, always ready to tell you about the things around you and to warn you against the things that might hurt you. The fifth of your ‘Five Senses,’ the sense of touch, is in your skin. There are some parts of your skin-coat that should have special care. I hardly need tell you about washing your face carefully around your nose and in front of your ears. Sometimes I have seen a ‘high-water mark’ right down the middle of the cheek or just under the jaws or chin. Of course, your mother has told you about washing your hands! You see, our [...]