sirable accomplishment for the deaf child.

Tops and tenpins cultivate dexterity, as do playing ball and rolling
hoop.

VII

THE CULTIVATION OF CREATIVE IMAGINATION

This can be greatly helped by early use on the part of the child of
colored modeling wax to reproduce objects and animals, and to construct
models of imaginary houses, yards, trees, etc. A sand pile, or a large,
shallow sand box, perhaps five feet square, with sides six inches high,
and completely lined with enamel cloth to make it watertight, is a
wonderful implement for constructive play on the part of the child.
Whole villages of farms, fields, and forests, ponds and brooks, roads
and railroads, can be made here in miniature.

Building blocks of wood or stone; the metal construction toy called
"Mechano"; dolls, doll houses, furniture, and equipment, are valuable,
but they should be simple, inexpensive and not fragile.

Cut-up picture puzzles, painting books, tracing slates with large and
simple designs cultivate observation and ingenuity. Kaleidoscopes and
stereoscopes are excellent, but moving pictures are so trying upon the
eyes, and the air of the theaters is so bad, that a deaf child whose
eyes are his only salvation, and whose health is doubly important,
should not even know of their existence till he is seven or eight years
old.

VIII

FURTHER TESTS OF HEARING

But, as soon as the mother finds her little child sufficiently mature to
benefit by the sense training described above, whether it be at twenty
or, as is more likely, at from twenty-four to thirty months, she can
begin to make a more complete and accurate determination of the degree
of his deafness, for now she can establish a system of responses on the
part of the child that will show her when he perceives the sounds she
uses in her tests.

In order to be certain that the little one knows what she wishes of him,
she must begin with some sensation that she is sure he feels. We will
assume that he has as yet no speech, and cannot count, at least does not
know the names of the numbers. Let the mother pat him once on the
shoulder and then cause him to hold up one of his little fingers. Then
pat him twice, and make him hold up two fingers, then three times and
have him put up three fingers. Now return to one pat and one finger,
repeat two pats and the holding up of two of his fingers, and three pats
and three fingers. Go over and over this little game until he has
g