Bureau of Educational Experiments in
the Spring and Summer of 1917, and we wish to make acknowledgment,
therefore, to the many who contributed to that exhibit and by so doing
to the substance of the following pages. Chief among them are Teachers
College, The University of Pittsburgh, The Ethical Culture School, The
Play School and other experimental schools described in our bulletins,
numbers 3, 4 and 5.

The cuts have been chosen for the most part from photographs of the
Play School, where conditions fairly approximate those obtainable in
the home and thus offer suggestions easily translatable by parents
into terms of their own home environment.

While this equipment is especially applicable to the needs of children
four, five and six years old, most of it will be found well adapted to
the interests of children as old as eight years, and some of it to
those of younger children as well.

BUREAU OF EDUCATIONAL EXPERIMENTS.

New York City, June, 1918.

[Illustration: Children at play.]*

OUT-OF-DOOR FURNISHINGS

Out-of-door Furnishings should be of a kind to encourage creative play
as well as to give exercise.

Playground apparatus, therefore, in addition to providing for big
muscle development should combine the following requisites:

Intrinsic value as a toy or plaything. "The play of children on it
and with it must be spontaneous."[A]

Adaptability to different kinds of play and exercise. "It must
appeal to the imagination of the child so strongly that new forms of
use must be constantly found by the child himself in using it."[A]

Adaptability to individual or group use. It should lend itself to
solitary play or to use by several players at once.

Additional requisites are:

Safety. Its use should be attended by a minimum of danger. Suitable
design, proper proportions, sound materials and careful construction
are essentials.

Durability. It must be made to withstand hard use and all kinds of
weather. To demand a minimum of repair means also to afford a
maximum of security.

[Footnote A: Dr. E. H. Arnold, "Some Inexpensive Playground
Apparatus." Bul. 27, Playground Association of America.]

[Illustration: The city yard equipped to give a maximum of exercise
and creative play]

[Illustration: An outdoor play area.]*

THE OUTDOOR LABORATORY

In the country, ready-to-hand resources, trees for climbing, the
five-barred fence, the pasture gate, the stone wa