should be. Children in poorly
equipped homes may find the most practical of training in this way. My
experience has been that teachers have only to begin this work in
order to arouse enthusiasm in any class of little girls. Once begun,
it carries itself along. There should be no compulsion in this work.
Choice and not necessity must be the rule in all our training for
homemaking. To compel a child's attention to that which she will later
do voluntarily, if at all, will at the very outset defeat our purpose.

[Illustration: Making furniture for a doll's house affords
educational advantages in emphasizing the details of housekeeping]

The finest sort of cooeperation arises in this work when parents are
led to provide the little girl at home with a doll's house fashioned
like the one at school. Perhaps they may go a step farther and find
space for a larger scheme of housekeeping, in the attic or elsewhere.
Cooeperation among the children means interchange of ideas, materials,
and labor, most helpful to social ideals.

From the furnishing of the doll's house it is easy to pass to plays
involving the activities of home life. Children delight in sweeping,
dusting, washing dishes, arranging cupboards and pantries, and making
beds in their miniature houses, and if their efforts are wisely
directed, orderly habits easily begin to form. In all these varieties
of work the children must be led to feel that there is a right way,
and that only that way is good enough, even for play.

The great result of all play housekeeping is the formation of ideals.
It is just as easy to learn at seven or eight the most efficient way
of washing dishes as it is to defer that knowledge until years of
inefficient work harden into inefficient habits. The teacher will find
abundant and interesting studies in household efficiency in recently
published books to inspire her guidance of the children's activity.

The step from washing play dishes at school to washing real dishes at
home is easily taken, and children are delighted to take it. Here
again the school and home may--indeed must, for best results--work
together. Some schools are giving school credit for home work along
domestic lines. That there are complex elements entering into the
successful working out of such a plan one must admit. A school giving
credit for work it does not see may put a premium upon quantity rather
than quality. The teacher who asks her little pupils to wash the home
d