A sand-box usually causes more scoldings than pleasure, but a Japanese garden with stones and trees, houses, bridges, and people, which can be readjusted with a view to new landscape effects, is both instructive and amusing. Plants, growing bulbs, and a window-box where real seeds may be planted are important playroom accessories, as is a large aquarium with bright fish, polliwogs, and baby turtles. There is some disagreement about birds, some people holding that their captivity teaches cruelty, while others that a pet bird often endears the whole bird species to the child. Their songs and their bright color undoubtedly gives children pleasure.

The tendency to cover the furniture and walls of the playroom with literal representations of elves and fairies, or the child's favorite characters in fiction, is deplorable. The greater part of childhood is spent in the realm of the imagination and the delight of conjuring up their own images should not be taken from children. If mural decoration is used, it must again be remembered that it should not be brought down to the level of the child, but be of a nature to permit the child to grow up to it. It is best of a purely suggestive and fanciful nature, allowing the child's imagination to rove in and out of it and build for itself the story.

While decorative friezes are of great value in the nursery, they are not necessary to the playroom, although sometimes they may be used to advantage for educational and artistic purposes.

A professor of education in a large Western university conceived the idea of a playroom frieze founded on the four great civilizations of antiquity - Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman. In order that it should have a vital meaning to the children, he planned to have them make it themselves under his direction. There were four children and each one was given the choice of a civilization and a wall to decorate. Each side of the frieze was to be an individual composition giving an idea of architecture, costumes, and mode of living, but certain important features of the arrangement were to be repeated in all so that the frieze would "hang together" as a whole.

A wainscoting paper of green-blue extended three quarters of the height of the wall and above that there was a strip of heavy buff paper. The children traced, drew, enlarged with the help of a pantograph, painted and cut out and pasted up their temples, figures, and scenes under their father's guidance. It took several years before it was completed, but meanwhile they had received a remarkable first-hand insight into ancient customs, history, and art.

A home-made frieze in a New England playroom was composed of birds, beasts, flowers, and fish common to the New England states. The pictures were cut out from old books and charts and pasted on a strip of tough unbleached paper placed around the room at a height of about four feet from the floor so that the objects were visible for minute examination.

A frieze composed of various styles of sea-going craft, both old and new, was devised by a boy and his father and pasted on a frieze of half blue and half tawny-gold paper to represent the sea and sky. Sea birds and flying fish completed this unique arrangement.

A frieze representing the founding of New York and points of important historical interest was the contribution of an artist father to the playroom of his children in the city.

Screens made of tough paper also form good foundations for decorations undertaken by the children, and the flora and fauna or the history of their native states provide good subjects.

A gay and individual atmosphere is created in the playroom by the use of bright and elementary colors in combinations which are fresh and unusual.

One very fascinating playroom had raspberry walls and a high Dutch blue wainscoting. The furniture was a diminutive rustic type in grayish green and there were cunning little out-of-door benches and tables. The rug was the green of a grassy carpet and the touches of scarlet and crimson in the toys and the window-box gave one a surprising feeling of satisfaction.

Another delightful playroom had walls of tan burlap and bright blue woodwork and furniture. The rug was brown, and the green painted window-boxes and bright red pottery bowls for flowers lent a gay atmosphere to the whole.

Gray-green, yellow-green, and olive formed the neutral foundations for a playroom whose decorative interest lay in a fireplace of turquoise blue tiles and a red Japanese lacquer screen.

The value of the sleeping porch for children is coming to be generally recognized. If the porch is small the end of the cot can be drawn up on pulleys to lie flat against the wall and concealed with curtains, allowing the space to be available for an out-of-door playroom. In one case to overcome the lack of privacy in an unsuitably situated porch, a tiny portable shelter was built to hold the cots of two little boys.

If a separate playroom is not possible and one room must serve for both play and sleeping quarters, the most satisfactory plan is to arrange a line of demarkation between the portions of the room consigned to the different functions. Often the bed and bureau can be grouped together and cut off from the rest of the room by a screen, leaving a clear space for play. In a large room occupied by two little girls, screens were used to hide the little beds in the daytime, their outer faces representing cunning little houses which afforded an excellent background for the play portion of the room. If the room is long and narrow, a little fence with a gate in the center may be used to form the entrance to the play garden. There is nothing so distracting as a disorderly or jumbled bedroom. On the other hand, neat and orderly play is contrary to the spirit of childhood. One does not seem to mind the confusion of the play portion of the room when the sleeping portion is kept tidy and fresh.