Why did nature play such an important role in Helen Keller's education?

While Anne Sullivan is teaching Helen Keller, Sullivan tries to spend a great deal of time out in nature with Helen because she knows Helen enjoys the outdoors. Keller writes, "I cannot explain the peculiar sympathy Miss Sullivan had with my pleasures and desires." Keller ascribes her teacher's inclination to teach her using what Keller enjoys to Sullivan's long experience teaching the blind. Sullivan clearly understands how to motivate Keller to learn. In addition, being in nature allows Keller to learn about things that are tangible and beautiful to her. Keller says, "The loveliness of things taught me all their use." By looking at nature, what Keller describes as, "everything that could hum, or buzz, or sing, or bloom," Keller learns to love learning. In addition, learning out in nature makes her lessons real to her and acquaints her with the world beyond her house--the world she will have to find her way around. Her lessons in nature are so enjoyable that Keller says her experiences are very different than those of children in a traditional school, who generally come to hate the humdrum and inapplicable nature of what they are learning.