Froebel's Gifts Part 18

"It will be readily seen how useful stick-laying may become in perspective drawing, in the study of planes and solids, in crystallography; how, while it insures an enjoyable familiarity with geometrical forms and secures ever-increasing manual skill and delicacy of touch, it develops at the same time the artistic sense of the children in a high degree."

W. N. HAILMANN.

1. The wooden staffs of the eighth gift (sometimes called the tenth) are of various lengths, but have for their uniform thickness the tenth of an inch.

They present, as now made, flat sides and square ends, are sometimes uncolored and sometimes dyed in the six primary colors.

2. The previous gifts dealt with solids and plane surfaces, wholes or divided wholes, while this one ill.u.s.trates the edge or line.

The previous gifts more definitely suggested their uses by their prominent characteristics; this depends for its value largely upon the ingenuity of the teacher.

We have contrasts of size in the preceding gifts, both in the units themselves and in the component parts of which the divided units are made; but in this gift the dimension _length_ is alone emphasized.

3. The most important characteristic of the gift is the representation of the line. The relations of position and form enter as essential elements of usefulness.

4. The laying of sticks may be used as an occupation very early in the kindergarten course, and thus serve as a preparation for the first drawing exercises, but there should be no attempt at this time to give them their legitimate connection with the cube as the edge of the solid and with the tablet as a portion of the surface.

Later they may be introduced in their proper place in the sequence of gifts, and thus a.s.sume their true relation in the child's mind. This relation is made more evident as we can and should reproduce the lessons with the solids in outline with the sticks. When the child is more advanced, the connection of the sticks with the preceding objects will be more clearly explained and intelligently comprehended, and then they may be used in connection with softened peas or tiny corks, which serve to ill.u.s.trate the points of contact of the sides of surfaces and edges of solids whose skeletons the child can then construct with these materials.

5. The geometrical forms ill.u.s.trated in this gift are:--

Angles of every degree.

Triangles, quadrilaterals, and additional polygons.

Skeletons of solids by means of corks or peas.

6. The law of the mediation of contrasts is shown in the fact that every line is a connection between opposite points. As in the other gifts, the law governs the use of the line in the formation of all outlines of objects and all symmetrical designs.

As we have already noted, the gifts of Froebel are thus far solids, divided solids, planes and divided planes.

Relation of the Single and Jointed Slats to the other Gifts. How both are used.

With the single and jointed slats we shall not deal separately, merely stating that they form a transition between the surface and the line, having more breadth and relation to the surface itself than to the edge, but manifestly tending towards the embodied line of which the little stick given by Froebel is the realization.

The jointed slats, generally ruled in half and quarter inches for measuring, may be used to show how one form is developed from another,--for instance, the rhombus from the square, the rhomboid from the oblong, and they are very useful also for explaining and ill.u.s.trating the different kinds of angles, as the opening between the joints may be made narrower or wider at pleasure.

The disconnected slats are used for the occasional play or exercise of interlacing, forming a variety of figures, geometrical and artistic, which hold together when carefully treated.[66]

[66] "The slats form, in some sort, the transition from the surface-pictures of the laying-tablets to the lineal representations of the laying-sticks, but have this advantage over both tablets and sticks, that the forms constructed with them are not bound down to the surface of the table, but possess sufficient solidity to bear being removed from it."--H. Goldammer, _The Kindergarten_, page 155.

Materials of Froebel's Gifts.

As to the unpretentious little sticks themselves, the use of these bits of waste wood is entirely unique and characteristic. No one else would have deemed them worthy of a place in school apparatus or among educational appliances; but Froebel had the eye and mind of a true philosopher, ever seeing the great in the small,--ever bringing out of the commonplace material, which lies unused on every hand, all its inherent possibilities and capabilities of usefulness. Froebel was no destructive reformer, but the most conservative of philosophers.

How the Stick is to be regarded.

The stick of course is to be regarded in its relation to what comes before and after it,--as the embodied edge of the cube, as the tablet was its embodied face. The child should at last identify his stick, the embodiment of the straight line, with the axis of the sphere, the edge of the cube, and the side of the square.[67] The sticks and rings are, properly speaking, one gift, contrasting the curved and straight lines.

[67] "Just as we obtained the tablets from the cubes, of which they are the embodied faces, so now we obtain also the laying-sticks from the cube, whose edges they represent. But they are contained also in the laying-tablets, for one may regard the surface as produced by the progressive movement of a line, and this may be made clear to the child by slicing a square tablet into a number of sticks."--H. Goldammer, _The Kindergarten_, page 161.

Method and Manner of Lessons.

Although the stick exercises should make their appearance at least once every week after their introduction, they may always be varied by stories, and when occasionally connected with other objects, cut from paper to ill.u.s.trate some point, are among the pleasantest and most fruitful exercises of the kindergarten.

The sticks may be used for teaching number and elementary geometry, both in the kindergarten and school, or for reviewing and fixing knowledge already gained in these directions, for practice in the elements of designing, for giving a correct idea of outlines of familiar objects, and should constantly serve as an introduction to drawing and sewing lessons, to which they are the natural prelude.

They should be used strictly after the manner of the other gifts, beginning with careful dictations, in which the various positions of one stick should be exhausted before proceeding to a greater number, with cooperative work, and with free invention. These exercises and original designs may be put into permanent form in parquetry, which is furnished for this gift in the various colored papers, as well as for the tablets. The inventions may also be transferred to paper by drawing, and to card-board by sewing.

The exercises may continue from the various simple positions which one stick may a.s.sume to really complex dictations requiring from fifteen to twenty-five sticks, and introducing many difficult positions and outlines of new geometrical figures.

Forms of Knowledge and Number Work.

When we consider that the length of the sticks varies from one to six inches, and that the number given to the child is limited only by his capacity for using them successfully, we can see that the outlines of all the rectilinear plane figures can easily be made by their use. Of course in these exercises there must be a great deal of incidental arithmetic, but the gift may also be used for definite number work, and is far better adapted to this purpose than any other in the series, since it presents a number of separate units which may be grouped or combined to suit any simple arithmetical process.

Representing the line as it does, it has less bodily substance than any previous gift, and hence comes nearest to the numerical symbols, as the next step to using a line would obviously be making one. It also offers very much the same materials for calculation as were used by the race in its childhood, and hence fits in with the inherited instincts of the undeveloped human being.[68]

[68] "Each following generation and each following individual man is to pa.s.s through the whole earlier development and cultivation of the human race,--and he does pa.s.s it; otherwise he would not understand the world past and present,--but not by the dead way of imitation, of copying, but by the living way of individual, free, active development and cultivation."--Friedrich Froebel, _Education of Man_, page 11.

Who has not seen him arranging twigs and branches in his play, counting them over and over or simulating the process, and delighting to divide them into groups? So the cave-dweller used them, doubtless, not in play, but in serious earnest, for some such purpose as keeping tally of the wild beasts he had killed, or the number of his enemies vanquished.

"With a few packets of Froebel's sticks," as has been very well said, "the child is provided with an excellent calculating machine." The use of this machine in the primary school in word making as well as in number work is practically unlimited; but in the kindergarten it may very well give a clear, practical understanding of the first four rules of arithmetic,--an understanding which will be based on personal activity and experience.[69]

[69] "Thus the child's sphere of knowledge, the world of his life, is again extended by the observation and recognition, by the development and cultivation, of the capacity of number; and an essential need of his inner nature, a certain yearning of his spirit, are thereby satisfied.... The knowledge of the relations of quant.i.ty extraordinarily heightens the life of the child."--Friedrich Froebel, _Education of Man_, page 45.

Evolution of the Kindergarten Stick.

It is well by way of prelude to the first few lessons to draw from the children the origin and history of the tiny bit of wood given them for their play, and they will henceforth regard it in a new light and treat it with greater respect and care.

Let us trace it carefully from its baby beginnings in the seed, its germination and growth, the influences which surround and foster it from day to day, its steady increase in size and strength, its downward grasp and its upward reach, the hardening of the tender stem and slender cylindrical trunk into the ma.s.sive oak or pine, the growth of its tough, strong garment of bark, its winter times of rest and spring times of renewal, until from the tender green twig so frail and pliant it has become too large to clasp with the arms, and high enough to swing its dry leaves into the church tower.

Then let us follow out its usefulness; for instance, we might first paint a glowing word-picture of the logging-camp, the chopping and hewing and felling, the life of the busy woodcutter in the leafy woods in autumn, or in the dense forests in winter time, when the snow, cold and white and dazzling, covers the ground with its fleecy carpet.

Again, let us depict the road and the busy teamsters driving their yokes of strong oxen with their heavy loads of logs to the towns and cities where they are to be sold. A scene, a perfect word-picture, should be painted of everything concerning the trip,--the crunching of the oxen's hoofs on the pressed snow, the creaking of the heavy truck as its runners slip along the smooth surface, the breath of the men and animals rising like steam into the clear, cold air. All these things rise in image before the child's eye and are not soon forgotten, you may be sure. The work and life of the river-drivers might also be described, and their manner of floating the logs down river in springtime when the water is high and the current strong.

Then perhaps the children will help to tell us about the mill of which they doubtless know something,--where the sawmills are built, how the water helps in turning the great wheel, the buzzing and hissing of the big saws, and the way in which they quickly make boards of the long, strong logs. This and much more may be said, and if it is well said, no child can ever look at the tiny stick afterwards and entirely forget the charm which once surrounded it.[70]

[70] "These terse graphic descriptions of objects will be found very serviceable in sharpening and intensifying the powers of observation, as well as securing clearness, distinctness, accuracy, and life in verbal description. Here the pupil learns practically to give due prominence to essentials, and to appreciate the full value of accessories; to look for and discover the fundamental ideas of which things are the modified, adorned, garbled, or stunted expression; to seek and find the very soul of things."--W. N.

Hailmann, _Primary Helps_, page 17.

Group Work with Sticks.

The sticks are especially serviceable for group work of various kinds, either at the long or square tables. As the children have now an abundance of material they can make all the objects, perhaps, which may be mentioned in a story the kindergartner tells. If it is about the origin of Thanksgiving Day, for instance, Abby, who sits at one end of the line, may make a picture of the Mayflower, and John, her neighbor, make the Speedwell. The next child may construct a cradle for Ocea.n.u.s, the little Pilgrim baby born on shipboard; the next use his material for the Indian huts the settlers saw after landing; and so on, each child making a different object, which remains upon his table until the close of the story. When this is completed, it will have been fully ill.u.s.trated by the children with their sticks, and they will be delighted to inspect the different pictures which they will plainly see are much more varied and beautiful than any one of them could have made alone. Thus the value of cooperation will be plainly shown, without a word from the kindergartner.[71]