Froebel's Gifts Part 8

Froebel says if his educational materials are found useful it cannot be because of their exterior, which is as plain as possible and contains nothing new, but that their worth is to be found exclusively in their application.

How Children are to be reached.

Therefore these simple devices with which we carry on our education should never seem trifling, for we are compelled in teaching very young children to put forth all gentle allurements to the gaining of knowledge.

They are to be reached chiefly by the charms of sense, novelty, and variety, and consequently, to please such active and imaginative little critics, our lessons must be fresh, vivid, vigorous, and to the point.

What is Necessary on Part of Kindergartner.

To accomplish this, we can see that not only is absolute knowledge necessary, but that a well developed sensibility and imagination are needed in leading the child from the indefinite to the definite, from universal to particular, and from concrete to abstract. The worth of the gifts then, we repeat, lies exclusively in their application; the rude little forms must be used so that the child's imagination and sympathy will be reached.

Imagination in Child and Kindergartner.

We may be thankful that this heaven-born imaginative faculty is the heritage of every child,--that it is hard to kill and lives on very short rations. The little boy ties a string around a stone and drags it through dust and mire with happy conviction that it is a go-cart.

The little girl wraps up a stocking or a towel with tender hands, winds her shawl about it, and at once the G.o.d-given maternal instinct leaps into life,--in an instant she has it in her arms. She kisses its cotton head and sings it to sleep in divine unconsciousness of any incompleteness, for love supplies many deficiencies. So let us cherish the child heart in ourselves and never look with scorn upon the rude suggestions of the forms the child has built, but rather enter into the play, enriching it with our own imaginative power. The children will rarely perceive any incongruities, and surely we need not hint them, any more than we would remind a child needlessly that her doll is stuffed with sawdust and has a plaster head, when she thinks it a responsive and affectionate little daughter.

Middendorf said, "This is like a fresh bath for the human soul, when we dare to be children again with children.[33] The burdens of life could not be borne were it not for real gayety of heart."

[33] "If we want to educate children, we must be children with them ourselves." (Martin Luther.)

"If it were only the play and the mere outward apparatus," says the Baroness von Marenholtz-Bulow, "we might indeed find our daily teaching monotonous, but the idea at the foundation of it and the contemplation of the being of man and its development in the child is an inexhaustible mine of interesting discovery."

Reasons for Choice of Third Gift.

This third gift satisfies the child's craving to take things to pieces. Froebel did not choose it arbitrarily, for Nature, human and physical, was an open handbook to him, and if we study deeply and sympathetically the reasons for his choice they will always be comprehended.[34] Fenelon says, "The curiosity of children is a natural tendency, which goes in the van of instruction." Destruction after all is only constructive faculty turned back upon itself. The child, having no legitimate outlet for his creative instinct, pulls his playthings to pieces, to see what is inside,--what they are made of and how they are put together;[35] but to his chagrin he finds it not so easy to reunite the tattered fragments.

[34] "What must we furnish to the child after the self-contained ball, after the hard sphere, every part of which is similar, and after the single solid cube? It must be something firm which can be easily pulled apart by the child's strength, and just as easily put together again.

Therefore it must also be something which is simple, yet multiform; and what should this be, after what we have perceived up to this point, and in view of what the surrounding world affords us, but the cube divided through the centre by three planes perpendicular to one another."--Froebel's _Pedagogics_.

[35] "_Unmaking_ is as important as _making_ to the child. His destructive energy is as essential to him as his power of construction." (W. T. Harris.)

"The child wishes to discover the inside of the thing, being urged to this by an impulse he has not given to himself,--the impulse which, rightly recognized and rightly guided, seeks to know G.o.d in all his works.... Where can the child seek for satisfaction of his impulse to research but from the thing itself?"--Friedrich Froebel, _Education of Man_.

In the divided cube, however, he can gratify his desires, and at the same time possess the joy of doing right and destroying nothing, for the eight little blocks can be quickly united into their original form, and also into many other pleasing little forms, each one complete in itself, so that every a.n.a.lysis ends as it should, in synthesis.

Froebel calls this gift specifically "the children's delight," and indeed it is, responding so generously to their spontaneous activity, while at the same time it suits their small capabilities, for the possibilities of an object used for form study should not be too varied. "It must be suggestive through its limitations," says Miss Blow, "for the young mind may be as easily crushed by excess as by defect."[36]

[36] "An element which slumbers like a viper under roses is that which is now so frequently provided as a plaything for children; it is, in a word, the already too complex and ornate, too finished toy. The child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough variety by means of it; his power of creative imagination, his power of giving outward form to his own idea, are thus actually deadened."--Froebel's _Pedagogics_.

Froebel was left motherless at a very early age, and during his first four years of life his father was entirely engrossed with parish duties, and the child had only occasional supervision from a hard-worked servant. Thus it happened that he was frequently alone long hours at a time in a dusky room overshadowed by the neighboring church, and naturally strayed often to the window, from whence he might look down upon the busy world outside. He recalls that he was greatly interested at one time in some workmen who were repairing the church, and that he constantly turned from his post of observation to try and imitate their labors, but his only building material was the furniture of the room, and chairs and tables clumsily resisted his efforts to pile them up into suitable form. He tells us that this strong desire for building and the bitter disappointment of his repeated failures were still keenly remembered when he was a grown man, and thus suggested to him that children ought to be provided with materials for building among their playthings. He often noticed also, in later years, that all children seem to have the building instinct, corresponding to what Dr. Seguin calls "the building mania in the infancy of peoples," and that "to make a house is the universal form of unguided play."[37]

[37] "One of the greatest and most universal delights of children is to construct for themselves a habitation of some sort, either in the garden or indoors, where chairs have generally to serve their purpose. Instinct leads them, as it does all animals, to procure shelter and protection for their persons, individual outward self-existence and independence."--Bertha von Marenholtz-Bulow, _Child and Child Nature_.

We now understand the meaning of the gift, the reason for its importance in Froebel's plan, and its capabilities as a vehicle for delightful instruction.

Cla.s.ses of Forms.

There are three different cla.s.ses of forms for dictation and invention, variously named by kindergartners.

1. Life forms, or upright forms, which are seen in the child's daily life, as a pair of boots, a chair, table, bed, or sofa. Froebel calls them also object forms, or forms of things.

("The child demands that the object constructed stand in connection with himself, his life, or somebody or something in his life."--Froebel.)

2. Mathematical forms, or various combinations of the blocks, upright and supine, for mathematical exercises. They correspond to the forms of knowledge in Logic.

(Also called by Froebel forms of truth, forms of instruction, forms of learning.)

3. Symmetrical forms, or flat designs formed by opposites and their intermediates. These are figures in which four of the blocks generally revolve in order around the other four as a centre.

(Also called by Froebel picture forms, flower forms, star forms, dance forms.)

LIFE FORMS.

Life forms should be given first, as the natural tendency of the young child is to pile things up,[38] and these forms seem simpler for dictation, are more readily grasped by the mind, and more fascinating to the imagination. They are the images of things both dear and familiar to him, and thus are particularly adapted to the beginning since the "starting point of the child's development is the heart and the emotions." It is easier for him to be an architect at first than an artist, though each will be comprehended in the other after a time.[39]

[38] "The building or piling up is with the child, as with the development of the human race, and as with the fixed forms in Nature, the first."--Froebel's _Education of Man_.

"Towers, pyramids, up, up, connecting themselves with something high, voicing aspiration."

[39] "The representation of facts and circ.u.mstances of history, of geography, and especially of every-day life, by means of building, I hold to be in the highest degree important for children, even if these representations are imperfect and fall far short of their originals. The eye is at all events aroused and stimulated to observe with greater precision than before the object that has been represented.... And thus, by means of perhaps a quite imperfect outward representation, the inner perception is made more perfect."--Froebel's _Letters_, tr. by Michaelis and Moore, page 99.

The dictations should be given very simply, clearly, and slowly, always using one set of terms to express a certain meaning, and having those absolutely correct. We should never give dictations from a book, but from memory, having prepared the lesson beforehand, and should remember that every exercise we give should "incite and develop self-activity." We must guard against mistakes or confusion in our own minds; it is very easy to confuse the child, and he will become inattentive and careless if he is unable to catch our meaning.

Brief stories should occasionally be told, just mere outlines to give color and force to the child's building, and connect it with his experience. If it is an armchair, grandmother may sit in it knitting the baby's stocking. If it is a well, describe the digging of it, the lining with stones or brick, the inflowing of the water, the letting down of the bucket and long chain, the clear, cool water coming up from the deep, dark hole in the ground on a hot summer's day. These, of course, are but the merest suggestions which experience may be trusted to develop.

It is better, perhaps, to give a bit of word-painting to each object constructed than to wait till the end of the series for the day and tell a longer story, as the interest is thus more easily sustained.

The children, too, should be encouraged to talk about the forms and tell little stories concerning them. The form created should never be destroyed, but transformed into the next in order by a few simple movements.

SYMMETRICAL FORMS.

"These forms, in spite of their regularity, are called forms of beauty. The mathematical forms which Froebel designates forms of knowledge give only the skeleton from which the beautiful form develops itself.

"Symmetry of the parts which make up these simple figures gives the impression of beauty to the childish eye. He must have the elements of the beautiful before he is in a condition to comprehend it in its whole extent.

"Only what is simple gives light to the child at first. He can only operate with a small number of materials, therefore Froebel gives only eight cubes for this object at this time."

Of course these three cla.s.ses of forms are not to be kept arbitrarily separate, and the children finish and lay aside one set before attempting another. There are many cases where the three may be united, as indeed they are morally speaking in the life of every human being.

When the distinctions are clear in our own minds, our knowledge and tact will guide us to introduce the gift properly, and carry it on in a natural, orderly, and rational manner, not restricting the child's own productive powers.

If the children have had time to imbibe a love of symmetry and beauty, and have been trained to observe and delight in them, then this second cla.s.s of forms will attract them as much, after a little, as the first, though more difficult of execution.