[1] "The string unites the ball, symbol of the outer world, with the child, and is the means by which it can act upon his inner nature." (E. G. Seymour.)[2] "The Egyptians and the Greeks hung geometrical forms over their cradles, so as to strike the eyes of the child with lawful relations. Froebel introduces colored balls for the same purpose, which, considering the psychological and emotional condition of the child, leads to the joyful conception of motion, color, and life." (Emma Marwedel.)[3] "Suppose, e. g., that the child, by dint of repeated and varied playing with the blue ball of the first gift, has succeeded in getting a tolerably clear notion of the blue ball. If then you bring the yellow ball to his notice, his mind will be led to examine more closely and to compare the two playthings, resembling each other so fully in every respect, yet differing so widely in color. The other balls of the gift are introduced in judicious succession, offering new yet milder contrasts: these reconcile, combine, the contrasts first offered; they are aided in this by the colors of surrounding objects. The child begins to feel that these color impressions, however widely they differ, have a similar source; he is connecting the contrasts, and as he succeeds in this, he succeeds, too, in separating, abstracting, the ball from its color." (W. N. Hailmann.)[4]

Tennyson's In Memoriam.[5] Many suggestions for the use of the ball in the nursery may be found in Froebel's Pedagogics of the Kindergarten, translated by Josephine Jarvis.[6] See Kindergarten Chimes (Kate D. Wiggin), pages 22-32, Oliver Ditson Publishing Co.[7] "The infant begins to examine forms from the commencement of his existence; for without this knowledge it is doubtful if he could distinguish one object from another, or even be aware of an external world. Gradually he begins to know objects apart and to recognize them, and in time discerns resemblances which cause him to classify them."—W. W. Speer's Form Lessons.[8] Conrad Diehl's Elements of Ornamentation and Color.[9] Education, page 130.[10] "That priority of color to form which, as already pointed out, has a psychological basis, and in virtue of which psychological basis arises this strong preference in the child, should be recognized from the very beginning."—Spencer's Education.[11] "A person born blind, and suddenly enabled to see, would at first have no conception of in or out (of eye), and would be conscious of colors only, not of objects; when by his sense of touch he became acquainted with objects, and had time to associate mentally the objects he touched with the colors he saw, then, and not till then, would he begin to see objects."—Preyer's Mind of the Child, page 58.

"Color cannot be abstracted from that which gives it vitality,—i. e., Form,—from which it cannot be abstracted without rendering the color flat and meaningless." (Geo. L. Schreiber.)[12] "Finding forms of the same general shape as those taken as types is of the highest importance. Unless this is done, pupils are not learning to pass from the particular to the general. They are not taught to see many things through the one, and the impression they gain is that the particular forms observed are the only forms of this kind. Unless that which the pupil observes aids him in interpreting something else, it is of no value to him. Certain things are taught that through them other things may be seen. Pupils should not be trained to see for the sake of the seeing, but that they may have the power to see." W. W. Speer, Lessons in Form.[13] Emma Marwedel, Childhood's Poetry and Studies, page 35.[14] Professor Earl Barnes, of Stanford University, reports that in his various color experiments on the Pacific Coast, 1000 children having been studied, a very large majority selected red as their favorite color.[15] "Care should be taken, in the selection of all materials for color lessons, to get as perfect foundation colors as possible; no faded or poor shades are allowable, as they lead the child astray."[16] "The resemblance of the symbol to the thing signified is a very important matter in education, especially in kindergarten education."—Geo. P. Brown, Essentials of Educational Psychology.[17] "If, therefore, genuine brotherliness, ... consideration and respect for playmates and fellow-men, are again to become prevalent, they can become so only by being connected with the feeling of community abiding in each man (however much or little of it may be found), and by fostering this feeling with the greatest care."—Friedrich Froebel, Education of Man, page 74.[18] "The wooden sphere has no string like the balls of the first gift, because the child no longer needs the outward connection; he now realizes the spiritual connection between himself and the outer world." (E. G. Seymour.)[19] Education, page 132.[20] E. Shirreff.[21] "We cannot evolve what has not first been involved."[22] "Nothing charms us more than the recognition of the old in the new. The man who hurries through a foreign city, indifferent and inattentive to the passing crowd, feels a quick thrill of pleasure when in the midst of all the strangers he recognizes a familiar face." (E. Minhinnick.)[23] "The infant mind is transparent to resemblance, but opaque to difference."—Susan E. Blow, Symbolic Education, page 83.[24] For second gift songs, see Kindergarten Chimes (Kate D. Wiggin), pages 32, 33, Oliver Ditson Publishing Co.[25] "The sound is a yet higher sign of life to the child, as he then, and also later, likes to lend speech to all dumb things; therefore he also desires to hear sound and speech from everything."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 72.[26] "But each thing is recognized only when it is connected with the opposite of its kind, and when the union, accord, similitude with this object are found; and the connection with the opposite, and the discovery of the uniting, renders the recognition so much the more complete."—Froebel's Education of Man, page 26.[27] "But now as man both unites the single, which finds its limits in itself, and the manifold, which is constantly developing, and reconciles them within himself as opposites, there results also to the child from both, from sphere and cube outwardly united, the expression of the animate and active, especially as embodied in the doll."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 106.[28] "On revolving the cylinder on an axis parallel to the circular faces, we find that it incloses a solid, opaque sphere; teaching us the lesson, not only that each member of the second gift contains each and all of the others, but that whatever is in the universe is in every individual part of it; that even the meanest holds the elements of the noblest; that the highest life is even in what in short-sighted conceit we call death."—W. N. Hailmann, Law of Childhood, page 35.[29] "The giving of a new play by no means precludes the further use of the preceding and earlier plays. But, on the contrary, the use of the preceding play for some time longer with the new play, and alternating with it, makes the application of the new play so much the easier and more widely significant."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 145[30] W. N. Hailmann.[31] "In each construction the whole of the materials must be used; or at least each separate piece must be arranged so as to stand in some actual relation to the whole. While this awakens the thinking spirit, it also strengthens and elevates the imagination; because amidst so much variety, the underlying unity is made visibly apparent."—Froebel's Letters, tr. by Michaelis and Moore, page 72.[32] "The idea of separation gained here in concrete form becomes typical of that condition which must always exist in any growth—the seed breaks through its coverings, and seems to divide itself into distinct parts, each having its function in the growth of the whole plant." (Alice H. Putnam.)[33] "If we want to educate children, we must be children with them ourselves." (Martin Luther.)[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 God 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.[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.[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-BÜlow, Child and Child Nature.[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 circumstances 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.[40] See Kindergarten Chimes (Kate D. Wiggin), Oliver Ditson Publishing Co.: "Building Song," pages 34, 35; "Trade Game," page 70; "The Carpenter," page 92.[41] "Probably the chief wish of children is to do things for themselves, instead of to have things done for them. They would gladly live in a Paradise of the Home-made. For example, when we read how the 'prentices of London used to skate on sharp bones of animals, which they bound about their feet, we also wished, at least, to try that plan, rather than to wear skates bought in shops." (Andrew Lang.)

"Complete toys hinder the activity of children, encourage laziness and thoughtlessness, and do them more harm than can be told. The active tendency in them turns to the distortion of what is complete, and so becomes destructive."

"Any fusing together of lessons, work, and play, is possible only when the objects with which the child plays allow room for independent mental and bodily activity, i. e., when they are not themselves complete in the child's hand. Had man found everything in the world fixed and prepared for use; had all means of culture, of satisfaction for the spiritual and material wants of his nature, been ready to his hand, there would have been no development, no civilization of the human race."[42] "In order to furnish to the child at once clearly and definitely the impression of the whole, of the self-contained, the plaything before it is given to the child for his own free use must be opened as follows.... It will thus appear before the observing child as a cube closely united, yet easily separated and again restored."—Froebel's Pedagogics, pages 123, 124.[43] "A child trained for one year in a kindergarten would acquire a skillful use of his hands and a habit of accurate measurement of the eye which would be his possession through life." (W. T. Harris.)[44] "The three principal dimensions of space, which in the cube only make themselves known as differences of position, in the fourth gift become more prominent and manifest themselves as differences of size. These three relations of size are in the fourth gift as abiding and changeless as the position of the three principal directions was before and still is."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 189.[45] "The child is allowed the greatest possible freedom of invention; the experience of the adult only accompanies and explains."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 130.[46] Pedagogics, page 180.[47] "This procedure is by no means intended merely to make the withdrawal of the box easy for the child, but, on the contrary, brings to him much inner profit. It is well for him to receive his playthings in an orderly manner—not to have them tossed to him as fodder is tossed to animals. It is good for the child to begin his play with the perception of a whole, a simple self-contained unit, and from this unity to develop his representations. Finally, it is essential that the playing child should receive his material so arranged that its various elements are discernible, and that by seeing them his mind may unconsciously form plans for using them. Receiving his material thus arranged, the child will use it with ever-recurrent and increasing satisfaction, and his play will produce far more abiding results than the play of one whose material lies before him like a heap of cobblestones."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 205.[48] "The child, in a word, follows the same path as the man, and advances from use to beauty and from beauty to truth."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 219.[49] "The Conference recommends that the child's geometrical education should begin as early as possible; in the kindergarten, if he attends a kindergarten, or if not, in the primary school. He should at first gain familiarity through the senses with simple geometrical figures and forms, plane and solid; should handle, draw, measure, and model them; and should gradually learn some of their simpler properties and relations."—Report of Committee of Ten, page 110.[50] "The child's life moves from the house and its living-rooms, through kitchen and cellar, through yard and garden, to the wider space and activity of street and market, and this expansion of life is clearly reflected in the order and development of his productions."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 221.[51] "In some German kindergartens large building-logs are supplied in one corner of the play garden. These logs are a foot or more in length, three inches wide, and one inch thick. Several hundred of these are kept neatly piled against the fence, and the children are expected to leave them in good order. This bit of voluntary discipline has its good uses on the playground, and the free building allowed with this larger material gives rise to individual effort, and tests the power of the children in a way which makes the later, more organized work at the tables far more full of meaning."—Kindergarten Magazine, November, 1894.[52] "As these building gifts afford a means of clearing the perceptions of the child, they give occasion for extending these perceptions, and for representing in their essential parts objects of which the child has only heard."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 222.[53] "With these forms of beauty it is above all important that they be developed one from another. Each form in the series should be a modification or transformation of its predecessor. No form should be entirely destroyed. It is also essential that the series should be developed so that each step should show either an evolution into greater manifoldness and variety, or a return to greater simplicity."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 225.[54] "This free activity ... is only possible when the law of free creativeness is known and applied; for that a free creativeness only can be a lawful one, we are taught by the smallest blade of grass, whose development takes place only according to immutable laws."—Reminiscences of Froebel, page 133.[55] "Whoever sacrifices health to wisdom has generally sacrificed wisdom, too." (Jean Paul.)[56] "Perceptions and recognitions which are with difficulty gained from words are easily gained from facts and deeds. Through actual experience the child gains in a trice a total concept, whereas the same concept expressed in words would be only grasped in a partial manner. The rare merit, the vivifying influence of this play-material is that, through the representations it makes possible, concepts are recognized at once in their wholeness and unity, whereas such an idea of a whole can only very gradually be gained from its verbal expression. It must, however, be added that later, through words, the concept can be brought into higher and clearer consciousness."—Froebel's Pedagogics, page 206.[57] "It is through frequent return to a subject and intense activity upon it for short periods, that it 'soaks in' and becomes influential in the building of character. Especially is this true if the principles of apperception and concentration are not forgotten by the teacher in working upon the disciplinary subjects." (Geo. P. Brown.)[58] "The sense of beauty must be awakened in the soul in childhood if in later life he is to create the beautiful."—Reminiscences of Froebel, page 158.[59] "As the gifts proceed from the first to the sixth, observation is demanded with increasing strictness, relativity more and more appreciated, and the opportunity afforded for endless manifestations of the constructive faculty, while all the time impressions are forming in the mind which in due time will bear rich fruits of mathematical and practical knowledge as well as Æsthetic culture, for the dawning sense of the beautiful as well as of the true is gaining consistency and power." (Karl Froebel.)[60] "What makes Froebel's gifts particularly instructive is, indeed, the fact that the most varied materials constantly lead to the same observations, but always under different conditions, so that we obtain the necessary repetitions without the dryness, the tiresomeness, the fatigue inseparable from constant unvaried iteration. But they also accustom the child to discover similarity in things that appear to differ, to find resemblance in contrasts, unity in diversity, connection in what appears unconnected."—H. Goldammer's The Kindergarten, page 109.[61] "If you would be pungent, be brief; for it is with words as with sunbeams,—the more they are condensed the deeper they burn."[62] Pamphlet on the Seventh Gift. (Milton Bradley Co.)[63] "The perception of the difference between a surface-extension and an extension in three dimensions begins late and is established slowly."—W. Preyer, The Mind of the Child, page 180.[64] "With this law I give children a guide for creating, and because it is the law according to which they, as creatures of God, have themselves been created, they can easily apply it. It is born with them."—Reminiscences of Froebel, page 73.[65] "The utility of this united action is not to be overlooked. The children all proceed according to one and the same law, they all work to produce one and the same result, the same purpose unites them all; in short, we see here in the children's play all that forms the base of every human society, all that renders it possible for men to act together in organized communities, such as are the family, the state, and the church. And to prepare for the future, to be mindful even amidst play of that which a child will afterwards require in order worthily to fill his place in the world, ought surely not to be among the least important ends of an education claiming to be in conformity with nature and reason."—H. Goldammer, The Kindergarten, page 135.[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.[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.[68] "Each following generation and each following individual man is to pass through the whole earlier development and cultivation of the human race,—and he does pass 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.[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 quantity extraordinarily heightens the life of the child."—Friedrich Froebel, Education of Man, page 45.[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.[71] "In this group work it is desirable that the common aims should be fully within the comprehension of each little worker, yet sufficiently beyond his powers of execution and endurance to make him sensible of the need of assistance. The former secures the possibility of individual enjoyment, and hence the only reliable incentive to persistence; the latter insures free subordination to the will of the whole, the essential condition of success."—W. N. Hailmann, Primary Helps, page 18.[72] "These forms are invaluable even as silent teachers of geometrical and numerical relations. Used judiciously in conversational lessons, leading to partial or complete analysis of the figures in spoken or written descriptions, their teaching power is inexhaustible."—W. N. Hailmann's Primary Helps, page 21.[73] "Whenever the early and persistent cultivation of the full use of both hands has been accomplished, the result is greater efficiency, without any corresponding awkwardness or defect. In certain arts and professions, both hands are necessarily called into play. The skillful surgeon finds an enormous advantage in being able to transfer his instrument from one hand to the other. The dentist has to multiply instruments to make up for the lack of such acquired power. The fencer who can transfer his weapon to the left hand places his adversary at a disadvantage. The lumberer finds it indispensable, in the operation of his woodcraft, to learn to chop timber right-and-left-handed; and the carpenter may be frequently seen using the saw and hammer in either hand, and thereby not only resting his arm, but greatly facilitating his work. In all the fine arts the mastery of both hands is advantageous. The sculptor, the carver, the draughtsman, the engraver, the cameo-cutter, each has recourse at times to the left hand for special manipulative dexterity; the pianist depends little less on the left hand than on the right; and as for the organist, with the numerous pedals and stops of the modern grand organ, a quadrumanous musician would still find reason to envy the ampler scope which a Briareus could command."—Dr. Daniel Wilson, Left-Handedness. A Hint for Educators.[74] Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education, No. 4, 1882.[75] "The number of rings should only gradually be augmented. Satiety destroys every impulse of creation."—Emma Marwedel, Childhood's Poetry and Studies, page 15.[76] "It is true that the child produces forms of beauty with other material also, but it is the curved line which offers the strongest inducements to attempt such forms, since even the simplest combinations of a small number of semicircles and circles yield figures bearing the stamp of beauty."—H. Goldammer's The Kindergarten, page 177.[77] Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education, No. 4, 1882.[78] "This coming-out of the child from the outer and superficial and his entrance into the inner view of things, which, because it is inner, leads to recognition, insight, and consciousness,—this coming-out of the child from the house-order to the higher world-order makes the boy a scholar."—Friedrich Froebel, Education of Man, page 79.[79] The development of motor-ability in children and its furtherance or arrest by the kindergarten materials concerns the occupations more particularly, and as such will receive full consideration in a later volume.[80] Marwedel's Materials for Child-Culture. D. C. Heath & Co.[81] Public School Journal, July, 1895.[82] Education of Man, page 145.[83] It is a difficult thing to find the via media between complete silence on the part of the children save when answering questions and a confusion of tongues like that at the building of Babel, but there is such a via media, and it can be found by those who seek it diligently.[84] "At all stages of learning the mother tongue, the purely verbal exercises are more or less accompanied with the occupation of the mind upon things. If we suppose the child to become acquainted, in the first instance, with a variety of objects, the imparting of the names is a welcome operation, and the mental fusion of each name and thing is rapidly brought about. If the objects are in any way interesting, if they arouse or excite attention, their names are eagerly embraced. On the other hand, if objects are but languidly cared for, or if they are inconspicuous or confused with other things, we are indifferent both to the things themselves and to their designations." (Alexander Bain.)[85] "Language is the necessary tool of thought used in the conduct of the analysis and synthesis of investigation." (W. T. Harris.)

"What we are really seeking is the meaning and the word. One is of no value without the other in the education of the child. There is no such thing as a valuable observation and investigation of natural objects without language in which to embody the results at every step." (Geo. P. Brown.) Report on Correlation of Studies by Committee of Fifteen. With annotations by Geo. P. Brown.[86] "Of course, there is great difference between the disciplinary value of that study in which the pupil solves his own difficulties and that teaching in which the teacher accompanies the pupil, supplying the needed information or suggestion at every step of his progress. The latter is not worth much for character building for the reason that it is not apt to become a part of the organized self.... The school cannot afford to expend much energy in acquiring such knowledge." (Geo. P. Brown.) Report on Correlation of Studies by Committee of Fifteen. With annotations by Geo. P. Brown.[87] "In the broad view we are safe in affirming that all truth is congruous, and that truth in one department of human knowledge will always reinforce truth in any other department. There is a unity in all truth. While it is true, as Dr. Harris affirms in his Report on the Correlation of Studies, that the student does not come into the full consciousness of this fact before he attains the university, is it not also true that he can be so taught that he will feel this unity before he can think it, and that his feeling it will hasten the development of the power to think it?"—Geo. P. Brown, "Congruence in Teaching," Public School Journal, Sept., 1895.[88] W. T. Harris.[89] Froebel's Letters on the Kindergarten, page 145.