V Developing the Mental Faculties

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By the time he is two years old he has gained maturity and grasp enough to play many little educational games with his mother and his little brothers and sisters, or playmates. These games should be calculated to develop his various faculties, his powers of observation, memory, and concentration. To develop a faculty is really to train the brain. As a matter of fact, we see and hear and taste and smell and feel with our brains. The eye of a two-year-old child is practically as perfect an optical instrument as the eye of a boy of ten, and yet how much more the older boy seems to see. This is because his brain has been trained to interpret the impressions that even the baby eyes received but did not understand. Of course, where the instrument is found to be imperfect we can assist it by means of additional lenses, or perhaps by some one of the skillful operations now performed by oculists, and, as the sight is of such increased importance to a deaf child, the greatest care and watchfulness should be given to his eyes. Do not let him sleep, or lie, facing the sun, or any other powerful light, but throughout his life be careful that all his use of eyesight be under conditions of ample and well-directed light. Supposing that the simple tests referred to heretofore have shown that the eyes, as optical instruments, are sufficiently perfect, our efforts need to be to train the brain to take cognizance of, and to interpret the impressions transmitted to it by the eyes. We shall not be able to improve the working of the eye by our efforts, but we can educate the brain.

Color and form make the earliest appeal to the child's eyes, and we can use them for our educational play. The duplicate set of worsted balls of the seven primal colors can be increased to include easily distinguishable shades. The child can be sent on entertaining voyages of discovery around the room with a ball of a certain color to find other objects similar in color in the rugs, books, chairs, dresses, ties, etc.

A game to develop observation of form can be made by collecting a group of objects of varying shapes in a pile on the floor or a low table; mother picks up some one of the objects, directs the attention of the little one to it, and after he has observed it somewhat she puts it back in the pile and moves all the objects about till they are well mixed up. Ask the little fellow then to pick out the object mother held in her hand a moment before. When he can do this by sight without difficulty, have him shut his eyes, place an object in his little hands, teach him to feel it over carefully, take it from him, and, while his eyes are still closed, place it once more in the pile. Let him then open his eyes and see if he can indicate the object he had previously held. When he has mastered this, give the game another turn by asking him to find by means of touch alone, while the eyes are still closed, the object that he has been feeling, after it is restored to the pile of other objects. Still another turn can be given by first letting him see the object, without touching it, then having him close his eyes, and by touch alone select it from the pile. A set of wooden forms, such as spheres, cubes, pyramids, cones, cylinders, and similar, but truncated, forms, can be obtained at any school supply store. To these can be added common household objects such as small frames, vases, napkin rings, spoons, forks, and other similar things, as well as some of the forms included in a complete set of the Montessori material.

The Montessori weighted forms are excellent for training his muscular recognition of difference of weight, and an excellent way is to put various quantities of birdshot into half a dozen exactly similar little rubber balls that can be purchased at any toy store for two cents apiece. Then hand the boy one of the weighted balls, and after he has felt its weight put it back with the other similar-appearing balls and see if he can again discover it. An outfit for training his tactile sense can be made in any home by collecting duplicate pieces of cloth having different textures; such as velvet, rough woolen tweeds or homespun, silk, satin, cambric, muslin, etc., and pasting one set on cards. Also by stretching on a wooden frame, strings of varying sizes, weaves, and twists, and having a bunch of duplicates from which he can select, by sight and touch alone, the pieces that correspond, each to each, with those on the frame or on the cards. If there is a guitar, or mandolin, or zither, or a piano, available, perhaps, by and by, the mother can teach the child to recognize the difference in the vibratory sensation perceived by his fingers touching the body of the instrument when a low note and a high note are struck alternately. She can make a game of this, too, by later having him close his eyes and place his fingers in contact with the instrument and then tell her approximately what string or key she struck. The next step, if she can take it, is to place his little hands upon her chest to feel the lowest notes of her voice, and upon both the chest and the top of her head to feel the highest, and endeavoring to get him to recognize the similarity in vibratory sensation between what he now feels and what he previously felt on the musical instruments. The last step in this series of exercises to awaken a recognition of vibratory sensations is to lead him to feel in his own chest and head the vibrations set up by his own voice in shouting and laughing, crying or babbling.

These hints that are so quickly and easily given, require weeks and months of patient, happy effort to carry out. Beware that no one of them is repeated or continued so long at a time as to become a thing dreaded and disliked. Remember that the attention of a little child is like a constantly flitting butterfly that rests for only a moment or two on anything before dancing away to something else.

There are many little games with kindergarten materials that can be used to develop the powers of attention, observation, imitation, and obedience. The laying in simple designs, by watchful imitation of the mother, of colored sticks, colored squares, etc.; the building with colored blocks; stringing of large beads; weaving with wide strips of colored paper simple designs that a mother could invent with the material at hand or could learn from any kindergarten manual. The point that must be firmly, but pleasantly, insisted upon in these exercises is careful and obedient following by the child of the exact order of movement and manner of placing adopted by the mother teacher. The entire value of these exercises for the purpose she wishes to accomplish depends upon accurate observation by the child and implicit obedience.

The material outfit prepared and sold by the American exploiters of the Montessori method is admirably adapted to the development of the budding faculties of the child, and the mother who is trying to do all in her power to prepare her little one to benefit to the greatest possible extent from the professional instruction that must come later, will make no mistake in supplying herself with the set of materials, and making herself intelligent on their use by the child.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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