Study of Child Life Part 9

Jack-o'-lanterns are great fun, and when pumpkins are not available, oranges may be used instead.

[Sidenote: Rhythmic Movements]

Besides these elemental playthings the child gets much valuable pleasure out of the rhythmic use of his own muscles. All such plays Plato thought should be regulated by music, and with this Froebel agreed, but in the Household this is often impossible. The children must indulge in many movements when there is no one about who has leisure to make music for them. Still, when they come to the quarrelsome age, a few minutes' rhythmic play to the sound of music will be found to harmonize the whole group wonderfully. For this purpose the ordinary hippity-hop, fast or slow according to the music, is sufficient. It is as if the regulation of the body to the laws of harmony reacted upon minds and nerves. Such an exercise is particularly valuable just before bed-time. The children go to sleep then with their minds under the influence of harmony and wake in the morning inclined to be peaceful and happy.

[Sidenote: Songs]

A book of Kindergarten songs, such as Mrs. Gaynor's "Songs of the Child World" and Eleanor Smith's "Songs for the Children," ought to be in every household, and the mother ought to familiarize herself with a dozen or so of these perfectly simple melodies. Of course the children must learn them with her. When once this has been done she has a valuable means of amusing them and bringing them within her control at any time. She may hum one of the songs or play it. The children must guess what it is and then act out their guess in pantomime, so that she can see what they mean. Perhaps it is a windmill song; their arms fly around and around in time to the music, now fast, now slow.

Perhaps it is a Spring song; the children are birds building their nests. Other songs turn them into shoemakers, galloping horses, or soldiers.

[Sidenote: Dramatic Plays]

Dramatic plays, whether simple, like this, or elaborate, are, as Goethe shows in _Wilhelm Meister_, of the greatest possible educational advantage. In them the child expresses his ideas of the world about him and becomes master of his own ideas. He acts out whatever he has heard or seen. He acts out also whatever he is puzzling about, and by making the terms of his problem clear to his consciousness usually solves it.

[Sidenote: Dancing]

As for dancing, Richter exclaims: "I know not whether I should most deprecate children's b.a.l.l.s or most praise children's dances. For the harmony connected with it (dancing) imparts to the affections and the mind that material order which reveals the highest, and regulates the beat of the pulse, the step, and even the thought. Music is the meter of this poetic movement, and is an invisible dance, as dancing is a silent music. Finally, this also ranks among the advantages of his eye and heel pleasure; that children with children, by no harder canon than the musical, light as sound, may be joined in a rosebud feast without thorns or strife." The dances may be of the simplest kind, such as "Ring Around a Rosy," "Here We Go, To and Fro," "Old Dan Tucker" and the "Virginia Reel." The old-fas.h.i.+oned singing plays, such as "London Bridge," "Where Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow," and "Pop Goes the Weasel" have their place and value. Several collections of them have been made and published, but usually quite enough material may be found for these plays in the memories of the people of any neighborhood.

[Sidenote: Toys]

All these plays, it will be noticed, call for very simple and inexpensive apparatus, in most cases for no apparatus at all.

Nevertheless there is a place for toys. All children ought to have a few, both because of the innocent pleasure they afford and because they need to have certain possessions which are inalienably their own.

A simple and inexpensive list of suitable toys adapted to various ages is given at the end of this section. Most of them are exactly the toys that parents usually buy. But it will be noticed that none of them are very elaborate or expensive, and that the patrol wagon is not among them. This is because the patrol wagon directly leads to plays that are not only uneducational but positively harmful in their tendencies.

The children of a whole neighborhood were once led into the habit of committing various imitation crimes for the sake of being arrested and carried off in miniature patrol wagon. It any such expensive and elaborate toys are bought, it may well be the plain express wagon or the hook and ladder and fire engine. The first of these leads to plays of industry, the second to those of heroism.

LIST OF TOYS SUITABLE FOR VARIOUS AGES.

Ball, rubber ring, soft animals and rag dolls ......... Before 1 year Blocks and Bells ............................................. 1 year Small chair and table ....................................1 1/2 years Noah's Ark .................................................. 2 years Picture books ............................................... 2 years Materials and instruments .............................. 2 to 3 years Carts, stick-horses, and reins ..................... 2 1/2 to 3 years Boats, s.h.i.+ps, engines, tin or wooden animals, dolls, dishes, broom, spade, sand-pile, bucket, etc ................ 3 years Hoop, games and story books ................................. 5 years

OCCUPATIONS

[Sidenote: Home Kindergarten]

There are a number of books designed to teach mothers how to carry the Kindergarten occupations over into the home; but while such books may be helpful in a few cases, in most cases better occupations present themselves in the course of the day's work. The Kindergarten occupations themselves follow increasingly the order of domestic routine. For example, many children in the Kindergarten make mittens out of eiderdown flannel in the Fall, when their own mothers are knitting their mittens, and make little hoods either for themselves or for their dolls. At other periods they put up little gla.s.ses of preserves or jelly, and study the industry of the bees and the way they put up their tiny jars of jelly. Their attention is called also to the preparations that the squirrels and other animals make for winter, and to that of the trees and flowers. In other words, the occupations in the Kindergarten are designed to bring the children into conscious sympathy with the life of nature and of the home.

[Sidenote: Kindergarten Methods]

That mother who keeps this purpose in mind and applies it to the occupations that come up naturally in the course of a day's work, will thereby bring the Kindergarten spirit into her own home much more truly than if she invests in a number of perforated sewing cards and colored strips of paper for weaving. Not that there is any harm in these bits of apparatus, provided that the sewing cards are large and so perforated as not to task the eyes and young fingers of the sewer.

But unless for some special purpose, such as the making of a Christmas or birthday gift, these devices are unnecessary and better left to the school, which has less richness of material at hand than has the home.

[Sidenote: Helping Mother]

In allowing the children to enter a workers into the full life of the home several good things are accomplished. (1) The eager interest of the developing mind is utilized to brighten those duties which are likely to remain permanent duties. Not does this observation apply only to girls. Domestic obligations are supposed to rest chiefly upon them, but the truth is that boys need to feel these obligations as keenly as the girls, if they are to grow into considerate and helpful husbands and fathers. The usual division of labor into forms falsely called masculine and feminine is, therefore, much to be deplored.

Moreover, at an early age children are seldom s.e.x-conscious, and any precocity in this direction is especially evil in its results; yet many mothers from the beginning make such a division between what they require of their boys and of their girls as to force this consciousness upon them. All kinds of work, then, should be allowed in the beginning, however it may differentiate later on, and little boys as well as little girls should be taught to take an interest in sewing, dish-was.h.i.+ng, sweeping, dusting, and cooking--in all the forms of domestic activity.

This is so far recognized among educators that the most progressive primary schools now teach cooking to mixed cla.s.ses of boys and girls, and also sewing. These activities are recognized as highly educational, being, as they are, interwoven with the history of the race and with its daily needs. When they are studied in their full sum of relations.h.i.+p, they increase the child's knowledge of both the past and the living world.

[Sidenote: Teaching Mother]

(2) Besides the deepening of the child's interest in that work which in some form or other he will have with him always, is the quickening of the mother's own interest in what may have come to seem to her mere daily drudgery. Any woman who undertakes to perform so simple an operation as dish-was.h.i.+ng with the help of a bright happy child, asking sixteen questions to the minute, will find that common-place operation full of possibilities; and if she will answer all the questions she will probably find her knowledge strained to the breaking point, and will discover there is more to be known about dish-was.h.i.+ng than she ever dreamed of before; while in cooking, if she will make an effort to look up the science, history, and ethics involved in the cooking and serving of a very simple meal, she will not be likely to regard the task as one beneath her, but rather as one beyond her. No one can so lead her away from false conventions and narrow prejudices as a little child whom she permits to help her and teach her.

[Sidenote: The Love of Work]

(3) The child's spontaneous joy in being active and in doing any service is being utilized, as it should be, in the performance of his daily duties. We have already referred to the fact that all children in the beginning love to work, and that there must be something the matter with our education since this love is so early lost and so seldom reacquired. If when young children wish to help mother they are almost invariably permitted to do so, and their efforts greeted lovingly, this delight in helpfulness will remain a blessing to them throughout life.

[Sidenote: To Make "Helping" of Benefit]

But in order to get these benefits from the domestic activities two or three simple rules must be observed. (1) Do not go silently about your work, expecting your child to be interested and to understand without being talked to. Play with him while you work with him, and see the realization of youthfulness that comes to yourself while you do it.

Many tasks fit for childish hands are in their nature too monotonous for childish minds. Here your imagination must come into play to rouse and excite his activity. For instance, you are both sh.e.l.ling peas.

When he begins to be tired you suggest to him, "Here is a cage full of birds, let us open the door for them;" or you may tell a story while you work, but it should be a story about that very activity, or the child will form the habit of dreaming and dawdling over his work. Such stories may be perfectly simple and even rather pointless and yet do good work; the whole object is to keep the child's fly-away imagination turned upon the work at hand, thus lending wings to his thought, and lightness to his fingers. Moreover, the mother who talks with her child while working is training in him the habit of bright unconscious conversation, thus giving him a most useful accomplishment. Making a game or a play out of the work is, of course, conducive to the same good results. When the story or the talk drags, the game with its greater dramatic power may be subst.i.tuted.

[Sidenote: Fatigue]

(2) Children should neither be allowed to work to the point of fatigue nor to stop when they please. Fatigue, as our latest investigators in physiological psychology have conclusively proved, is productive of an actual poison in the blood and as such is peculiarly harmful to young children. But while work--or for that matter play either--must never be pushed past the point of healthful fatigue, it may well be pushed past the point of spontaneous interest and desire: the child may be happily persuaded by various hidden means to do a little more than he is quite ready to do. By this device, which is one of the recognized devices of the Kindergarten, mothers increase by imperceptible degrees that power of attention which makes will power.

[Sidenote: Willing Industry]

(3) Set the example of willing industry. Neither let the child conceive of you as an impersonal necessary part of the household machinery, nor as an unwilling martyr to household necessities. Most mothers err in one or the other of these two directions, and many of them err in both: they either, (a) perform the innumerable services of the household so quietly and steadily that the child does not perceive the effort that the performance costs and, therefore, as far as his consciousness is concerned, is deprived of the force of his mother's example, or (b) they groan aloud over their burdens and make their daily martyrdom vocal. Either way is wrong, for it is a mistake not to let a child see that your steady performance of tasks, which cannot be always delightful, is a result of self-discipline; and it is equally a mistake to let him think that this discipline is one against which you rebel. For in reality you are so far from being unwilling to bind yourself in his service that if he needed it you would promptly double and quadruple your exertions. It is exactly what you do when he is sick or in danger; and if he dies the sorest ache of your heart is the ache of the love that can no longer be of service to the beloved.

[Sidenote: Monotony]

(4) Remember that monotony is the curse of labor for both child and adult, but that _monotony cannot exist where new intellectual insights are constantly being given_. Therefore, while the daily round of labor, shaped by the daily recurring demands for food, warmth, cleanliness, and sleep, goes on without much change, seize every opportunity to deepen the child's perception of the relation of this routine to the order of the larger world. For instance, if a new house is being built near by, visit it with the children, comparing it with your own house, figure out whether it is going to be easier to keep clean and to warm than your house is and why. If you need to call in the carpenter, the plumber, the paper-hanger, or the stoveman, try to have him come when the children are at home, and let them satisfy their intense curiosity as to his work. This knowledge will sooner or later be of practical value, and it is immediately of spiritual value.

[Sidenote: Beautiful Work]

(5) Beautify the work as much as possible by letting the artistic sense have full play. This rule is so important that the attempt to establish it in the larger world outside of the home has given rise to the movement known as the arts and crafts movement, which has its rise in the perception that no great art can come into existence among us until the common things of daily living--the furniture, the books, the carpets, the chinaware--are made to express that creative joy in the maker which distinguishes an artistic product from an inartistic one.

This creative joy, in howsoever small degree, may be present in most of the things that the child does. If he sets the table, he may set it beautifully, taking real pleasure in the coloring of the china and the s.h.i.+ne of the silver and gla.s.s. He ought not to be permitted to set it untidily upon a soiled tablecloth.

[Sidenote: The Right Spirit]

(6) This is a negative rule, but perhaps the most important of all: DO NOT NAG. The child who is driven to his work and kept at it by means of a constant pressure of a stronger will upon his own, is deriving little, if any, benefit from it; and as you are not teaching him to work for the sake of his present usefulness, which is small at the best, but for the sake of his future development, you are more desirous that he should perform a single task in a day in the right spirit, than that he should run a dozen errands in the wrong spirit.

(7) Besides a regular time each day for the performance of his set share in the household work, give him warning before the arrival of that hour. Children have very incomplete notions of time; they become much absorbed in their own play; and therefore no child under nine or ten years of age should be expected to do a given thing at a given time without warning that the time is at hand.

[Sidenote: "Busy Work"]

Besides these occupations which are truly part of the business of life come any number of other occupations--a sort of a cross between real play and steady work, what teachers call "busy work"--and here the suggestions of the Kindergarten may be of practical value to the mother. For instance, weaving, already referred to, may keep an active child interested and quiet for considerable periods of time. Besides the regular weaving mats of paper, to be had from any Kindergarten supply store, wide gra.s.ses and rushes may be braided into mats, raffia and rattan may be woven into baskets, and strips of cloth woven into iron-holders. A visit to any neighboring Kindergarten will acquaint the mother with a number of useful, simple objects that can be woven by a child. Whatever he weaves or whatever he makes should be applied to some useful purpose, not merely thrown away; and while it is true that a conscientious desire to live up to this rule often results in a considerable clutter of flimsy and rather undesirable objects about the house, still, ways may be devised for slowly retiring the oldest of them from view, and disposing of others among patient relatives.

[Sidenote: Sewing]

Sewing is another occupation ranch used in the Kindergarten as well as in the home. Beginning with the simple stringing of large wooden beads upon shoe-strings, it pa.s.ses on to sewing on b.u.t.tons, and sewing doll clothes to the making of real clothing. This last in its simplest form can be begun sooner than most parents suppose, especially if the child is taught the use of the sewing machine. There is really no reason why a child, say six years old, should not learn to sew upon the machine.

His interest in machinery is keen at this period, and two or three lessons are usually sufficient to teach him enough about the mechanism to keep him from injuring it. Once he has learned to sew upon the machine, he may be given sheets and towels to hem, and even sew up the seams of larger and more complex articles. He will soon be able to make ap.r.o.ns for himself and his sisters and mother. Toy sewing machines are now sold which are really useful playthings, and on which the child can manufacture a number of small articles. Those run by a treadle are preferable to those run by a hand crank, because they leave the child's hands free to guide the work.

[Sidenote: Drawing Cutting Pasting]