Froebel's Gifts Part 17

Dictations.

The dictations should invariably be given so that opposites and their intermediates may be readily seen. The different triangles may be studied each in the same way, introducing them one at a time in the order named, afterwards allowing as free a combination as will produce symmetrical figures. It is best always to study one of a new kind, then two, then gradually give larger numbers.

Great possibilities undoubtedly lie in this gift, but it is well to remember that with young children it must not be made the vehicle of too abstract instruction. In order to make the dictations simple, the child must be perfectly familiar with the terms of direction, up, down, right, left, centre; with the simple names of the planes (squares, half-squares, equal-sided, blunt and sharp-angled triangles, etc.); and he must learn to know the longest edge of each triangle, that he may be able to place it according to direction.

The children should be encouraged to invent, to give the dictation exercises to one another, and to copy the simpler forms of the lesson on blackboard or paper. Some duplicate copies in colored papers may be made from their inventions, and the walls of the schoolroom ornamented with them. It will be a pleasure to the little ones themselves, and demonstrate to others how wonderful a gift this is and how charmingly the children use it.

No exercise should be given without previous study, and in the first year's teaching it is wiser to draw or make the figures before giving the dictations. The materials, too, should be prepared beforehand, in such a form that they can be given out readily and quietly by the children at the opening of the exercise. To require a cla.s.s of a dozen or more pupils to wait while the kindergartner a.s.sorts and counts the various colors and shapes of tablets to be used is positively to invite loss of interest on the children's part, and to produce in the teacher a hurry and worry and nervous tension which will infallibly ruin the play.

Life Forms.

The Life forms are no longer absolute representations, but only more or less suggestive images of certain objects, and thus show still more clearly the orderly movement from concrete to abstract.

Hitherto in Life forms the child has produced more or less real objects,--for instance, he built a miniature house, a fountain, a chair, or a sofa. They were not absolutely real, and therefore in one way merely images; but they were bodily images. He could place a little dish on the table, a tiny cup on the edge of the fountain, a doll could sit in the chair, and therefore they were all real for purposes of play, at least.

With the tablets, however, the child can no longer make a chair, though by a certain arrangement of them he can make an image of it.

The child will notice that many of the forms made with squares are flat pictures of those made with the third gift, and with the addition of the right isosceles triangles he can reproduce the facades of many of the elaborate object forms of the fifth. The various triangles differ greatly in their capabilities of producing Life forms, the equilateral and the obtuse isosceles being especially deficient in this regard and requiring to be combined with the other tablets. The fact that both the right isosceles and right scalene triangles produce Life forms in great variety seems to prove that, as Goldammer says, "the right angle predominates in the products of human activity."

Symmetrical Forms.

The symmetrical forms are more varied and innumerable than those of any other gift, and with the addition of the brilliant colors of the pasteboard, or the soft shades of the wooden tablets, make figures which are undeniably beautiful, and which are mosaic-like in their effect.

The whirling figures are interesting and new, and the child with developed eye and growing artistic taste will delight in their oddity, and yet be able to find opposites and their intermediates and make them as correctly as in the more methodical figures, where the exact right and left balanced the upper and lower extremes. Here we note that the equilateral and obtuse isosceles triangles, so ill fitted to produce Life forms, lend themselves to forms of symmetry in great variety. The various sequences of the latter in the third and fifth gifts may of course be faithfully reproduced in surface-extension with the tablets, and thus gain an added charm.

The amount of material given to the child is now a matter for the decision of the kindergartner, and is dependent only on the ability of the child to use it to advantage. This increase of material presents a further difficulty, and it is time for us to add still another, that is, to expect more of the child, and to require that he produce not only something original, but something which shall, though simple, be really beautiful.

Inventions in borders are a new and charming feature of this gift, and the circular and oblong tablets as well as the squares and various triangles are well adapted to produce them. The various borders laid horizontally across the tablets may be divided by lines of sticks, and thus make an effect altogether different from anything we have had before.

Mathematical Forms.

The work with forms of knowledge, as has been fully shown, will be in geometry than in arithmetic, to which indeed the gift is not especially well adapted. In addition to the study and comparison of the various forms, their lines and angles, we have a great variety of figures to be produced by combination. We can make the nine regular forms already mentioned in the introduction in a variety of ways, and thus give new charm to the old truths. We must allow the child to experiment by himself very frequently, and interpret to him his discoveries when he makes them.

The Seventh Gift in Weaving.

The square tablets afford a valuable aid to the occupation of weaving, as all the simple patterns can be formed with them, the child laying them upon his table until he has mastered the numerical principle upon which they are constructed. We can easily see how these same patterns may be further utilized as designs for inlaid tiles, or parquetry floors. Thus the seventh gift may introduce children to subsequent practical life, and serve as a useful preparation for various branches of art-work.

Seventh Gift Parquetry.

It is easy to see when we begin the practical use of the tablets that the essential characteristics of the gifts in their progress from solid to point are now becoming less marked, and that they begin to merge into the occupations, which develop from point to solid. The meeting-place of the two series is close at hand, and, like drops of water fallen near each other, they tremble with impatience to rush into one.

The inventions which the child makes with tablets he now very commonly expresses a desire to give away, or to take home with him,--a thought which he seldom had with the gifts, wis.h.i.+ng rather to show them in their place upon the tables. As this is a natural and legitimate desire, a supplement to the seventh gift has been devised, consisting of paper subst.i.tutes for the various forms, of the same size and appropriate coloring, and to be had either plain or gummed on the back. After the inventions have been made, they are easily transferred to paper with parquetry, and so can be bestowed according to the will of the inventor.

Group Work.

The parquetry of the seventh gift lends an added grace to cooperative work, for the children can now combine all their material in one form to decorate the room, or perhaps to send as a gift to an absent playmate. They may make an inlaid floor for the doll's house, a brightly colored windowpane for the sun to stream through, and with larger forms may even design an effective border for the wainscoting of the schoolroom.[65]

[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.

The group work at the square tables is also carried on very fully with the tablets, the symmetrical figures when the colors are well combined being quite dazzling in beauty.

Color with Seventh Gift.

In this connection, a danger may be noted in the treatment of the gifts, both by kindergartner and children. Color appears again here in almost bewildering profusion after its long absence in the series, and is another straw to prove that the wind is blowing strongly toward the occupations. Many of the pasteboard tablets are of different colors on the opposite sides, and though this is of great use in Beauty forms, when properly treated, it is quite often unfortunate in forms of life, unless careful attention is given to arranging the material beforehand. The effect of a barn, for instance, with its front view checkered with violet, red, and yellow squares, may be imagined, or of a pigeon-house with a parti-colored green and blue roof, an orange standard, and red supports. Yet these are no fancy pictures I have painted, and if the child places the tablets in this fas.h.i.+on, they are often allowed so to remain without criticism from the purblind kindergartner. She even sometimes dictates, herself, extravagant and vulgar combinations of color, such as a violet centre-piece with green corners and an orange border.

There needs no reasoning to prove that such a person is radically unfit to handle the subject of color-teaching, and is sure to corrupt the children under her charge; for in general, if ordinarily well trained, they should now be far beyond the stage in which they would be satisfied with such crudity of combination. They have had their season of "playing with brightness," as Mr. Hailmann calls it, and should now begin to have really good ideas as to harmonious arrangement of hues. If they have not, if they really seem to prefer the pigeon-house or barn above mentioned, then they are viciously ill-taught, or altogether deficient in color sense.

It has been noted that the older children often choose the light and dark wooden tablets, for invention, rather than the gay pasteboard forms; but this may be on account of the high polish of the wood, and its novelty in this guise, rather than because, as has been suggested, they have been surfeited with brightness.

READINGS FOR THE STUDENT.

Paradise of Childhood. _Edward Wiebe_. Pages 30-38.

Law of Childhood. _W. N. Hailmann_. 38, 39.

Kindergarten Guide. _Kraus-Boelte_. 145-237.

Koehler's Kindergarten Practice. Tr. by _Mary Gurney_. 6-9.

The Kindergarten. _H. Goldammer_. 116-54.

Kindergarten Culture. _W. N. Hailmann_. 68-70.

Kindergarten and Child-Culture. _Henry Barnard_. 210, 255, 257.

Prang Primary Course in Art Education. Part I. _Mary D. Hicks_, _Josephine C. Locke_.

Color in the School-Room. _Milton Bradley_.

Elementary Color. _Milton Bradley_.

Color Teaching in Public Schools. _Louis Prang_, _J. S. Clark_, _Mary D. Hicks_.

Color, an Elementary Manual for Students. _A. H. Church_.

The Principles of Harmony and Contrasts of Colors. _M. E. Chevreul_.

Students' Text-Book of Color. _O. N. Rood_.

Suggestions with Regard to the Use of Color. _Prang Ed. Co._

FROEBEL'S EIGHTH GIFT

THE STRAIGHT LINE.

_The Single and Jointed Slats and Staff or Stick._

"The knowledge of the linear lies at the foundation of the knowledge of each form; the forms are viewed and recognized by the intermediation of the straight-lined."

FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"Froebel's laths, wherewith the child can form letters, correspond to the beech-staves (_buchenen Stabchen_, now contracted to _Buchstaben_, i. e., letters of the alphabet), whereon were carved the runes and magic symbols of our primitive ancestors."

HERMANN POESCHE.