Froebel's Gifts Part 21

The rings are of course not as well adapted to the production of objects constructed by man as were the sticks, but, nevertheless, the material is not without value in this direction. Various fruits, flowers, and leaves may be made, as well as such objects as bowls, goblets, hour-gla.s.ses, baskets, and vases. When connected with sticks, the number of Life forms is obviously much increased on account of the union of straight and curved lines thus made possible. Tablets may also be added and contribute a new element to the possibilities for invention.

For symmetrical forms, however, the gift is admirably adapted, since the child can hardly put two rings together without producing something pleasing.[76] Borders enter here in great variety, tablets and sticks being added when desirable, and the group work forms, combining the seventh, eighth, and ninth gifts, give full play to the creative impulses of the child, while calling constantly upon those principles of design which he has learned empirically.

[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.

The forms of knowledge which can be made with the ninth gift are necessarily few. It is not especially well fitted for number work, and development of geometrical form is limited to the planes and lines of the circle.

Wooden Rings.

Miss Emma Marwedel introduced a supplement to the ninth gift in the form of wooden circles and half-circles in many colors. These are much heavier than the metal rings, therefore somewhat easier to handle and give, as she claims, "the child's creative powers a much larger field for aesthetic development." Of course, this larger field is to be found in color blending, not in beauty of design, as the form elements remain the same. The bright hues are undoubtedly a great attraction, however, and perhaps are in line with that return to color which was noted in the seventh gift, when the architectural forms were laid aside. If we adopt the wooden rings we need not on that account lay aside the metal ones, for the two materials may be combined to great advantage.

Difficulties of the Gift.

The gift presents little difficulty, the dictations requiring less concentration than heretofore as the positions in which the rings may be placed are few and simple. Froebel's purpose evidently was that the child should now concentrate his activity entirely upon design, and that he should use the material by itself, and in connection with sticks and tablets to give out in visible form whatever aesthetic impressions he had received through the preceding gifts. The office of the kindergartner is hardly now more than to suggest, merely to watch the child in his creative work, and to advise when necessary as to the most artistic disposition of the simple material. She may here, if she adopts this att.i.tude, have the experience of seeing the direct result of her teachings, for the child's work will be a mirror in which she can see reflected her successes or her failures.

Froebel's Idea.

The idea of Froebel in devising all these gifts was not, it seems hardly necessary to say, to instruct the child in abstractions, which do not properly belong to childhood, but to lead him early in life to the practical knowledge of things about him; to inculcate the love of industry, helpfulness, independence of thought and action, neatness, accuracy, economy, beauty, harmony, truth, and order.

The gifts and occupations are only means to a great end, and if used in this sense will attain their highest usefulness.

No dictation with any of the kindergarten materials, no study of lines, angles, oblongs, triangles, and pentagons, no work with numbers either concrete or abstract are fit employments for little children, if not connected in every possible way with their home pleasures and the natural objects of their love. Only when thus connected do they produce real interest, only thus can agreement with the child's inner wants be secured.

Actual experiences in the child's life are its most natural and potent teachers. We need constantly to remember that the prime value of the kindergarten lies in its personal influence upon individuals, and seek to develop each separate member of our cla.s.s according to his possibilities.

An Objection answered.

The objection has been made that the study and practice with straight lines, angles, geometrical forms, cubes, and other rectangular solids would fit the child for later work in the exact and mathematical sciences more than for other branches of study. But yet it is difficult to see how, when the child's powers of observation are so carefully trained in every way; when he is constantly led to notice objects in nature and reproduce them with clay, pencil, chalk, or needle; when these objects are so frequently presented for his critical inspection and comparison; when he is led to see in the flowers, plants, rocks, and stars, the unity which holds together everything in the universe; when beauty and harmony, mingled freely, const.i.tute the atmosphere of the ideal kindergarten,--it is difficult indeed to see how he can receive anything but benefit from the gift plays, which present at first mainly the straight line, seemingly deferring the curve to a later period when it can be managed more successfully.

READINGS FOR THE STUDENT.

Paradise of Childhood. _Edward Wiebe_. Pages 45, 46.

Kindergarten Guide. _Kraus-Boelte_. 373-417.

The Kindergarten. _H. Goldammer_. 173-78.

The Kindergarten. Principles of Froebel's System. _Emily s.h.i.+rreff_.

17-20.

Industrial Art in Schools.[77] _Charles G. Leland_.

Childhood's Poetry and Studies. With Diagrams. _Emma Marwedel_.

The Grammar of Ornament. _Owen Jones_.

Art. _Sir John Lubbock_.

How to Judge a Picture. _Van d.y.k.e_.

[77] Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education, No. 4, 1882.

FROEBEL'S TENTH GIFT

THE POINT

"The awakening mind of the child ... is led from the material body and its regular division to the contemplation of the surface, from this to the contemplation of the line and to the point made visible." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"And it is precisely thus that the first artistic work of primeval man occurs; he begins by the forming of simple rows, as strings of beads, or of sh.e.l.ls, for instance."

H. POESCHE.

"For the last step in this a.n.a.lysis the child receives small lentil seeds or pebbles--concrete points, so to speak--with which he constructs the most wonderful pictures."

W. N. HAILMANN.

1. The point made concrete, which forms the tenth and last of Froebel's gifts, is represented by many natural objects, by beans, lentils, pebbles, sh.e.l.ls, leaves, and buds of flowers, by seeds of various kinds, as well as by tiny spheres of clay and bits of wood and cork.

2. We have been moving by gradual a.n.a.lysis from the solid through the divided solid, the plane and the line, and thus have reached in logical sequence the point, into a series of which the line may be resolved.

3. The point which was visible in the preceding gifts, but inseparable from them, now in the tenth gift has an existence of its own.

Although it is an imaginary quant.i.ty having neither length, breadth, nor thickness, yet it is here ill.u.s.trated by tangible objects which the child can handle. By its very lack of individuality, it lends itself to many charming plays and transformations.

4. By the use of the point the child learns practically the composition of the line, that its direction is determined by two points, that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and that a curved line is one which changes its direction at every point. The gift closes the series of objects obtained by a.n.a.lysis from the solid, and prepares for the occupations which are developed by synthesis from the point.

5. The outlines of all geometrical plane figures both rectilinear and curvilinear may be ill.u.s.trated with the point as well as straight and curved lines and angles of every degree.

6. The law of mediation of contrasts is no longer ill.u.s.trated in the gift itself, but simply governs the use of the material. All lines and outlines of planes made with a series of dots show its workings, and the symmetrical figures, as we have noted from the first, owe to it their very existence.

Meeting-Place of Gifts and Occupations.

When we begin upon a consideration of the tenth gift, the last link in the chain of objects which Froebel devised to "produce an all-sided development of the child," we see at once that the meeting-place of gift and occupation has been reached. The two series are now in fact so nearly one that the point is much more often used for occupation work than as a gift. This convergence of the series in regard to their practical use was first noted in the tablets, and has grown more and more marked with each succeeding object.

Though the point is in truth the last step which the child takes in the sequence of gifts as he journeys toward the abstract, yet we are met at once in practice by the apparently inconsistent fact that it is one of the first presented in the kindergarten. This can only be explained by the statement that it is in truth quite as much of an occupation as a gift, and is used in the former sense among the child's first work-materials as a preparation for later point-_making_ (perforating), and as an exercise in eye-training and accuracy of measurement. It is not an occupation, of course, for the reason that permanent results cannot be produced with it, and because no transformation of its material is possible.

The Point as a Gift.

Before the child completes his kindergarten course, however, he should certainly be led to an intellectual perception of the interrelation of the gifts and their gradual development from solid to point, for their orderly progression according to law, though it be but dimly apprehended, will be most useful and strengthening to the mind. To discern the logical order of a single series of objects is a step toward the comprehension of world-order in mature life.[78]

[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.

The mind in later childhood should be what Froebel describes his own to have been. "I often felt," he says, "as if my mind were a smooth, still pool scarce a handbreadth over, or even a single water-drop, in which surrounding things were clearly mirrored, while the blue vault of the sky was seen as well, reaching far away and above."

When the derivation of plane and of straight and curved line and their place in the gifts are clearly understood by the child, there will be no difficulty in gaining an equally clear apprehension of the point and its position in the series. This may be done somewhat as follows.

When the children are playing with blocks on some occasion, we may direct the conversation to the essential characteristics of the cube, its faces, edges, and corners. Do they remember which one of their playthings is like the face of the cube; do they remember cutting clay tablets from the clay blocks?