Part 4 (1/2)

CHAPTER VI.

KINDERGARTEN OCCUPATIONS.

THERE is a kind of thing done in Kindergarten, which retains the best characteristics of childish play, and yet a.s.sumes the serious form of occupation.

Fancy-work, if Froebel's method be strictly followed, is the best initiation of industry; for it can serve to a perfect intellectual training.

Childish play has all the main characteristics of art, inasmuch as it is the endeavor to ”conform the shows of things to the desires of the mind,”--Bacon's definition of poetry. A child at play is histrionic. He personates characters, with costume and mimic gesture. He also undertakes to represent whatever thing interests his mind by embodiment of it in outward form. Advantage is taken of this, by Froebel, to initiate exquisite manipulation, in several different materials; a veritable artistic work, which trains the imagination to use, and develops the understanding to the appreciation of beauty, symmetry, or order,--”Heaven's first law.”

Froebel's first two Gifts, as they are called, are a box of colored worsted b.a.l.l.s, and a box containing the cube, the sphere, and the cylinder. These two Gifts belong more especially to the nursery series, and were published some years since in Boston, with little books of rhymes, and suggestions for playing with babies.

But they can be used, in some degree, in the Kindergarten: the first, to give lessons on the harmonies of colors; and the second, to call attention to fundamental differences of form.

It is possible, however, to omit these, and begin a Kindergarten with the Third Gift, which is a little wooden box, containing eight cubes of an inch dimension.

The first plays with these blocks, especially if the children are very young, will be to make what Froebel calls forms of life; that is, chairs, tables, columns, walls, tanks, stables, houses, &c. Everybody conversant with children knows how easily they will ”make believe,” as they call it, all these different forms, out of any materials whatever; and are most amused, when the materials to be transformed by their personifying and symbolizing fancy are few, for so much do children enjoy the exercise of imagination, that they find it more amusing to have simple forms, which they can ”make believe,”--first to be one thing, and then another,--than to have elaborately carved columns, and such like materials, for building. There is nothing in life more charming to a spectator, than to see this shaping fancy of children, making everything of nothing, and scorning the bounds of probability, and even of possibility. It is a prophecy of the unending dominion which man was commanded, at his creation, to have over nature; and gives meaning to the parable of the Lord G.o.d's bringing all creatures before Adam, that he might give them their names.

Wordsworth felicitously describes, in that ode which he calls ”Intimations of Immortality in Childhood,” this victorious play of--

”The seer blest, On whom those truths do rest, Which we are toiling all our lives to find.”

”Behold the child among his new-born blisses; A six years' darling of a pigmy size; See where, mid work of his own hand, he lies, Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, With light upon him from his father's eyes!

See at his feet some little plan or chart, Some fragment of his dream of human life, Shaped by himself with newly learned art,-- A wedding or a festival, A mourning or a funeral; And this hath now his heart, And unto this he frames his song.

Then he will fit his tongue To dialogues of business, love, or strife; But it will not be long Ere this be thrown aside, And with new joy and pride, The little actor cons another part; Filling from time to time his humourous stage With all the persons down to palsied age That life brings with her in her equipage.”

That this is a literal picture, every mother knows; and, in this childish play, there is all the subjective part of a genuine work of art; the effort being to dramatize, or embody in form, the inward fancy, no less than in the case of the most mature and successful artist. The child seizes whatever materials are at hand to give objectivity to what is within; and he is only baffled in the effect, because he is not developed enough in understanding, and has not knowledge enough to discover or appreciate means appropriate to his ends. It is for the adult to show him that the universe is a magazine of materials given to the human race, wherewith each is to build an image of G.o.d's creative wisdom, into which he shall inwardly grow by the very act of accomplis.h.i.+ng this destiny.

As the child is satisfied at first with a symbolical representation of his inward thought, a row of chairs and footstools, arranged in a line, makes a railroad to his imagination; and no less a row of cubes, one being piled on another for the engine.

In using the blocks in a Kindergarten, the child at first is left to his own spontaneity, as much as possible; but the teacher is to suggest means of carrying out whatever plan or idea he has. What is cultivating about the exercise is, that the child makes or receives a plan, and then executes it; has a thought, and embodies it in a form.

But something more can be done with the blocks. They can be made symbolical of the personages and objects of a story. Thus even with the eight blocks, five may be a flock of sheep, one the shepherd, one a wolf who is seen in the distance, and who comes to steal a sheep, and one the shepherd's dog who is to defend the sheep against the wolf.

When all the Gifts come to be used, much more complicated dramas may be represented. The teacher should set an example; as, for instance, thus: ”I am going to build a light-house, so;” (she piles up some blocks and leaves openings near the top, which she says are) ”the lantern part where the lights are put;” near the light-house are a number of blocks, rather confusedly laid together, of which she says, ”These are rocks, which are very dangerous for s.h.i.+ps, but which are scarcely ever seen, because the water dashes over them, especially when there is a storm, or when the night is dark; and that is the reason the light-house is put here. Whenever sailors see a light-house, they know there is danger where it stands; and so they steer their s.h.i.+ps away from the place. Look here! here is a s.h.i.+p” (and she constructs with other blocks something which she calls a s.h.i.+p, or schooner, or sloop, representing respectively the number of masts which characterize each kind of vessel), ”and there is a pilot standing upon it who has seen the light-house, and is turning the s.h.i.+p another way.”

Having built her story, she will now call upon the children to build something. Some will imitate her; others will have plans of their own.

As soon as one has finished, he or she must hold up a hand; and the teacher will call upon as many as there is time for, to explain their constructions. There is no better way for a teacher to learn what is in children, their variety of mental temperament and imagination, than by this playing with blocks. Some will be prosaic and merely imitative; some will show the greatest confusion, and the most fantastic operations of mind; others, the most charming fancies; and others, inventive genius. But there will always be improvement, by continuing the exercise; and it is a great means of development into self-subsistence and continuity of thought.

But to return to Froebel's Third Gift, consisting of eight blocks. In making things with the blocks, a great deal is to be said about setting them accurately upon each other, and upon the squares drawn on the table (if it is so painted). I was both amused and instructed, when I was in Hamburg, by seeing a little table full of children taking a first lesson in making two chairs, by piling three blocks on each other for the back, and putting one in front for the seat; the Kindergartner going round so seriously to see if each block was adjusted exactly, and stood squarely.

When, at length, the chairs were done, the children took hold of hands, and recited, simultaneously with the Kindergartner, a verse of poetry; and then sang it. I could not understand the words; but the conversation, while they were making the chairs, had helped the several children's fancy to seat their fathers, mothers, or grandparents, or some other favorite friends, in them; each child having been asked for whom he wished to make his chairs, which developed a good deal of the domestic circ.u.mstances. None of the cla.s.s was more than four years old.

But the most important use of the eight blocks is to lead the children through a series of symmetrical forms, which Froebel calls forms of beauty.

As a preparation for this work, the children are questioned, till they understand which is the right, and which the left side of the cube made by the eight blocks; which the front, and which the back side; which the upper, and which the under side; and are able to describe a cube by its dimensions; also to know how to divide the whole cube into two, four, or eight parts; how to divide the length, how the breadth, and how the height, into two parts,--lessons of a.n.a.lysis sufficiently amusing, and giving precision to their use of words.

Dividing the height, they get a simple fundamental form; and the four blocks taken off can be arranged around the others symmetrically.

For instance: tell them, first, to take an inch cube and place it in front of the square that the four lower blocks make, so that one-half shall be on one block, and the other half on the other; then tell them to take another small cube, and place it opposite, in the same way, one-half on one cube, and the other half on the other. Already they will find the figure is symmetrical, or, as they may phrase it, even. Then tell them to put a cube on the right hand of the fundamental figure in the same way as before, and then another opposite on the left side; and the figure will be still more symmetrical.