Part 3 (2/2)

”There co going up to heaven It is the floor I think of chiefly, over the oilcloth of which, assues and forts of wooden bricksthe cracks and spaces of the floor and the bare brown ”surround” were the water channels and open sea of that continent of mine

”Justice has never been done to bricks and soldiers by those rite about toys--my bricks and my soldiers were my perpetual drama I recall an incessant variety of interests There was the s one could h which one could peep into their intricacies, and byways in the fro shi+p And there was commerce; the shops and markets and storerooms full of nasturtium seed, thrift seed, lupin beans and such-like provender froarden; such stuff one stored in love fingers tied up with thread and sent off by wagons along the great uered fortress on the Indian frontier beyond the worn places that were dismal swamps

”I find this empire of the floor much more vivid in s and boots that went gingerly across its territories”

H G WELLS, ”The New Machiavelli,” Chapter 2

[Illustration: The unsocial novice]

Nowhere else, perhaps, not even in his ”Floor Games” and ”Little Wars”

has Mr Wells, or any other author succeeded in drawing so convincing a picture of the possibilities of constructive play as is to be found in those pages, all too brief, in ”The New Machiavelli” where the play laboratory at Broer boy who played there looking back across the years strong in the conviction that it could not have been improved, and yet the picture of a child at solitary play is not, after all, the ideal picture Our laboratory, while it must accommodate the unsocial novice and es, roup play will develop along with block villages and other community life in miniature

FLOOR BLOCKS

In his reminiscences of his boyhood play Mr Wells lays e a special set of ”bricks” made to order and therefore sufficient in nuames he describes Comparatively few adults can look back to the possession of similar play hs in value every other type of toy that can be provided

Where the budget for equipment is limited, floor blocks can be cut by the local carpenter or, in a school, by thedepartment The blocks in use at The Play School (see cut, p 20) are of white wood, the unit block being 1-3/8” X 2-3/4” X 5-1/2” They range in size froonals to blocks four tith (22”)

[Illustration: The Hill Floor Blocks at the Gregory Avenue School]

At present there is but one set of blocks on the market that corresponds to the one Mr Wells describes These are the ”_Hill Floor Blocks_,” manufactured and sold by A Schoenhut & Co, of Philadelphia They are of hard s of 24”, the unit block being 6” in length There are 680 pieces in a set Half and quarter sets are also obtainable

They are the invention of Professor Patty Se, Coluarten and in many other schools

[Illustration: Useful alike to builders and cabinet -Lock construction]

The School of Childhood at the University of Pittsburgh makes use of several varieties of blocks, soiven is as follows:[C]

A Nest of blocks

B Large blocks made to order of hard s, 2-1/2” X 5” X 10”

Triangular prisonally into two and four parts

Pillars s into two parts

Plinths ht 12” boards, 3'-0” to 7'-0” long

C Froebel's enlarged fifth and sixth gifts

D Stone Anchor blocks

E Architectural blocks for flat for-Lock blocks

As children become more dexterous and -Lock Blocks_ will be found increasingly valuable These are a type of block unknown to Mr Wells, but hoould have revelled in the possession of a set! They are -Lock Block Co of New York Cut on a smaller scale than the other blocks described, they are equipped with holes and pegs, by which they may be securely joined This admits of a type of construction entirely outside the possibilities of other blocks They coreat variety of shapes The School of Childhood uses them extensively, as does The Play School

[Footnote C: See University of Pittsburgh Bulletin, ”Report of the Experimental Work in the School of Childhood”]