Part 2 (1/2)
Do not say I a too soleartner Unless she remembers that this very serious aim underlies every play which she conducts, she will not do justice to the children Law or order is one and the sa with beauty; and play is hindrance if it is not beautiful When she insists upon the children governing themselves, so far as to keep their proper places in relation to each other; to forbear exerting undue force, and to seek to give the necessary aid to others by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful result justifies her will to the minds of the children, and com the sense of personal responsibility in each child; and this, if done tenderly and with faith, it is by no means difficult to do The reward to the children is instant in the success of the play, and therefore not thought of as reward of merit It is a forher in the scale of being as an individual, without danger of the re-action of pride and self-conceit; for self is sed up in social joy
When I was in Gerartens, which were taught by Frbel's own pupils, and I found that in these the movement plays were the most prominent feature of the practice More than one was played in the course of the three or four hours, and especially when the session was as h not constrained manner, andwas not done by three or four, but all the children were encouraged to sing Often the little timider ones were called on to repeat the rhy it alone with the teacher Thus the stronger and abler were exercised (as they , syreat deal of care was also exercised in regard to the forestion and invention were the preferred ones They consisted in i, in rather a free and fanciful entler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, bees and birds There were plays in which children i their sy their kindness towards thes, coe, the work of the far wood, &c, were put into form by simple rhyreat natural movements In one instance I saw the solar system perforarten four years, but none of them were over seven years old Mere htful and salutary for children that a very little action of the imitative or fanciful power is necessary, just to take the rudeness out of bodily exercise without destroying its exhilaration
My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is published by E
Steiger, of New York, contains some of the principal plays, set to Frbel's own e published in her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense
But it is by no means arten, as you will see when the bearings upon their habits of thought, of all that the children do, are pointed out to you, in the various occupations, which are sedentary sports, though the moral discipline is the paraht of one artner Wethe children to _act_ to the end of_themselves_ If the individual enjoy But the individual is lifted into the higher order for which he is created, by , whenever his enjoy of that season of life under seven years of age, when the mind is yet undeveloped to the coood, the true and the beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be realized to their experience and brought within the sphere of their senses, by being embodied in persons whoood_, _beautiful_, _kind_, _true_, get theirfor children by their intercourse with such persons Specific knowledge of God cannot be opened up in theot their s who bear traces that they can appreciate of His ineffable perfections To liken God's love to the s home a conception of it to children, for _hers_ they realize every day
The connecting link between the nursery and Kindergarten is the First Gift of Frbel's series, being used in both The nursery use will have taught the nareen, blue and purple, andIt is all the better if the child has had no other playthings prepared for him He has doubtless used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could lay his hands on, to embody his childish fancies; and it is to be hoped he has been allowed to play out of doors with the earth, and has made mud pies to his heart's content--not tore--artificial duty of keeping his clothes clean That duty is to be reserved for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by proper developarten, the ball-plays are to become more skillful, and the teacher must see that the child learns to throw the ball so that it may bound back into his own hands; so that it may bound into the hands of another who is in such position as to catch its reflex ain the in ts they can throw it back and forwards to each other
When standing in a circle, the ballsfro
”Who'll buyAnd all thesethe body, giving it agility, grace of s will accrue all thesense of duty is called on As most of these plays are not solitary, they beco to adjust themselves to each other, and the teacher must watch that hilarity do not become violence or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one another's fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner alone, or even outside the roo his companions shall quicken him to be sufficiently considerate of theether learn justice and social graces, more or less, because they find that without fair play their sport is spoilt; but this play artner, in order that there artner, who is not a netize the children, and inspire such general good will that unpleasantness will be foreclosed in a great enerally of such variety of teth, have so often co Kindergartner has a good deal to do to prevent discords and secure their kindness to each other, and the reasonable little self-sacrifices of coh; the question, Is that right? Would you like to have any one else do so? It is so all the play to a full stop, in order to bring the common conscience to pronounce upon the fairness of what soest that the question be asked not of the class, but of the individual culprit, whether what is being done wrong, is right or wrong? The child, with the eyes of the class upon hier to confess and refor as self-love, and especially when re-inforced by the presence of others It is not worth while to make tooto the rightbelieved in and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing; theof the child
Of all the arten, the colored balls are s_; and there are none of the plays so liable to be riotous as the ball plays There is the greatest difficulty in keeping children fro _too_ noisy, and it is not wise toof life It is very difficult for theood command of it It excites thehter are irrepressible But there are reasonable liartner, in conversation before hand, should et too noisy, and tire each other, and she will easily induce the the bell, and be willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches the second hand of her watch go around a quarter, a half, or a whole reed upon This can be made a part of the play, and to pause and be perfectly still in this ill give theth of a minute, and teach self-command, as well as make a pleasant variety
The ball plays should always be accoarten, with conversations upon the ball, na which are priiving thelass of pure car them put two upon each other, and hold them towards the , and so realize the combinations of the secondary colors Ask thee, or purple, or green; and what color connects the orange and green; or the purple and orange, or the green and purple
One of the other exercises, on the day of using the First Giftwith the colored threads on the cards; and the colors ed so as to illustrate the connections, &c, just learned The use of the First Gift need only be once a week It will then be a fresh pleasure every tiarten course, even if it should last three years After the children have become perfectly familiar with the primary and secondary colors, their combinations and connections, the lessons on colorsthem that tints of the pri white to them; and shades of the black to them This may be illustrated by flowers, as may various combinations of colors A very little child, whoay plays, and whose attention could not easily be fixed, surprised a teacher one day by his aptitude in detecting what color had been lorious pink in a phlox This child liked to sew, but was very i his needle into any special holes It proved to be the pleasure of handling the colored yarns, and he was always eager to change them and form new coard to ball playing, froressed to colors, that the ball is the last plaything of men as well as the first with children
The object teaching upon the ball is strictly inexhaustible Children learn practically, by means of it, the laws ofof these laws _in terms_ You may make children familiar with the phenomena of the laws of incidence and reflection, by siainst the wall opposite, it will bound straight back to them, and then ask the direction By and by this knowledge can be used to giveto a scientific expression It is a first principle that the object, motion, or action, should precede the _word_ that names them This is Frbel's uniform method, and the reason is, that when the scientific study does come, it shall be substantial mental life, and not s_ that are the laws of _thought_; and thought ic will be deceptive, not reasonable Most erroneous speculation has its roots in mistakes about words, which it is fatal to divorce fro in their full
In the easy mood of mind that attends the lively play of childhood, impressions are made clearly; and it should be the care of the educator to have all the child's notions associated with significant words, as can only be done by his beco about it, as children always incline to do It is half the pleasure of their play, to represent it in words, as they are playing
In the nursery, the s with it, are expressed in words that are iive a lesson in ly, to the words, ”This is the way the gentle folks go, this is the way the gentle folks go; and this is the way the country folks go, this is the way the country folks go--bouncing and jouncing and ju in little rhy ball, makes it a mental as well as physical play of faculty, and Frbel published a hundred little rhymes, and the music for as many ball plays
It is not an unis seem different in different circuht is coiving the children pris their attention to the splendid colors of the sky at sunset and sunrise, when the clouds act as prise, will be so ed with the beautiful phenomenon, they will not be likely to ask questions as to how the light is separated by the prism and clouds; they will rest in the fact But if, by chance, analytic reflection has supervened, and they do, then a large ball on which all the six colors are arranged in linesis attached at one pole, or both poles, can be given them, and they be told to whirl it very swiftly This will present the pheno of the colors to the eye by motion, so that the ball looks whitish fro composed of multitudinous little balls, of the colors of the rainbow, inwhite
If soator should persist to ask why things seem to be other than they are, heabout his eyes, which he cannot understand now, but will learn by and by, when he goes to school and learns _optics_
Children are only to be _entertained_ in the Kindergarten, with the facts of nature that develop the organs of perception, but a skillful teacher who reads Tyndall's char into the later years of the Kindergarten period ht and colors, which shall increase the stock of facts, on which the scientific mind, when it shall be developed, may work, or which the future painter reat picture of Uriel, whose background was the sun, he thought out carefully theeffect, and drew lines of all the rainbow colors in their order, side by side, after having put on his canvass a ground of the three primary colors mixed When the picture was first exhibited at Soht at once by Lord Egreht; and for twice the suuineas I do not knohether time may not have dimmed its brilliancy, since paint is of the earth, earthy; but to paint the sun at high noon, and have it a success, even for a short tireat feat; and art, in this instance, took counsel of science deliberately, according to the artist's confession But perfect sensuous impressions of color and its combinations, were the basis of both the science and the art
This lecture is getting too long, and I will close by saying, that the First Gift has, for its rows by seeing Colors arouse _intentional_ seeing by the delightful impression they make I believe that _color-blindness_, (which our army examinations have proved to be as common as _want of ear for an of sight in a systematic way; just as _ear for music_ may be developed in those who are not born with it Lowell Mason proved, by years of experiment in the public schools, that the ently with little children, giving graduated exercises, so agreeable to them as to arouse their will to _try to hear_, in order to reproduce
That youians of perception actually grow by exercise _with intention_, I will relate to you a fact that ca friend ofhis first exercises, two fish scales to look at through a very powerfulhim to find out and tell all their differences At first they appeared exactly alike, but on peering through the microscope, all the time that he dared to use his eyes, for a month, he found them full of differences; and he afterwards said, that ”it was the best month's work he ever did, to form _the scientific eye_ which could detect differences ever after, _at a glance_,” and proved to hiave him exceptional authority with scientists
FOOTNOTES:
[1] An American translation has been published by Lee & Shepard, Boston
[2] Since this lecture ritten and delivered in Boston, I have received frohe's translation of Frbel's _Education of Man_, and find that the first chapters analyze the first and second stages of developives me, on the one hand, confidence in myself as a true interpreter of Frbel, and on the other, new confidence in Frbel as a scientific observer and recorder of what I have been accused of founding on a e, or that gained by the exercise of the understanding, and sentiained by the intuitions of the heart,is sound and the heart has been kept diligently to the issues of life Mr Emerson calls the intellect sensibility, and there is a fine ous instruction in calling the heart apprehension? What are love, justice, beauty, &c, but apprehensions of the pri have sensibility to the?
In the June, July and August nuer_, for 1874, will be found translations of the first chapters of Frbel's book, above an in February to print the translation of the introduction, which will be finished in the May number, and then will follow the first chapter, entitled ”The Nursling,” and in the following numbers the subsequent chapters, on the child's developarten era This work of Frbel's was published at an earlier period of his career than 1840, when he began to devote hie of education, which, as he grew older, he felt to be the erms of all later developments