Read Ebook: Froebel's Gifts by Smith Nora Archibald Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith

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FROEBEL'S GIFTS

THOUGHTS ON THE GIFTS OF FROEBEL

"A correct comprehension of external, material things is a preliminary to a just comprehension of intellectual relations." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"The A, B, C of things must precede the A, B, C of words, and give to the words their true foundations. It is because these foundations fail so often in the present time that there are so few men who think independently and express skillfully their inborn divine ideas." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"Perception is the beginning and the preliminary condition for thinking. One's own perceptions awaken one's own conceptions, and these awaken one's own thinking in later stages of development. Let us have no precocity, but natural, that is consecutive, development." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"Every child brings with him into the world the natural disposition to see correctly what is before him, or, in other words, the truth. If things are shown to him in their connection, his soul perceives them thus as a conception. But if, as often happens, things are brought before his mind singly, or piecemeal, and in fragments, then the natural disposition to see correctly is perverted to the opposite, and the healthy mind is perplexed." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"The linking together which is everywhere seen, and which holds the Universe in its wholeness and unity, the eye receives, and thereby receives the representation, but without understanding it except as an impression and an image. But these first impressions are the root-fibres for the understanding that is developed later." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"The correct perception is a preparation for correct knowing and thinking." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"No new subject of instruction should come to the scholar, of which he does not at least conjecture that it is grounded in the former subject, and how it is so grounded as its application shows, and concerning which he does not, however dimly, feel it to be a need of the human spirit." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"The sequences which the child builds, as well as the sequence of the kindergarten gifts, point on the one hand to physical evolution, wherein each form 'remembers the next inferior and predicts the next higher,' and on the other to the process of historic development, which magnifies the present by linking with it the past and the future." SUSAN E. BLOW.

"Let us educate the senses, train the faculty of speech, the art of receiving, storing, and expressing impressions, which is the natural gift of infants, and we shall not need books to fill up the emptiness of our teaching until the child is at least seven years old." E. SEGUIN.

"As soon as we, young or old, have taken to the habit of asking the book for what it is in our power to learn from personal observation, we dismiss our organs of perception and comprehension from their righteous charge, and cover the emptiness of our own minds with the patchwork of others." E. SEGUIN.

"Natural geometry is the object of a desire which generally precedes the artificial curiosity for the meaning of letters." E. SEGUIN.

"Without an accurate acquaintance with the visible and tangible properties of things, our conceptions must be erroneous, our inferences fallacious, and our operations unsuccessful." HERBERT SPENCER.

"The truths of number, of form, of relationship in position, were all originally drawn from objects; and to present these truths to the child in the concrete is to let him learn them as the race learned them." HERBERT SPENCER.

"If we consider it, we shall find that exhaustive observation is an element of all great success." HERBERT SPENCER.

"Learn to comprehend each thing in its entire history. This is the maxim of science guided by the reason." WM. T. HARRIS.

"Geometrical facts and conceptions are easier to a child than those of arithmetic." THOMAS HILL.

"Instruction must begin with actual inspection, not with verbal descriptions of things. From such inspection it is that certain knowledge comes. What is actually seen remains faster in the memory than description or enumeration a hundred times as often repeated." COMENIUS.

"If in the external universe any one constructive principle can be detected, it is the geometrical." BULWER-LYTTON.

"The education of the senses neglected, all after-education partakes of a drowsiness, a haziness, an insufficiency, which it is impossible to cure." LORD BACON.

"Of this thing be certain: Wouldst thou plant for eternity? Then plant into the deep infinite faculties of man, his fantasy and heart. Wouldst thou plant for year and day? Then plant into his shallow, superficial faculties, his self-love, and arithmetical understanding, what will grow there." THOS. CARLYLE.

FROEBEL'S FIRST GIFT

"I wish to find the right forms for awakening the higher senses of the child: what symbol does my ball offer to him? That of unity."

"The ball connects the child with nature as much as the universe connects man with God." FRIEDRICH FROEBEL.

"Line in nature is not found, Unit and Universe are round."

"Nature centres into balls." R. W. EMERSON.

"From thy hand The worlds were cast; yet every leaflet claims From that same hand its little shining sphere Of starlit dew." O. W. HOLMES.

"The Small, a sphere as perfect as the Great To the soul's absoluteness." ROBERT BROWNING.

The balls should be provided with strings for use in the various motions.

"The string unites the ball, symbol of the outer world, with the child, and is the means by which it can act upon his inner nature."

"The Egyptians and the Greeks hung geometrical forms over their cradles, so as to strike the eyes of the child with lawful relations. Froebel introduces colored balls for the same purpose, which, considering the psychological and emotional condition of the child, leads to the joyful conception of motion, color, and life."

The various colors serve to distinguish these several playmates of the child by special characteristics, and enable him to make his first clear analyses or abstractions, since the color is the only point wherein the objects differ. This contrast in color results in the abstraction of color from form.

"Each successive gift in the series must not only be implicit in, but demanded by, its predecessor;" so Froebel selects the ball, with its simplicity but great adaptability, for the starting-point of his series.

"The mind is aroused to attention and led to comparison by contrasts; on the groundwork of comparison, it is enabled to do the work of classification, of clear abstraction, of the formation of definite ideas by the connection of these contrasts."

The Ball a Universal Plaything.

"The presentiment of truth always goes before the recognition of it," says Froebel; and it would seem, indeed, as it, in selecting the first gift, he looked far back into the past of humanity, and there sought the thread which from the beginning connects all times and leads to the farthest future.

"The ball is the last plaything of men, as well as the first with children." In Kreutzer's "Symbolik" we read that the educators of the young god Bacchus gave him golden balls to play with, and also that the youthful princes of Persia played with them, and alone had this privilege.

It is a significant fact that we find balls even among the remains of the Lake Dwellers of Northern Italy and Switzerland, while small, round balls, resembling marbles, have been found in the early Egyptian tombs. The Teutons made ball-plays national, and built houses in which to indulge in these exercises in all sections of Germany, as late as the close of the sixteenth century. The ancient Aztecs used the game of ball as a training in warfare for the young men of the nation; and that it was considered of great importance is evident from the fact that the tribute exacted by a certain Aztec monarch from some of the cities conquered by him consisted of balls, and amounted to sixteen thousand annually.

The ball entered into many of the favorite games alike of the Greeks and the Romans, the former having a special place in their gymnasiums and a special master for it. It may be noted also that nearly all our modern sports are based upon the effort to get possession of a ball.

Froebel's Ideas of First Gift.

Froebel considered the ball as an external counterpart of the child in the first stages of his development, its undivided unity corresponding to his mental condition, and its movableness to his instinctive activity. Through its recognition he is led to separate himself from the external world, and the external world from himself.

"But as he grows he gathers much, And learns the use of 'I' and 'me,' And finds 'I am not that I see, And other than the things I touch.'

Froebel's intention was that the first gift should be used in the nursery, but as this is for the most part neglected, or imperfectly and unwisely done, we begin the series of kindergarten play-lessons with it, illustrating its qualities and asking questions concerning them, always diversifying the exercises with rhymes, games, and songs. We must remember that to the young child, as to primitive man, the activity of an object is more pleasing than its qualities, and we should therefore devise a series of games with the fascinating plaything which will lead the child to learn these qualities by practical experience.

Manner of Introduction.

With this dainty colored plaything we begin our first bit of education,--not instruction, mere pouring in, but true education, drawing out, developing. The balls should be kept in a pretty basket, as the beautiful should be cultivated in every way in the true kindergarten; and when they are given to the class, it should be with some little song sung by the kindergartner or one of the older children. At the close of the lesson, as the basket is passed, each child may gently drop his ball into it, saying simply, "Thank you for my ball," or naming its color. At other times they may be called by the names of fruits or flowers, the child saying, "I will give you a cherry," or, "I will give you a violet."

Method of Introduction.

The qualities of the ball must of course be brought before the child's observation in some more or less definite order, and it will be profitable to consider the relative claims of Form and Color to the first place.

We might say, correctly, that to illustrate the ball, we should begin with its essential qualities. The essential quality is Unity. Unity depends on Form, and the ball's form never changes; therefore we might conclude that this should be the first subject under consideration, since we always treat of the universal properties of objects before special ones, proceeding from homogeneous to heterogeneous. This view of the subject is supported by Ratich's important maxim, "First the thing, and then its properties."

Conrad Diehl.

On the other hand, Conrad Diehl says: "Color is the first sensation of which an infant is capable. With the first ray of light that enters the retina of the eye, the presence of color forces itself on the mind.... When light is present, color is present. The first impression which the eye receives of an object is its color; its form is revealed by the action of light upon its surfaces. We recognize at a distance the color of a leaf, an apple, a flower or berry, long before we are able distinctly to make out their forms. In the absence of light, neither the color nor the form of an object can be seen."

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