This occupation has its parallel in the tablets. The designs made temporarily with the circles, squares, etc., of wood may be put into more permanent form with the parquetry papers. These are circles, squares, triangles, etc., of colored papers, the unit of size being the inch. There are 1,000 in a package, embracing the six colors—red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet, with two shades and two tints of each, besides neutral tones, and black and white.
1. Easter Card. Give the child an oblong piece of gray cardboard, six inches long, and some yellow circles. Let him paste a row of circles for dandelion heads and then chalk in the green stems. Give to father for an Easter card.
Red and yellow circles may be cut in half and so arranged as to suggest tulips. (See [page 122].)
2. Frieze. Let the child make designs for a frieze for the doll-house parlor, arranging circles and squares successively or alternately on a strip of paper. Or he can make a design for the doll-house kitchen oilcloth by pasting squares or circles (one square or circle surrounded by others) in a square unit.
An inexpensive paste for this work may be made of gum tragacanth. Buy five cents' worth of the powdered gum. Put a tablespoonful into an empty mucilage bottle and fill with water. In a few moments it will dissolve and thicken. Use more or less, according to thickness desired.
Weaving (Colored kindergarten weaving mats, weaving needle)
This is one of the most popular of kindergarten occupations.
Primitive man early learned to interlace the branches of trees to make for himself a shelter, and to weave together coarse fibres to make his crude garments. In course of ages great skill was acquired in thus using all kinds of flexible materials; artistic baskets were produced of raffia and reeds, and fine garments of linen, wool and cotton. Beautiful effects in color and form were introduced, the designs usually having a symbolic meaning.
Froebel devised, for the expression of this natural tendency, a series of exercises with colored paper, which gave practice in selection of color harmonies, in designing, in counting, and which led to skill and neatness in work.
Loom-weaving has been described on another page. ([90].) In many kindergartens it now entirely supersedes the paper-weaving, which we will here briefly describe.