Next, the scientist must stock his laboratory with material for experiment.
"The child is attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the gaily fluttering bit of paper, by the smooth bit of board, by the rectangular block, by the brilliant quaint leaf. Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself erect, that can walk only with the greatest care—he sees a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it, and like the bird carries it to his nest. See him again, laboriously stooping and slowly going forward on the ground, under the eaves of the roof (the deep eaves of the Thuringian peasant house). The force of the rain has washed out of the sand smooth bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers them as building stones as it were, as material for future building. And is he wrong? Is he not in truth collecting material for his future life building?"
The "box of counters, and the red-veined stone," the brilliant quaint leaf, the twig, the bit of straw, all the child's treasures—these are the stimuli which, according to the biologist educator, must be supplied if the activities appropriate to each stage are to be called forth. Every one knows for how long a period a child can occupy himself examining, comparing and experimenting.
"Like things," says Froebel, "must be ranged together, unlike things separated…. The child loves all things that enter his small horizon and extend his little world. To him the least thing is a new discovery, but it must not come dead into the little world, nor lie dead therein, lest it obscure the small horizon and crush the little world. Therefore the child would know why he loves this thing, he would know all its properties. For this reason he examines the object on all sides; for this reason he tears and breaks it; for this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it. We reprove the child for naughtiness and foolishness; and yet he is wiser than we who reprove him."
This experimenting is one side of a child's play, and the things with which he thus experiments are his toys, or, as Froebel puts it, "play material." Much of this is and ought to be self found, and where the child can find his own toys he asks for little more. The seaside supplies him with sand and water, stones, shells, rock pools, seaweed, and he asks us for nothing but a spade, which digs deeper than his naked hands, and a pail to carry water, which hands alone cannot convey.
The vista of the sand is the child's free land; where the grown-ups seem half afraid; even nurse forgets to sniff and to call "come here" as she sits very near to the far up cliff and you venture alone with your spade….
Even indoors, a child could probably find for himself all the material for investigation, all the stimuli he requires, if it were not that his investigations interfere with adult purposes. Even in very primitive times the child probably experimented upon the revolving qualities of his mother's spindle till she found it more convenient to let him have one for himself, and it became a toy or top.
Froebel, who made so much of play, to whom it was spontaneous education and self realisation, was bound to see that toys were important. "The man advanced in insight," he said, "even when he gives his child a plaything, must make clear to himself its purpose and the purpose of playthings and occupation material in general. This purpose is to aid the child freely to express what lies within him, and to bring the outer world nearer to him, and thus to serve as mediator between the mind and the world." Froebel's "Gifts" were an attempt to supply right play material. True to his faith in natural impulse, Froebel watched children to see what playthings they found for themselves, or which, among those presented by adults, were most appreciated. Soft little coloured balls seemed right material for a baby's tender hand, and it was clear that when the child could crawl about he was ready for something which he could roll on the floor and pursue on all fours. As early as two years old he loves to take things out of boxes and to move objects about, so boxes of bricks were supplied, graded in number and in variety of form. Not for a moment did Froebel suggest that the child was to be limited to these selected playthings, he expressly stated the contrary, and he frequently said that spontaneity was not to be checked. But from what has followed, from the way in which these little toys have been misused, we are tempted to speculate on whether these "Gifts" supplied that definite foundation without which, in these days, no notice would have been taken of the new ideas, or whether they have proved the sunken rock on which much that was valuable has perished. The world was not ready to believe in the educational value of play, just pure play. Nor is it yet. For the new system in its "didactic" apparatus out-Froebels Froebel in his mistake of trying to systematise the material for spontaneous education. Carefully planned, as were Froebel's own "gifts," the new apparatus presents a series of exercises in sense discrimination, satisfying no doubt while unfamiliar, but suffering from the defect of the "too finished and complex plaything," in which Froebel saw a danger "which slumbers like a viper under the roses." The danger is that "the child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough variety by its means; his power of creative imagination, his power of giving outward form to his own ideas are thus actually deadened."
"To realise his aims, man, and more particularly the child, requires material, though it be only a bit of wood or a pebble, with which he makes something or which he makes into something. In order to lead the child to the handling of material we give him the ball, the cube and other bodies, the Kindergarten gifts. Each of these gifts incites the child to free spontaneous activity, to independent movement."
Froebel would have sympathised deeply with the views of Peter as expressed by Mr. Wells in regard to Ideals, which he, however, called toys: