We have never succeeded in making flames, but it is thrilling to get sparks from flint. Once a child brought an old tinder box with steel and flint, but even then we were not skilful enough to get up a flame. Still it is something to have tried, and we are left with a respectful admiration for those who could so easily do without matches.
What made these long-ago people think of using their fire to cook food? Our children have suggested that a bit of raw meat fell into the fire by accident, and we have also worked it out in this way. We were pretending to warm ourselves by the fire, and I said my frozen meat was so cold that it hurt my teeth. "Hold it to the fire then." We burned our fingers, and sticks were suggested, but we sucked the burnt fingers, and I said, "it tastes good," and the children shouted with glee "Because the meat's roasted really." Then something was supposed to drop, and the cry was "Gravy! catch it in a shell, dip your finger in and let your baby suck it." A small shell was suggested, and the boy who said "And put a stick in for a handle" was dubbed "the spoon-maker." At that time we were earning names for ourselves by suggestions; we started with Fair Hair, Curly Hair, Big Teeth, Long Legs, and arrived at Quick Runner, Climber, and even Thinker.
We have got at pottery in a similar way. The meat was supposed to be tough. "Soak it" came at once, and "Could you get hot water?" Then came suggestions: a stone saucepan, scoop out a stone and put it on the fire, build a stone pan and fix the stones with cherry gum, dig a hole in the ground and put fire under; "that would be a kind of oven." When asked if water would stay in the hole, and if any kind of earth would hold water, the answer may be, "No, nothing but clay, and you'd have to make that." "No! you get clay round a well. My cousin has a well, and there's clay round it." "Why, there's clay in the playground." "You could put the meat into a skin bag or a basket." Asked if the skin or basket could be set on the fire, or if anything could be done to keep the basket from catching fire, the answer comes, "Yes, dab clay round it. Then," joyfully, "it would hold water and you could boil." "What would happen to the clay when it was put on the fire?" This has to be discovered by a quick experiment, but the children readily guess that when the hot water is taken off the fire there would be "a sort of clay basin. Then they could make more! and plates and cups!"
Experiments depend upon circumstances and upon the age of the children. A thick and tiny basin put into a hot part of an ordinary fire does harden and hold water to a certain extent even without glazing. But elaborate baking may also be done.
I have found it convenient to take weaving as a bridge to history stories, by using Sir Frederick Leighton's picture of the Phoenicians bartering cloth for skins with the early Britons. The children are told that the people dressed in cloth come from near the Bible-story country, and those dressed in skins are the long-ago people of this very country. What would these people think of the cloth? "They would think it was animals' skins." And what would they do? "They'd feel it and look at it." So cloth is produced and we pull it to pieces, first into threads and then into hairs, and the children say the hairs are like "fur." Then sheep's wool is produced and we try to make thread. Attempts at thread-making and then at weaving last a long time, and along with this come some history stories, probably arising out of the question, "How did people know about all this?" The children are told about the writings of Julius Caesar, and pictures of Roman ships and houses are shown, beside pictures of coracles and bee-hive dwellings, etc. Old coins, a flint battle-axe, some Roman pottery are also shown, along with descriptions and pictures of the Roman villa at Brading and other Roman remains. The children are thus helped to realise that other countries exist where the people were far ahead of those in this country, and they can begin to understand how social conditions vary, and how nations act upon each other.
The work varies considerably from year to year, according to how it takes hold upon the children's interest. But children of eight to nine are usually considered ready for broad ideas of the world as a whole, and the inquiry into where Julius Caesar came from, and why he came, gives a fair start.
CHAPTER XIII
NEW NEEDS AND NEW HELPS
I am old, so old, I can write a letter.
Writing and reading have no place in the actual Kindergarten, much less arithmetic. The stories are told to the child; drawing, modelling and such-like will express all he wants to express in any permanent form, and speech, as Froebel says, is "the element in which he lives." His counting is of the simplest, and the main thing is to see that he does not merely repeat a series while he handles material, but that the series corresponds with the objects. Even this can be left alone if it seems to annoy the little one. In the school he is on a very different level, he has attained to the abstract, he can use signs: he can express thoughts which he could not draw, and can communicate with those who are absent. He can read any letter received and he is no longer dependent on grown-ups for stories. He can count his own money and can get correct change in small transactions, and he can probably do a variety of sums which are of no use to him at all.