It would never have dawned on Froebel, nor would it have appealed to him, to separate his philosophy from his science, but there is no more contradiction in Froebel’s “self-activity” which is influenced from without, than there is in Professor Stout when he speaks of self-determination as included in the connotation of “activity,” and adds that until a case of “pure activity” is brought forward, we must assume that there is none.
Of all his “means of play,” Froebel says:
“In order, therefore, on the one hand to introduce the child to the handling of his play material, we gave him the ball, … but each of these means of play summons the child in return to self-activity, to free self-activity; to movement, to free independent movement” (zur Selbsthätigkeit, zur freien Selbsthätigkeit; zur Bewegung, zur freien, inabhängigen Bewegung).[73]
APPENDIX II
Comparison of Plays noted by Froebel with the Enumeration given by Groos
Much that is given in Groos’ more elaborate classification can also be found in Froebel’s suggestions, particularly where younger children are concerned. For plays coming under the heading of Playful Activity of the Sensory Apparatus, Froebel has a parallel for every kind except that of Temperature, and for this Groos has not himself found anything that can fairly be called play.
For Sensations of Contact there is the Kicking Play, and Taste and Smell are also represented in the Mother Play book. For Hearing play we have the wooden ball, “a plaything for the child liable to produce noise by its movement,” as well as the Tic-tac and Finger Piano plays, and for receptive play, the mother is told to speak, rhythmically if possible, or to sing with every play. For Sensations of Brightness we have “Mother you want to foster this delight in all things that are sparkling clear and bright” of the “Fish in the Brook,” as well as “The Lightbird,” which Froebel has “found over and over again in all grades of the culture that makes up social life in village and in town.”
Sensations of colour are well provided for. In “The Two Windows” we have: “See the beautiful coloured circles and rays, just like rainbow and dew-drops, see how beautifully the colours play through each other.” Colour is a feature in Gift I, in beadwork, in the tablets, in paper folding, cutting and plaiting, and besides these there are crayons and paints, and frequent reference is made to the child’s pleasure in the colour of flowers.
Froebel also makes much play depend on perception of form: “Attention to the form and figure of the object can also be utilized for the child in play,” or, again, “Early in life the child delights in round and varied pebbles, he seeks and collects them, he takes pleasure in the straight edged and right angled.” He has found “The Target” play very widely spread, “plainly because it contains, as I see it, the first trace of an endeavour to make a child notice position and form.”