Education in the Home, the Kindergarten, and the Primary School

by Elizabeth Palmer Peabody

The movement plays which Frœbel invented, express, in dramatic form, some simple fact of nature or some childish fancy, for which he gives, as accompaniment, a descriptive song set to a simple melody. The children learn both to recite and to sing the words of the song, and then the movements of the play. To them the whole reason for the play seems to be the delight it gives, the exhilaration of body, the amusement of mind. But the Kindergartner knows that it serves higher ends, and that it is at least always a lesson in order, enabling them to begin to enact upon earth "Heaven's first law."

Do not say I am making too solemn a matter of these movement plays, to the Kindergartner. Unless she remembers that this very serious aim underlies every play which she conducts, she will not do justice to the children. Law or order is one and the same thing with beauty; and play is hindrance if it is not beautiful. When she insists upon the children governing themselves, so far as to keep their proper places in relation to each other; to forbear exerting undue force, and to seek to give the necessary aid to others by exerting sufficient force, the beautiful result justifies her will to the minds of the children, and commands their ready obedience. She must call forth by addressing the sense of personal responsibility in each child; and this, if done tenderly and with faith, it is by no means difficult to do. The reward to the children is instant in the success of the play, and therefore not thought of as reward of merit. It is a form of obedience that really elevates the little one higher in the scale of being as an individual, without danger of the re-action of pride and self-conceit; for self is swallowed up in social joy.

When I was in Germany, I went, as I believe I told you, to those Kindergartens, which were taught by Frœbel's own pupils, and I found that in these the movement plays were the most prominent feature of the practice. More than one was played in the course of the three or four hours, and especially when the session was as much as four hours. It was done in a very exact though not constrained manner, and much stress seemed to be laid upon every part. The singing was not done by three or four, but all the children were encouraged to sing. Often the little timider ones were called on to repeat the rhyme alone, without singing it, and then to sing it alone with the teacher. Thus the stronger and abler were exercised (as they must be so much in real life) in waiting, sympathetically, for the weaker. A great deal of care was also exercised in regard to the form and character of the play itself. Those of Frœbel's own suggestion and invention were the preferred ones. They consisted in imitating, in rather a free and fanciful manner, the actions of the gentler animals, hares and rabbits, fishes, bees and birds. There were plays in which children impersonated animals, evidently for the purpose of awakening their sympathies and eliciting their kindness towards them. Many of the labors of human beings, common mechanics, such as cooperage, the work of the farmer, that of the miller, trundling the wheelbarrow, sawing wood, &c., were put into form by simple rhymes. The children sometimes personated machinery, sometimes great natural movements. In one instance I saw the solar system performed by a company of children that had been in the Kindergarten four years, but none of them were over seven years old. Mere movement is in itself so delightful and salutary for children that a very little action of the imitative or fanciful power is necessary, just to take the rudeness out of bodily exercise without destroying its exhilaration.

My Kindergarten Guide, the revised edition of which is published by E. Steiger, of New York, contains some of the principal plays, set to Frœbel's own music. I would gladly have printed all that Madame Ronge published in her Guide, which is out of print, but for the expense.

But it is by no means merely a moral discipline that is aimed at in the Kindergarten, as you will see when the bearings upon their habits of thought, of all that the children do, are pointed out to you, in the various occupations, which are sedentary sports, though the moral discipline is the paramount idea, and never must be lost sight of one moment by the Kindergartner. We mean by moral discipline, exercising the children to act to the end of making others happy, rather than of merely enjoying themselves. If the individual enjoyment is not a social enjoyment, it is disorderly and vitiating. But the individual is lifted into the higher order for which he is created, by merely enjoying, whenever his enjoyment is social. I am of course speaking of that season of life under seven years of age, when the mind is yet undeveloped to the comprehension of humanity as a whole; when the good, the true and the beautiful are nothing as abstractions, and can only be realized to their experience and brought within the sphere of their senses, by being embodied in persons whom they love, reverence or trust. The words good, beautiful, kind, true, get their meaning for children by their intercourse with such persons. Specific knowledge of God cannot be opened up in them by any words, unless these words have first got their meaning by being associated with human beings who bear traces that they can appreciate of His ineffable perfections. To liken God's love to the mother's love, brings home a conception of it to children, for hers they realize every day.

The connecting link between the nursery and Kindergarten is the First Gift of Frœbel's series, being used in both. The nursery use will have taught the names of the six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, and made it a favorite play thing. It is all the better if the child has had no other playthings prepared for him. He has doubtless used the chairs, footstools, and whatever else he could lay his hands on, to embody his childish fancies; and it is to be hoped he has been allowed to play out of doors with the earth, and has made mud pies to his heart's content—not tormented with any sense of the—at his age—artificial duty of keeping his clothes clean. That duty is to be reserved for the Kindergarten age, and will come duly, by proper development of the mental powers.

In the Kindergarten, the ball-plays are to become more skillful, and the teacher must see that the child learns to throw the ball so that it may bound back into his own hands; so that it may bound into the hands of another who is in such position as to catch its reflex motion. The children must learn to toss it up and catch it again themselves. When standing in two rows they can throw it back and forwards to each other. When standing in a circle, the balls may be made to circulate with rapidity, passing from hand to hand, the children singing the accompanying song.

"Who'll buy my eggs?" is a good play to exercise them in counting. And all these movement plays with the ball are admirable for exercising the body, giving it agility, grace of movement, precision of eye and touch. These things will accrue all the more surely if it is kept play, and no constraining sense of duty is called on. As most of these plays are not solitary, they become the occasion for children's learning to adjust themselves to each other, and the teacher must watch that hilarity do not become violence or rudeness to each other, but furtherance of one another's fun; and occasionally, in enforcing this harmony, a child must be removed from the play, and made to stand in a corner alone, or even outside the room, till the desire of rejoining his companions shall quicken him to be sufficiently considerate of them to make pleasant play possible. All children in playing together learn justice and social graces, more or less, because they find that without fair play their sport is spoilt; but this play must be supervised by the Kindergartner, in order that there may not be injustice, selfishness and quarreling. A Kindergartner, who is not a martinet, and who is herself a good play-fellow, will magnetize the children, and inspire such general good will that unpleasantness will be foreclosed in a great measure; but a company of children are generally of such variety of temperament and different degrees of bodily strength, have so often come from such inadequate nursery life, that the regulating Kindergartner has a good deal to do to prevent discords and secure their kindness to each other, and the reasonable little self-sacrifices of common courtesy. But she will find a word is often enough; the question, Is that right? Would you like to have any one else do so? It is sometimes necessary to bring all the play to a full stop, in order to bring the common conscience to pronounce upon the fairness of what some one is doing. I would suggest that the question be asked not of the class, but of the individual culprit, whether what is being done wrong, is right or wrong? The child, with the eyes of the class upon him, will generally be eager to confess and reform, because the moral sense is quite as strong as self-love, and especially when re-inforced by the presence of others. It is not worth while to make too much of little faults, and the first indication of turning to the right must be accepted; the child is grateful for being believed in and trusted, and the wrong doing is a superficial thing; the moral sentiment is the substantial being of the child.

Of all the materials used in Kindergarten, the colored balls are most purely playthings; and there are none of the plays so liable to be riotous as the ball plays. There is the greatest difficulty in keeping children from being too noisy, and it is not wise to make too much of a point of it. The ball seems a thing of life. It is very difficult for them to get good command of it. It excites them to run after it; and shouts and laughter are irrepressible. But there are reasonable limits. The Kindergartner, in conversation before hand, should make them see that they may get too noisy, and tire each other, and she will easily induce them to agree to stop short when she shall ring the bell, and be willing to stand still while she counts twenty-five, or watches the second hand of her watch go around a quarter, a half, or a whole minute, as may be agreed upon. This can be made a part of the play, and to pause and be perfectly still in this way, will give them some conception of the length of a minute, and teach self-command, as well as make a pleasant variety.

The ball plays should always be accompanied and alternated, in the Kindergarten, with conversations upon the ball, naming the colors, telling which are primary, which secondary, and illustrating the difference by giving them pieces of glass of pure carmine, blue and yellow, and letting them put two upon each other, and hold them towards the window, and so realize the combinations of the secondary colors. Ask them, afterwards, to tell what colors make orange, or purple, or green; and what color connects the orange and green; or the purple and orange, or the green and purple.