Froebel's Gifts

by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin; Nora Archibald Smith

The Point as a Gift.

Before the child completes his kindergarten course, however, he should certainly be led to an intellectual perception of the interrelation of the gifts and their gradual development from solid to point, for their orderly progression according to law, though it be but dimly apprehended, will be most useful and strengthening to the mind. To discern the logical order of a single series of objects is a step toward the comprehension of world-order in mature life.[78]

The mind in later childhood should be what Froebel describes his own to have been. "I often felt," he says, "as if my mind were a smooth, still pool scarce a handbreadth over, or even a single water-drop, in which surrounding things were clearly mirrored, while the blue vault of the sky was seen as well, reaching far away and above."

When the derivation of plane and of straight and curved line and their place in the gifts are clearly understood by the child, there will be no difficulty in gaining an equally clear apprehension of the point and its position in the series. This may be done somewhat as follows. When the children are playing with blocks on some occasion, we may direct the conversation to the essential characteristics of the cube, its faces, edges, and corners. Do they remember which one of their playthings is like the face of the cube; do they remember cutting clay tablets from the clay blocks?

It is most unlikely that this experiment will have been forgotten, but if it has been, it may be easily repeated. Speak next of the edges of the cube, and let the children recall the derivation of the stick. That portion of the cube not yet discussed will now be seized upon by the children, and they will ask if any of their playthings are like the cube's corners. Can they think of anything; shall we not try to make something?

Now the clay appears, cubes are quickly fashioned, and each child is allowed to cut off the eight corners of his block. He has no sooner done this than he sees the nearest approach we can make to a point, and proceeds to make a design from them while he recalls the beans, shells, lentils, etc., he has used before in a similar way.

It is well here to suggest making the bits of clay into tiny oblate spheroids, and laying them away to dry so that we may make a group work invention of them to-morrow. Better still, however, is the instant introduction of sticks or wires to connect with the clay points, and thus form at once the skeleton of the solid, which will give an ineffaceable impression of the relation of point and line to each other.

Pleasure of Child in Point-laying and Stringing.

The pleasure the child finds in point-laying is not confined to the kindergarten, for playing with beads and pin-heads is an ordinary nursery occupation in all countries, and which of us cannot recall long happy hours on the seashore, or by the brookside, when we gathered and sorted shells and smooth glistening pebbles, and laid them in rows and patterns? The mere handling of a great store of these gave a Midas-like delight, and what primitive artistic pleasure we felt as we arranged them according to the principle of repetition to border our garden-beds or to inclose our miniature parks and playgrounds.

The same joy is felt in plucking, arranging, and stringing rose-hips, the seeds of the ailantus, the nasturtium, the pumpkin, or the "cheeses" of the mallow and wild geranium.