Miscellaneous Materials.
It will commonly be found that the child enjoys tenfold more the objects for point-work which he finds himself than the more perfect school-materials. Imagine the joy, for instance, of a bevy of kindergarten children set free on Pescadero Beach (California), and allowed to ramble up and down its shining sands to pick up the wonderful Pescadero pebbles. What colors of dull red and amber, of pink and palest green, what opaline lights, and smooth, glimmering surfaces! "Busy work" with such materials would be worth while indeed,—yet easy to obtain as they are, they are almost never seen in use.
Smooth, white pebbles, washed entirely clean and sorted according to size, are not uncommonly seen in the kindergartens, however, and are especially useful in the sand-table, and if these and the shining cream-colored shells could be found by the children themselves, their pleasure in them would be immensely increased. That this is true is proved by the experience of many teachers with seed-work. One of our own brood of kindergartners once had a birthday melon party for one of her children. The melons were brought to the kindergarten room and there divided, the small host serving his guests himself. Great interest was immediately shown in the jet-black seeds of the water-melon in contrast with the smaller light-colored seeds of the musk-melon, and unanimous appeals were made to the kindergartner that they might be saved and used for inventions. This was done, and they were always called for afterwards in point-work, rather than the beans, or vegetable and wooden lentils.
In those kindergartens where the seeds of all fruits are saved by the children at lunch hour, it is also noted that the collection thus made is always the object of universal interest and preference.
Use of the Gift.
One of the first uses of the point may be in following the outline of some form of life which the kindergartner has drawn in white or colored chalk on the child's table. This is much more fascinating work than the placing of seeds one space apart, three in a row, etc., for the latter belongs to the "knowledge-acquiring side of the game," which, as Froebel says, is the "quickly tiring side, only to be given quite casually at first, and as chance may provide suitable openings for it."
The forms drawn in chalk may very well be of curving outlines of vegetables, fruits, leaves, and flowers to connect with the study of the first gift, and may include any other simple appropriate object which the kindergartner is capable of drawing.
The more advanced child can of course make his own Life forms without the aid of drawing, and if he is given different sizes and kinds of shells, seeds, or pebbles, often arranges them with great ability to imitate the shading of the object.
The beginning of the forms of knowledge is in placing the points in regular order on the squared tables at the intersection of vertical and horizontal lines. Next, the child lays one space vertical lines, three points in a line, then two space lines with five points, then horizontal lines, angles, parallelograms, borders, etc., following out the school of linear drawing, and in this way progresses in an orderly manner to the designing of symmetrical forms. Curved lines of course are quite as easily represented as the straight, and really beautiful designs are often made by the children with them.
Tenth Gift Parquetry.