We must remember that on a carefully prepared plan of procedure depends much of the value of any system of education; therefore we must decide, when the child comes under our tutelage, what we wish to accomplish and what shall be our method of accomplishing it; and yet as the first gift is not the last, as it is but the first link in a chain of related objects, it is obvious that it must be chiefly useful as a starting-point. Each lesson should be carefully studied by the teacher, for the foundation is being laid for all future acquisition.
The kindergarten gifts are designed to lead to the mastery of material objects, but at the same time they are always connected with the child's experience and affection by being often transported into the region of fancy and feeling in a blending of realism and symbolism. Omitting everything which has reference to the moral and physical development, and speaking now only of that which is intellectual, what we should strive for at the beginning is that the child may acquire a habit of quick observation, with clear and precise expression; that in due time he may see not only quickly, but accurately; in short, that a slight degree of judgment may begin to attend his perceptions, so that he may know as well as observe. It is not enough to awaken the curiosity of a child, and to heap up in his memory a mass of good materials which will combine of themselves in due time, and which the brain when more highly developed will arrange in systematic groups; we should endeavor as far as possible to control the first impressions which sink unconsciously into a child's mind, but still more careful should we be in the selection of those later ones which we try to inculcate, and of the links which we wish to establish between such and such perceptions, sentiments, or actions.
We should seek to develop, side by side with the perceptions, the faculty of judging and acting rightly.
To give a child very little to observe at a time, but to make him observe that little well and rightly, is the true way of forming and storing his mind.
The process of receiving an idea must be through sensation, attention, and perception, conception and judgment being later processes. The curiosity to know must be kept alive, for it is our greatest ally, and the imagination must be fed, for the child remembers only what interests him.
Recognizing what is to be accomplished, we say, then:—
a. The ball is one of the first means used in awakening and developing the dawning consciousness and growing faculties of the child.
b. The beginning must be well made, or no later step will seem clear.
c. If the first opportunity which occurs of dealing with the gift (or with any instrumentality of education) is wasted, interest on the part of the child is permanently lessened.
d. The mind retains clear impressions in proportion to the degree of spontaneous interest and attention with which they are received.
e. The law of diminishing interest decrees that each point in a successful exercise shall be more interesting than the previous one.
f. The lessons must not be confined to so narrow a channel that they become monotonous, and they must leave room for the child to develop and not attempt to prescribe his mental action.
Tiedemann says: "Liberty of action even in imitated actions is one of the conditions of a child's happiness; besides that, it has the effect of exercising and developing all his faculties. Example is the first tutor, and liberty the second, in the order of evolution; but the second is the better one, for it has inclination for its assistant."
READINGS FOR THE STUDENT.
From Cradle to School. Bertha Meyer. Pages 118-20.