Reasons for Choice of Third Gift.
This third gift satisfies the child's craving to take things to pieces. Froebel did not choose it arbitrarily, for Nature, human and physical, was an open handbook to him, and if we study deeply and sympathetically the reasons for his choice they will always be comprehended.[34] Fénelon says, "The curiosity of children is a natural tendency, which goes in the van of instruction." Destruction after all is only constructive faculty turned back upon itself. The child, having no legitimate outlet for his creative instinct, pulls his playthings to pieces, to see what is inside,—what they are made of and how they are put together;[35] but to his chagrin he finds it not so easy to reunite the tattered fragments.
In the divided cube, however, he can gratify his desires, and at the same time possess the joy of doing right and destroying nothing, for the eight little blocks can be quickly united into their original form, and also into many other pleasing little forms, each one complete in itself, so that every analysis ends as it should, in synthesis.
Froebel calls this gift specifically "the children's delight," and indeed it is, responding so generously to their spontaneous activity, while at the same time it suits their small capabilities, for the possibilities of an object used for form study should not be too varied. "It must be suggestive through its limitations," says Miss Blow, "for the young mind may be as easily crushed by excess as by defect."[36]
Froebel was left motherless at a very early age, and during his first four years of life his father was entirely engrossed with parish duties, and the child had only occasional supervision from a hard-worked servant. Thus it happened that he was frequently alone long hours at a time in a dusky room overshadowed by the neighboring church, and naturally strayed often to the window, from whence he might look down upon the busy world outside. He recalls that he was greatly interested at one time in some workmen who were repairing the church, and that he constantly turned from his post of observation to try and imitate their labors, but his only building material was the furniture of the room, and chairs and tables clumsily resisted his efforts to pile them up into suitable form. He tells us that this strong desire for building and the bitter disappointment of his repeated failures were still keenly remembered when he was a grown man, and thus suggested to him that children ought to be provided with materials for building among their playthings. He often noticed also, in later years, that all children seem to have the building instinct, corresponding to what Dr. Seguin calls "the building mania in the infancy of peoples," and that "to make a house is the universal form of unguided play."[37]
We now understand the meaning of the gift, the reason for its importance in Froebel's plan, and its capabilities as a vehicle for delightful instruction.
Classes of Forms.
There are three different classes of forms for dictation and invention, variously named by kindergartners.
1. Life forms, or upright forms, which are seen in the child's daily life, as a pair of boots, a chair, table, bed, or sofa. Froebel calls them also object forms, or forms of things.
("The child demands that the object constructed stand in connection with himself, his life, or somebody or something in his life."—Froebel.)