Hints from Ronge's "Guide."
Excellent exercises or suggestions for building can be found in Ronge's "Kindergarten Guide." He mentions one pleasant little play which I will quote. "When each in the class has produced a different form, let the children rise and march round the table to observe the variety." Let them sing in the ascending and descending scales:—
Many pretty forms I see, Which one seems the best to me?
At another time let each child try to build the house he lives in, and while this is being done, let them join in singing some song about home. It is well to encourage singing during the building exercises, as we have so many appropriate selections.[40]
Group Work.
With the first of the Building Gifts enters a new variety of group work, which was not adapted for the first and second gifts. The children may now be seated at square tables, one at each side, and build in unison in the centre, the form produced being of course four times as large and fine as any one of the number could have produced alone. All the suggestions or directions for building are necessarily carried out together, and the success of the completed form is obviously dependent on the coöperation of all four children. Forms of Beauty are very easily constructed in this manner, as well as forms of Life, having four uniform sides, and when the little ones are somewhat more expert builders, Life forms having opposite sides alike, or even four different sides, may be constructed.
The other various forms of coöperative work are of course never to be neglected, that a social unity may be produced, in which "the might of each individual may be reinforced by the might of the whole."
MATHEMATICAL FORMS.
Mathematical Forms.