Forms of Life.
The sixth gift far surpasses all the other building blocks in its decided adaptation to the purely architectural forms. The bricks of the fourth gift may be used as a foundation for the construction of large and ambitious structures, and with this additional material, the sixth gift may excel in producing elegant and graceful forms.
The bricks of course admit of a much greater superficial extension and the inclosure of a more extensive space than has heretofore been possible.
The children will unaided construct familiar objects, such as household furniture and implements, churches, fences, walled inclosures, and towers, with the new blocks, and seize with delight upon the possibilities of the column, which is really the distinctive feature of the gift.
So far, the building of object forms will closely resemble those of the previous gifts, but a step in advance may be made by the children if the kindergartner is complete mistress of the new forms and knows their capabilities. The gift may serve as a primer of architecture if its materials are thoroughly exploited, and may lead later on to a healthy discontent with incorrect outline, with vulgar ornamentation, and with crudity of form.[58]
Froebel himself, who had made exhaustive studies in architecture, and obtained the training necessary to enable him to take it up as a profession, has left us many examples of sixth gift building, which are to be found in all the German "Guides." The structures are no longer rude representations, but have a marked grace and symmetry, and in their simplicity, clearness of outline, and fine proportion, strongly resemble early Greek architecture. Colonnades, commemorative columns, façades of palaces, belvederes, temples, arches, city gates, monuments, fountains, portals, fonts, observatories,—all can be constructed in miniature with due regard to law, fitness, and proportion, and as the soft, creamy-white structures rise on the various tables, we see borne out Froebel's saying that the order of his Building Gifts was such that the child might be led in their use through the world's great architectural epochs from Egypt to Rome.[59]
Forms of Symmetry.
Although with this gift we cannot produce symmetrical forms in as great diversity as with the fifth, yet the materials are productive to the inventive mind, and when the pieces are arranged with care and taste, beautiful figures may always be developed, those having a triangular centre being novel and especially pleasing. Although not as diversified, however, they have the added advantage of approaching nearer the plane; and that this progression may be more clearly shown, it seems evident that the symmetrical forms should only be produced by laying the columns, "square-faced blocks" and bricks, flat upon the table, and that the practice, advised by some authorities, of changing the figures by placing the blocks erect, or half erect, should be discouraged.
Forms of Knowledge.
In the forms of knowledge we find again much less diversity than in the fifth gift,—the rectilinear solids and consequent absence of oblique angles limiting us in the construction of geometrical forms. The blocks, however, offer excellent means for general arithmetical instruction, for working out problems as to areas, for further illustration of dimension, and for building many varieties of parallelopipeds, square prisms, and cubes, and studying the parallelograms which bound them. The elements of this knowledge, it is true, were gained with the fourth gift, but we must remember that interest in any subject is not necessarily decreased by repetition, and that the value of review depends upon whether or not it is mechanical.[60]