The recognition of the form is rendered much easier in this way. Children who evidently do not recognize the identities of form by the eye and who make absurd attempts to place the most diverse figures one within the other, do recognize the forms after having touched their outlines, and arrange them very quickly in their right places.
The child’s hand during this exercise of touching the outlines of the geometrical figures has a concrete guide in the object. This is especially true when he touches the frames, for his two fingers have only to follow the edge of the frame, which acts as an obstacle and is a very clear guide. The teacher must always intervene at the start to teach accurately this movement, which will have such an importance in the future. She must, therefore, show the child how to touch, not only by performing the movement herself slowly and clearly, but also by guiding the child’s hand itself during his first attempts, so 50 that he is sure to touch all the details––angles and sides. When his hand has learned to perform these movements with precision and accuracy, he will be really capable of following the outline of a geometrical figure, and through many repetitions of the exercise he will come to coordinate the movement necessary for the exact delineation of its form.
This exercise could be called an indirect but very real preparation for drawing. It is certainly the preparation of the hand to trace an enclosed form. The little hand which touches, feels, and knows how to follow a determined outline is preparing itself, without knowing it, for writing.
The children make a special point of touching the outlines of the plane insets with accuracy. They themselves have invented the exercise of blindfolding their eyes so as to recognize the forms by touch only, taking out and putting back the insets without seeing them.
Fig. 25.––Series of Cards with Geometrical Forms.
Corresponding to every form reproduced in the plane insets there are three white cards square in shape and of exactly the same size as the wooden 51 frames of the insets. These cards are kept in three special cardboard boxes, almost cubic in form. (Fig. 25.)
On the cards are repeated, in three series, the same geometrical forms as those of the plane insets. The same measurements of the figures also are exactly reproduced.