Following this, we place before the child the eight gradations of two different colours (red and blue); he is shown how to separate the groups and then arrange each group in gradation. As we proceed we offer groups of more nearly related colours; for example, blue and violet, yellow and orange, etc.
In one of the "Children's Houses," I have seen the following game played with the greatest success and interest, and with surprising rapidity. The directress places upon a table, about which the children are seated, as many colour groups as there are children, for example, three. She then calls each child's attention to the colour each is to select, or which she assigns to him. Then, she mixes the three groups of colours upon the table. Each child takes rapidly from the mixed heap of tablets all the gradations of his colour, and proceeds to arrange the tablets, which, when thus placed in a line, give the appearance of a strip of shaded ribbon.
In another "House," I have seen the children take the entire box, empty the sixty-four colour-tablets upon the table and after carefully mixing them, rapidly collect them into groups and arrange them in gradation, constructing a species of little carpet of delicately coloured and intermingling tints. The children very quickly acquire an ability before which we stand amazed. Children of three years are able to put all of the tints into gradation.
Experiments in Colour-memory. Experiments in colour-memory may be made by showing the child a tint, allowing him to look at it as long as he will, and then asking him to go to a distant table upon which all of the colours are arranged and to select from among them the tint similar to the one at which he has looked. The children succeed in this game remarkably, committing only slight errors. Children of five years enjoy this immensely, taking great pleasure in comparing the two spools and judging as to whether they have chosen correctly.
At the beginning of my work, I made use of an instrument invented by Pizzoli. This consisted of a small brown disk having a half-moon shape opening at the top. Various colours were made to pass behind this opening, by means of a rotary disk which was composed of strips of various colours. The teacher called the attention of the child to a certain colour, then turned the disk, asking him to indicate the same disk when it again showed itself in the opening. This exercise rendered the child inactive, preventing him from controlling the material. It is not, therefore, an instrument which can promote the education of the senses.
EXERCISE FOR THE DISCRIMINATION OF SOUNDS
It would be desirable to have in this connection the didactic material used for the "auricular education" in the principal institutions for deaf mutes in Germany and America. These exercises are an introduction to the acquisition of language, and serve in a very special way to centre the children's discriminative attention upon the "modulations of the sound of the human voice."
With very young children linguistic education must occupy a most important place. Another aim of such exercises is to educate the ear of the child to noises so that he shall accustom himself to distinguish every slight noise and compare it with sounds, coming to resent harsh or disordered noises. Such sense education has a value in that it exercises æsthetic taste, and may be applied in a most noteworthy way to practical discipline. We all know how the younger children disturb the order of the room by shouts, and by the noise of over-turned objects.
The rigorous scientific education of the sense of hearing is not practically applicable to the didactic method. This is true because the child cannot exercise himself through his own activity as he does for the other senses. Only one child at a time can work with any instrument producing the gradation of sounds. In other words, absolute silence is necessary for the discrimination of sounds.
Signorina Maccheroni, Directress, first of the "Children's House" in Milan and later in the one in Franciscan Convent at Rome, has invented and has had manufactured a series of thirteen bells hung upon a wooden frame. These bells are to all appearances, identical, but the vibrations brought about by a blow of a hammer produce the following thirteen notes: