Digging
Earth may be played with in still another way. Children should dig in it; for all pass through the digging stage and this should be given free swing. It develops their muscles and keeps them busy at helpful and constructive work. They may dig a well, make a cave, or a pond, or burrow underground and make tunnels like a mole. Give them spades and a piece of ground they can do with as they like, dress them in overalls, and it will be long before you are asked to think of another amusement for them.
Gardens
In still another way the earth may be utilized, for children may make gardens of it. Indeed, there are those who say that no child's education is complete until he has had a garden of his own and grown in it all sorts of seeds from pansies to potatoes. But a garden is too much for a young child to care for all alone. He needs the help, advice, and companionship of some older person. You must be careful, however, to give help only when it is really desired; and careful also not to let him feel that the garden is a task to which he is driven daily, but a joy that draws him.
Kites Windmills Soap-bubbles
(2) The Air. The next important plaything is the air. The kite and the balloon are only two instruments to help the child play with it. Little windmills made of colored paper and stuck by means of a pin at the end of a whittled stick, make satisfactory toys. One of their great advantages is that even a very young child can make them for himself. Blowing soap-bubbles is another means of playing with air. By giving the children woolen mittens the bubbles may be caught and tossed about as well as blown.