Woodchoppers, scissor-grinder men, acrobats, blacksmiths at their anvils, bell ringers, carpenters, laundresses, cooks, housekeepers, all made to work by the manipulation of strings, springs, or cleverly balanced and counterbalanced weights, shot or marble
Toy telephones, electric bells, wireless telegraph systems
Automobiles and engines that will go, the motor power furnished by a spring, windlass, or tiny, homemade electric battery.
CHAPTER XIX
MUSIC AND ART
Rhythm and Musical Sound. Even the tiny baby responds to rhythm and to melody. Rhythm brings “a cadence to the soul”, to use G. Stanley Hall’s phrase; it relaxes and soothes both mind and body; it has far-reaching significance as a spiritual and moral force. Chanting any rhythmic poem or jingles, singing, rhythmic performing of physical exercises, are the beginnings of music as a rhythmic art. When the noise-enjoying age arrives, at about six months, a string of soft-toned, musical sleigh bells, or later in the first year, at the pounding stage, a tubephone, will give as much enjoyment as harsh noises; and at the same time these are cultivating a rudimentary musical sense. With the development of the phonograph, good music can be had even in households where no one plays a musical instrument. A baby of six months will notice the music, and most children from a year old will show enjoyment in hearing it. It is less important to acquaint little children with well-known classics—which are easily thus worn stale—than it is to provide good types of melody, harmony, and rhythm,—music that is sincere, enduring, normal. If children hear much of such music from the great masters and their disciples, before the age of ten, their tastes may be permanently influenced, and cheap, flashy, sensational music will fail to attract them.
As rapidly as a child develops motor ability to use them, musical instruments of good tone, adapted to his size, will provide him with enjoyable toys that at the same time cultivate sense of good musical sound and opportunity for musical experimenting and self-expression. A stout drum, cymbals, triangle, a tambourine, flute (being careful of its use by only one individual, and that it is wiped before using) are inexpensive. Montessori uses musical glasses and a series of bells tuned to scale and sounded by striking them. Kindergartners make wind harps by stringing mandolin or other cheap strings and wires on a wooden frame made in the workshop. This may be tuned for chords and hung where the wind will play fairy music upon it.
Every little child loves to play upon the piano. The ordinary toy piano is a jangle of noises that can only pervert the child’s sense of musical sound. Good toy pianos, with about two scales, small enough for the three-year-old size, can be purchased for a moderate price from some large musical stores. If circumstances will at all permit a child to play at his own sweet will and in his own way upon a real piano, the act will not only yield him indescribable bliss, but will foster immeasurably his love of music, and provide a means of musical self-expression. Few people expect to become great artists on any instrument. Technique, therefore, is of minor importance. The love of music, the desire to find expression through music, is the important feature to cultivate, leaving technique to a later age, nearer the teens.
The hearing of singing as a daily experience of early childhood, is potent for imitation and for good humor. A baby who hears much singing or humming will, even in his first year, attempt to hum, and in his second year, make up little snatches of song. This is music as it should be, developing out of the daily experience of life, illuminating that experience. Froebel urged his teachers to encourage this spontaneous, natural singing, and to set the example by their own spontaneous singing when with the children. In progressive schools of to-day, children of all ages are encouraged to compose melodies for nursery rhymes or little poems that they know, and later to develop harmonies. Thus through creation the child develops a richer self-expression, and if he is interested to become more proficient, he furnishes his own incentive for the drudgery of acquiring technique. What more pathetic situation than that of a child compelled to “practice”, whose soul is in revolt, and who every moment is acquiring a deeper loathing for music?
For teaching musical notation, there is a pasteboard keyboard, a set of pasteboard notes of different time-length and a special blackboard with the musical lines on which the notes can be hung. With these many games can be played, even at five or six years of age with some children, although others will not be ready until seven or eight.
The Crude Tastes of Childhood. Little children, like savages, have not developed fine discriminations in color. This is largely a matter of education. The little child shows a preference for vivid color, and no sense of harmony in color. His color sense is as undeveloped as his spoken language, and needs training, especially through good examples, for its refinement. A glass prism hung in the sunlight will give him pure spectrum hues while delighting even his baby days. It is not yet known with certainty at what age children’s eyes are sufficiently developed to really perceive color, although they are evidently able to distinguish degrees of brightness before a year of age, and show a preference for red or yellow objects rather than gray. They prefer colored pictures to black and white. Kindergarten supply houses now furnish large colored wooden beads, to be strung on shoe laces, and colored papers in graduated series of hues, and large colored wax crayons the size of a marking pencil. The Montessori apparatus now includes a set of flat wooden bobbins, about two by three inches square, painted in graduated shades of the spectrum colors, which the children at four and five years love to match or arrange by graduations of shade. A box of water colors (primary colors only) is indispensable to childhood.