In going on, through the large number of forms which are given in the manuals of Madame Rongé and the Baroness Marienholtz, for the convenience of the Kindergartners, the children can be asked in turn to suggest rules for new figures, and then directed how to apply the rule, and adjust each of the four blocks to make a symmetry. Often, a form of the series given, is anticipated; but, if no suggestion is made by the children, the Kindergartner must choose, and ask if so and so would not be pretty. But in no case must the engraved forms be given as a pattern. Imitation is mechanical, and children soon tire of working by patterns; while to work from a rule, whether it is suggested by another, or is one's own fancy, will keep up the interest a long while, and stimulate invention; for it is real intellectual work, though less abstract than geometry.
The great secret of the charm of working out symmetrical forms is, that the mind is created to make, like the divine mind. "God geometrizes," says Plato; and therefore man geometrizes. The generation of forms by crystallization, and by vegetable and animal organization, follows the law of polarity, which is alike the law of the human and the mode of the divine creation. It was amusing to hear a little child cry out, "I cannot find an opposite;" and, when another said, "No matter, take this," reply, "But then it will not make anything."
In going through the series of forms, made first by the eight blocks, then by those of the Fourth Gift, and afterwards by the larger number of the Fifth and Sixth Gifts, the child comes, by being led perpetually to put down opposites, in order to make symmetry, to learn the value of the law of polarization, which obtains alike in thought, and in the created universe.
But, besides the boxes of solids, there are boxes of triangles, one of equilateral, one of right angle, and two of isosceles triangles—one acute and one obtuse—affording means for an infinity of forms of beauty; so that this amusement of making symmetrical forms is not exhausted in the whole four years of the Kindergarten course.
The same principle of polarity is brought out in the combination of colors, as well as of forms.
In weaving bookmarks and mats, with strips of different colored papers, the series of forms becomes more attractive by observing the harmonies of color. The children are taught, by the colored balls of the First Gift, to distinguish the primary and secondary colors, and to arrange them harmoniously. Children acquire very soon a very exquisite taste in color, and, if carefully called to attend to harmonies, detect an incongruity at once.
Calkins, of New York, has published sheets of diagrams, if they may be so called, of the harmonies of colors.
The Kindergartner, while at the training-school, gets a series of several hundred woven forms, to relieve her from the fatigue of constantly inventing, when she is full of care. But children soon begin to invent of themselves, and are recreated—not fatigued—by it. This weaving may be turned to much account for innumerable ornamental articles which the children are delighted to make, in order to have something of their own, to give to their friends, at Christmas, New Year's, and birthdays. Our woodcut gives the beginning of the series of woven forms. Children of three years old can begin these; and those of five will make beautiful things. But a series of forms may perhaps be most easily begun by little children, by sewing colored worsted threads into pricked paper.
One essential furniture of the Kindergarten is paper ruled in squares of a sixteenth of an inch, which can be done wherever paper is ruled. Every child should have a piece of this paper, pricked in the crossings of the squares, and be taught to use the needle and colored thread, so as first to make parallel lines, then diagonals, then right angles, then squares; and then other more complex but still symmetrical figures.
This squared paper may also be used to teach pricking, first at the crossings of the lines, preparing sheets for sewing, and then making a series by pricking symmetrical forms; following the same general law as produced beauty with the blocks and triangular planes.