Effect of Froebel's Gifts on the Kindergartner.

Although uninterested and uninitiated persons doubtless regard the various gifts of Froebel as very ordinary objects, made from commonplace materials, yet that this view of the matter is only a peep through a pin-hole is abundantly proven by their effect on the kindergartner. Those of us who have seen successive groups of young women in training-cla.s.ses approach the first few gifts have noted that interest is commonly mingled at first with a slight surprise that the objects should be considered worthy of so much study, while underneath lies a half-concealed amus.e.m.e.nt at the simple forms produced. Yet this att.i.tude of mind endures but for a season, for as soon as the gifts are studied and used practically, it is seen that they contain possibilities of indefinite expansion. When they are looked at through the gla.s.ses of imagination, it is wonderful how large they appear, and when one has toiled long hours to invent some sequence with them, one wonders at the reality and fascination of the forms produced.

The outsider who glanced at the materials hastily would undoubtedly suppose them capable of only a limited number of changes and combinations, but the fact remains that every year kindergarten students invent hundreds of new forms with these simple, insignificant blocks and sticks and beans.

How, then, does this change come about? How is it that the same student who once half-scorned the gifts, now, upon the completion of her course of training, looks upon them with affection, admiration, and respect? It is that her eyes have been opened, and whereas she was blind, now she sees. Her imagination has been awakened, her literary instinct has been stirred, and she has come to look at things in the child way, which is always the poetic way.

Effect of Froebel's Gifts upon the Child.

The effect of Froebel's gifts upon the child has been shown directly and indirectly through the entire series of talks, and need not now be recapitulated. If they are wisely presented and wisely conducted, "inward and outward, the limits of their influence and scope lie in infinity."

Froebel says in one of his letters: "No one would believe, without seeing it, how the child-soul--the child-life--develops when treated as a whole, and in the sense of forming a part of the great connected life of the world, by some skilled kindergartner,--nay, even by one who is only simple-hearted, thoughtful, and attentive; nor how it blooms into delicious harmonies like a beautifully tinted flower.

Oh, if I could only shout aloud with ten thousand lung-power the truth that I now tell you in silence. Then would I make the ears of a hundred thousand men ring with it! What keenness of sensation, what a soul, what a mind, what force of will and active energy, what dexterity and skill of muscular movement and of perception, and what calm and patience will not all these things call out in the children."[89]

[89] Froebel's _Letters on the Kindergarten_, page 145.

It is not that we regard the connected series of gifts as inspired, nor as incapable of improvement, for it may be that as our psychological observations of children grow wiser, more sympathetic, and more subtle, we shall see cause to make radical changes in the objects which are Froebel's legacy to the kindergarten. This we may do, but we can never improve upon the motherly tenderness of spirit with which they were devised by the great pioneer of child-study, nor upon the philosophic insight which based them on the universal instincts of childhood.