CHAPTER VIII

FROEBEL’S PLAY-MATERIAL AND ITS ORIGINAL PURPOSE

To one who believed, as Froebel did, that “the means by which the child gains his first ideas of his own nature and life and the nature and life of the cosmos, are his play and playthings,” these playthings could not be indifferent.

“It has been stated as a fundamental truth that the plays and occupations of children should by no means be treated as offering merely means for passing, we might say for consuming, time, hence as mere outer activity, but rather that by means of such plays and employments the child’s innermost nature must be satisfied.”--_P., p. 108._

Froebel was speaking of his own Play-material--known by the name of “Froebel’s Gifts” because he thought them the most suitable gifts for little children--when he wrote:

“To realize his aims, man, and more particularly the child, requires material, though it be only a bit of wood or a pebble with which he makes something or which he makes into something.”--_P., p. 235._

And although his opinion of the importance of that particular series of playthings, which he chose from among those he saw in general use, may have been exaggerated, still there is a good deal of sound psychology in what he says about them. In speaking of imitative action and construction, we have already touched upon what were perhaps the most important ideas underlying this series.[42]

“What presents are most prized by the child? Those which afford him a means of unfolding his inner life most freely and of shaping it in various directions.”--_P., p. 142._

But Froebel also writes of his Gifts that “they will cover the whole ground of training in sense perception,” and he has managed to think out a very fair number of the points which Dr. Ward, in his Analysis of Perception, notes as important.

One of Froebel’s frequent Reviews of his play-material begins:

“How has the child developed up to this point? How has the world, the objects and things around him developed? How has the child developed himself _especially through the toys_--the means of play and employment--which have thus far been given him? The brightening light in the child’s mind illuminates the objects around him. In proportion as the inner light increases, the nature of external objects grows clear to him … the law of development is that of progress from the unlimited to the limited, from the whole to the part, from an undifferentiated to a membered totality … the outer world comes to meet the inner world, it does not hinder, but helps the inner world.

“The man advanced in insight should be clear about all this before he introduces his child to the outer world. Even when he gives his child a plaything he must make clear to himself its purpose, and the purpose of playthings and occupation material in general. This purpose is to aid the child freely to express what lies within him--to bring the phenomena of the outer world nearer to him, and thus to serve as mediator between the mind and the world.”--_P., pp. 169-171._

Then Froebel explains in so many words the really psychological aim or meaning of his sequence of “Gifts,” so well known by name--and even better known in most _un_-psychological practice--but little understood in their real and original significance, as a means of perception, the earlier ones at least, for children much below even Kindergarten age.

“Recognizing the mediatorial character of play and playthings, we shall no longer be indifferent either to the choice, the succession, or the organic connection of the toys we give children. In these I offer them, I shall consider as carefully as possible, how the child may in using them develop his nature freely and yet in accordance with law (laws of mind), and how through such use he may also learn to apprehend external things correctly and to employ them justly. As the child’s first consciousness of self was born of physical opposition to and connection with the external world, so through play with the ball, the external world itself began to rise out of chaos and to assume definiteness. In recognizing the ball the child moved from the indefinite to the definite, from the universal to the particular, from mere externality (compare Prof. Ward’s ‘mere thing stuff’) to a self-included space-filling object. In the ball, especially through movement, through the opposition of rest and motion, through departing and returning, the object came forth out of general space as a special space-filling object, as a body: just as the child by means of his life (activity) also perceives himself, his bodily frame, as a space-filling object, as a body. The child has thus obtained two important terms of comparison for his first intellectual development; body and body, object and object.… At the same time there begins in the child, as in a seed-corn, a development advancing towards manifoldness. For this reason he should receive a corresponding seed-corn in the object which he first detaches as object from the external chaos. Such object should, like himself, include an indefinite manifoldness, and be susceptible of a progressive development. Such an object is the ball (Gift I).”--_P., p. 171._

The very first “intimation of an intellect,” Froebel writes, is when the child is seen to “keep his gaze fixed upon the motion of a bright object. This begins a few weeks after birth.” The ball is to be given to the baby “when the starting-point of recognition and knowledge (Erkennens und Erkenntniss), viz. perceiving, noticing, thinking (das Gewahrwerden, das Bemerken und Beachten) becomes perceptible”: when the child “can freely move its little arms and hands, when it can perceive and distinguish tones, and can turn its attention and gaze in the direction from which these tones come.”

In his analysis of Perception, Dr. Ward distinguishes (i) Assimilation or Recognition, (ii) Localization or Spatial Fixation, and (iii) Objective Reference, or Intuition of Things. Of these, the first, Assimilation, has already been taken up in Chapter IV, and we have seen that, according to Dr. Ward, it involves Retention and Differentiation, though in itself there is no active comparison, and we have seen that Froebel also spoke of the earliest impressions as “almost imperceptible, but _fixed_ by repetition and by change,”[43] and of a “perception of sequence” involving “dim” or “unconscious comparison.”

Of the second process Dr. Ward writes: “To treat of the localization of impressions is really to give an account of the steps by which the psychological individual comes to a knowledge of space,” and he goes on to say that psychologists may have been too apt to examine “the conception of space and not our concrete space perceptions.” Now Froebel did consider concrete space perception, and with a certain amount of care. That he saw its importance is clear from the fact that in discussing his “means of employment” he says:

“They will cover the whole ground of training in sense perception but _will begin with the observation of space and the knowledge that comes from that, since the child first feels and finds himself in space and finds others occupying space around him_. They are to go on by development of limbs and senses and by means of language to understand Nature in all directions, so that finally man _who at first could find himself only in space and by means of space_, may learn to know himself as an existent, feeling, thinking, intelligent, rational being, and as such to try to live.”--_P., p. 19._

And although Froebel may not fully have realized that, as Dr. Ward puts it: “The infant’s earliest lessons in spatial perception are in exploring his limbs,” still we do find him writing from Blankenburg, in a letter accompanying the first sketch of his Nursery Songs:

“I soon felt that some important connecting link was imperatively required to prepare the newly awakening life of a child for its later activity with the ball. It was through the ball itself that I discovered this link: in general terms it may be described as _the first development of muscular movement and sensation_ specially distinguishing infancy. The link between the infant, still an undivided self-sufficient whole of peaceful life, and the ball, which is something external given to him to play with, lies in the child’s own limbs, the child’s own senses; and _the first toys and occupations of the child come from himself; he plays with his own limbs_, and uses them as the material for representing his ideas. This spontaneous activity of limb and vividness of sensation natural to infancy must also be studied; for a considerable degree of cultivation of these powers is already necessary in the use of the ball, etc.… To help the child to use his own body, his limbs and sensations, and to assist mothers to a consciousness of their duties … I have carefully preserved several little songs and games and send this collection to you for your severe criticism.”[44]--_L., p. 108._

Having said that “the child first perceives himself, his corporeal frame, as a space-filling object, as a body, by means of his life,” or his activity, the first two of this collection naturally deal with large body movements. In the one the mother alternately lowers and raises the infant, “letting him really feel a slight shock,” and in the other the baby tramples with his feet, and she is told to supply the object of resistance. This resistance, as we have seen, gives him “the dim consciousness of self, which comes out of physical opposition to, and connection with, the outer world,” which Dr. Ward speaks of under the head of Localization of Impressions. Dr. Ward writes that “the distinction between his own and foreign bodies begins when the child feels the difference between a series of movements accompanied by passive touches, and one without passive touches,” but Froebel goes no further than noting what comes through “resistance.” The ball, however, as we have just seen, is to be used so as to assist the child’s comprehension of “a self-included space-filling object,” and through play with the ball he is to gain the “three great perceptions of object, space and time.”

In the Intuition of things, Dr. Ward distinguishes five points “concerning which psychology may be expected to give an account: (_a_) the reality; (_b_) solidity or occupation of space; (_c_) permanence, or, rather, continuity in time; (_d_) unity and complexity; and (_e_) substantiality and the connection of its attributes and powers.”

(_a_) _Reality_ he disposes of as “not strictly an item by itself, but a characteristic of all the items that follow.” Of (_b_), _Solidity or Impenetrability_, he writes that “here our feelings of effort come specially into play. They are not entirely absent in those movements of exploration by which we attain a knowledge of space; but it is when these movements are definitely realized, or are only possible by increased effort, that we reach the full meaning of body as that which occupies space.” Dr. Ward goes on to add as “in the highest degree essential,” that muscular effort should meet with something which seems to be “making an effort the counterpart of our own.”

Besides telling the mother to give the required definite resistance, by opposing her hand or chest to the little trampling feet, Froebel gives a “new play, a new perception of the object,” when he tells the mother that “as soon as the child is sufficiently developed to perceive the ball as a thing separate from himself,” she should tie a string to it and pull gently.

“The child will hold the ball fast, the arm will rise as you lift the ball, and as you loosen the string the hand and arm will sink back from their own weight; the feeling of the utterance of force, as well as the alternation of the movement, will delight the child. From this, however, soon springs a quite new play, that is also something new to the child, when, through a suitable drawing and lifting, the ball escapes from the child’s hand and then quietly moves freely before him as an individual object. Through this play is developed in the child a new feeling, the new perception of the object as a something now clasped, grasped and handled, and now as a freely active opposite something.”--_P., p. 36._

_Unity and Complexity_, “the remaining factors in the psychological constitution of things,” says Dr. Ward, “might be described in general terms as the time-relations of their opponents.…”

And Froebel, going straight on from “the opposite something,” comes in like manner to time-relations.

“One may say with deep conviction that even this simple activity is inexpressibly important for the child, for which reason it is to be repeated as a play with the child as often as possible. What the little one has up to this time directly felt so often by the touch of the mother’s breast--union and separation--it now perceives outwardly in an object which can be grasped and clasped. Thus the repetition of this play confirms, strengthens, and clears in the mind of the child a feeling and perception deeply grounded in, and important to the whole life of man--the feeling and perception of oneness and individuality, and of disjunction and separateness; also of present and past possession.… The idea of return or recurrence soon develops to the child’s perception, from the presence and absence; that of reunion from the singleness and separateness; of future repossession from present and past possession, and so the idea of being, having and becoming, are the dim perceptions which first dawn on the child.

“From these perceptions there at once develop in the child’s mind the three great perceptions of object, space and time, which were at first one collective perception. From the perceptions of being, having and becoming in respect to space and object, and in connection with them, there soon develop also the new perceptions of present, past and future in respect to time. Indeed, these ninefold perceptions which open to the child the portals of a new objective life, unfold themselves most clearly by means of his constant play with the one single ball.”--_P., p. 36._

Dr. Ward gives as the first step “in the psychological constitution of distinct things”--as opposed to what he calls “mere thingstuff”--“the simultaneous projection into the same occupied space of the several impressions, which we thus come to regard as the qualities of the body filling it.”

Froebel writes:

“We gave, therefore, to the mother the brightly coloured soft ball to make a unity of touch and perception through sight, for through the brightness it makes itself known to sight, and through warmth (softness?) to touch, as an objective phenomena, a thing in itself.”--_P., p. 65._

To reach unity and complexity, says Ward, “it is essential that objects should recur, and recur as they have previously recurred, if knowledge is ever to begin.” The constituent impressions must also “be again and again repeated in like order to prompt anew the same grouping,” and the constancy of one group must present itself “along with changes in other groups, and in the general field.… It is only where a group, as a whole, has been found to change its position relatively to other groups, and--apart from causal changes--to be independent of changes of position among them, that such complexes can become distinct unities and yield a world of things.”

Froebel writes of one of his early plays:

“It is really important for the human being, especially as a child, that the essential perceptions of things should be _repeated frequently_ under different forms, and _if possible in a particular order_, so that the child may easily learn to distinguish the essential from the unessential and accidental, and the abiding from the changing. Unnoticed and unrecognized though the phenomena are to the child, yet the impression of them will be certain and firm, and this so much the more when the repetition has been precise and clear.”--_P., p. 88._

Later, speaking of a child’s earliest attempts at walking, he says:

“The smallest child who begins to exercise the power of walking, loves to go from place to place--i.e. _he likes to turn about and to change the relationships in which he stands to different objects, and in which they stand to him. Through these changes he seeks self-recognition and self-comprehension, as well as recognition of the different objects which surround him, and recognition of his environment as a whole_.”--_P., p. 243._

Dr. Ward requires still more and says that “the unity of a thing” carries us over to temporal continuity, and this he attributes to “the continuous presentation of such a group as the bodily self, which makes us infer continuity of existence, for presentations which have been presented, removed and re-presented.”

We have seen already that Froebel says the child perceives the ball “through departing and returning, as a space-filling object, as a body, just as he perceives himself, his corporeal frame, as a space-filling object, as a body.” And there is also a quaint, but interesting reference to something of this kind in one of the earliest Nursery Songs called “All Gone,” where the mother is distinctly told that she must help her child to realize continuity through change.

“How can the child understand what you mean when you say ‘It’s all gone, Baby’? He will not be contented unless you put meaning into it. What he saw just now he sees no longer, what was above is below, what was there is just now vanished. Where, then, has it gone?”

And the baby is supposed to be quieted by the mother’s playful tale of the present whereabouts of his bread and milk, a German version of the homely “Down red lane.”

Professor Ward’s last point in the intuition of things is “substantiality.” “What is it,” he says, “that has thus a beginning and continues indefinitely?” The answer is that “of all the constituents of things only one is universally present, that of physical solidity, which presents itself according to circumstances, as impenetrability, resistance or weight.… In other words, that which occupies space is the substantial; the other real constituents are but its properties or attributes, the marks or manifestations which lead us to expect its presence.”

Froebel, again, sums up the ideas he intends the child to gain from play with the ball:

“The ball shows contents, mass, matter, space, form, size and figure; it bears within itself an independent power (elasticity) and hence it has rest and movement, and consequently stability and spontaneity; it offers even colour, and at least calls forth sound; it is indeed heavy--that is, it is attracted--and thus shares in the general property of all bodies.… Therefore, it places man, on his entrance into the world, furnished with activity of limbs and senses, in the midst of all phenomena and perceptions of Nature and of all life … to place man through a skilful education in the understanding of Nature and life, and to maintain him in it with consciousness and circumspection cannot be done too early.”--_P., p. 53._

The soft ball of the first gift is supposed to be given to the child when he is three or even two months old, but when he reaches six or eight months, he is supposed to be ready for something which “makes itself known especially through noise, sound, tone, as it were through speech.” The second gift therefore consists of a wooden sphere and a cube, which are intended not only to please the child by the noise they make, but to serve as material for comparison. The mother is told to roll the sphere and then, in order to make this oppositeness between sphere and cube perceptible to the child, to place the cube steadily before him and presently to take one of his little hands, pushing gently at first, but

“finally overcoming the gravity of the cube and pushing it away with the child’s hand and fingers … drawing the child’s strength, although yet so feeble, into the play, that his limbs may be trained, his strength increased, and that he may experience and perceive much through his own activity.”--_P., p. 77._

By even these few representations the mother can present to her child:

“The quiet, firm sure-standing on a relatively larger surface; the filling of space by each object; heaviness which is expressed by pressure; the final overcoming of heaviness (gravity); and the possibility of moving away the body by the use of a proportionately greater strength. The perception of all these and many other facts, showing themselves merely as changing phenomena in oft-recurring repetition, will give pleasure even to the child who is scarcely half a year, or at least not a whole year old, especially when the play is placed in intimate connection with the child’s life, and with his impulse to activity.”--_P., p. 78._

Many plays are suggested, all to be accompanied by song or rhyme, only, says Froebel, “one must not go on in opposition to the wish of the child, but always follow his requirements and needs and his own expressions of life and activity.”

It is in this connection that Froebel notices how early a child begins to note cause.

“Even the child whose capacity for speech is as yet undeveloped will remark the cause of the fall of the cube, at least experience has shown us that children of this age drew away the holding support, and, as the cube then fell over, turned toward their mother with face and body as in joyous triumph.”--_P., p. 80._

The sphere and cube are also to be compared as to shape:

“Through all that has been done hitherto, the child’s attention has been predominantly called to the object, as filling space, and acting, but only incidentally to the object as being the identical one; nor yet to the figure and shape, nor to the members and parts. But attention to the form and figure of the object can also be utilized for the child in play.”--_P., p. 83._

So the mother is directed to hide the cube in her hand and show it again--so that the child will watch for its reappearance.

“By this play the child is not only again made to notice that the cube fills space, but his attention is also called to its precise form; and he will look at it sharply, _unconsciously comparing_ it with the hand to which his eyes were first attracted.”--_P., p. 84._

“Each object speaks constantly to man by its qualities and attributes, and still more to the child, though in mute speech.… It is essential for the intellectual development of man that the surroundings should speak to him by their qualities and attributes.”--_P., p. 95._

Froebel’s “Gift III” is a little box containing eight-inch cubes for building purposes, and after the child has clearly gained the idea of “outer object” Froebel says:

“Let us first of all hasten to place ourselves together in the children’s play corner, and there seek to discover what attracts the child, or, rather, in what direction he himself turns his attention, what he would like to do and what he needs for the purpose. Let us take our place there as quietly and as unnoticed as possible, observing how the child, between the ages of one and three years, after he has clearly gained the idea of “outer object,” has contemplated the form and colour of the self-contained body which he can handle, has moved it here and there in his hands, and experimented upon its solidity, now tries to pull it apart, or at least to alter its form in order to discover new properties in it, and to find out new ways of using it. If the little one succeeds in his attempt to separate the object, we see that he then tries to put the parts together, to form the whole which he had at first, or to arrange them in a new whole. We see that he will unweariedly and quietly repeat this for a long time.

“Let us linger over this significant phenomenon and seek to recognize through it what we have to furnish to the child from inner grounds and without arbitrariness. This is: something firm which can be easily pulled apart by the child’s strength, and just as easily put together.”--_P., p. 117._

The time when the child wants this something to arrange is given as any time “between the ages of one and three.” It is the time when “his greatest delight consists in the quick alternation of building up and tearing down.”--_P., p. 106._

At first the little one will be satisfied with arranging and rearranging the cubes, piling them one upon another, “placing one before, behind, beside another.” Soon, however, he will try to make something definite, and “the intelligent nurse interprets the dim idea and sees whether a something, a table, a chair, etc., can be perceived in what is represented.” Then the something must have a purpose, so the chair is grannie’s chair, the table is ready for the soup, and so on.

There is nothing here which is not quite a usual proceeding. Froebel’s peculiarity of treatment comes from his desire to give the blocks to the child as a whole which he can take to pieces. This is the reason of the traditional proceeding, perhaps still kept up in old-fashioned kindergartens, when the children first slip the lid out a little way, then reverse the boxes, pull out the lid and lift it off the box. The directions are Froebel’s own, and are given:

“in order to furnish to the child at once clearly and definitely, the impression of the whole, of the self-contained; from this perception, as the first fundamental perception (Grundanschauung) all proceeds and must proceed.”--_P., p. 123._

It is clear that this meaning is quite lost when the same proceeding is forced on older children, who are quite accustomed to pull down and build up.

Froebel emphasizes the fact that the pieces are of the same cubical form as the whole thus presented, and adds:

“Thus fundamental perceptions, whole and part, form, and size, are made clear by comparison and contrast, as well as deeply impressed by repetition.”--_P., p. 119._

It is in speaking of this simplest of toys that Froebel enters a strong protest against the complex and useless toys which afford no scope for childish activity.

“Here, then, we meet a very great imperfection and inadequateness--indeed in reference to the inner development of the child an obstructing element in that which is now so frequently provided as a plaything for children; an element which slumbers like a viper under roses--it is, in a word, the already too complex and ornate, too-finished plaything. The child can begin no new thing with it, cannot produce enough variety by means of it; his power of creative imagination, his power of giving form to his own idea, are thus actually deadened. For when we provide children with too finished playthings we at the same time deprive them of the incentive to perceive the particular in the general, and of taking the means to find it.… What presents are the most prized by the child as well as by mankind in general? Those which afford him a means of unfolding his inner life most purely and of shaping it in a varied manner, giving it freest activity and presenting it clearly.”--_P., p. 122._

This quotation sets forth quite plainly the main idea underlying all the varied toys or play-material known as the “Gifts and Occupations” of the Kindergarten.

According to Mr. Hailmann and other writers, the gifts are material by which the child can gain ideas, and the occupations furnish material for gaining skill. But Mr. Hailmann allows that this distinction, which to him seems important, was never formulated by Froebel.

Froebel’s psychological knowledge, in fact, was in advance of that of his interpreters. He knew that it was by action, by manipulation of material, that the child gains his ideas and that the clear distinction between gift and occupation which to Mr. Hailmann is “very important” is on the contrary actually non-existent.

Gifts III to VI are boxes of building blocks, intended to present sequence in difficulty of manipulation, and also increasing variety of form. Because of the stress he laid on self-expression, Froebel thought very highly of the educational possibilities of a box of bricks. In “The Education of Man” he writes:

“Look into this education room of eight boys, seven to ten years old. On the large table stands a chest of building blocks, in the form of bricks, each side about one-sixth of the size of actual bricks, the finest and most variable material that can be offered a boy for purposes of representation. Sand or sawdust, too, have found their way into the room, and fine green moss has been brought in abundantly from the last walk in the beautiful pine forest. It is free time, and each one has begun his own work. There in a corner stands a chapel … there a building which represents a castle.…”--_E., p. 108._

After the bricks come the coloured tablets of Gift VII, which children from four and upwards, _if left free_, often highly appreciated as material for making patterns; and the Sticks or splints of various lengths of Gift VIII, with which they used to lay outlines of familiar objects. English children often use burnt matches for this, sometimes they do the same thing with “mother’s pin-box,” and a child quite innocent of Kindergarten ideas has been seen to appropriate the various nails of a tool-box to the same purpose. Along with the sticks Froebel supplied rings of metal or paper; the little English child who used the nails took small curtain rings for the petals of her flower and screw nails for its stalk. In Gift IX the child is presented with very small articles for stringing or arranging--beads, coloured beans, pebbles, etc. A child’s pleasure in this material and in the sticks and rings probably shows that he is ready to practise movements of the thumbs and forefingers. Froebel said that the use of these sticks called the child’s attention to “linear phenomena,” and I have already mentioned that many years ago, when we were still using Froebel’s play-material, I heard a child call out, “Oh, I’m making lines!” just after he had been using the sticks. The other children contentedly went on rubbing with the crayons; but this young discoverer continued to make laborious lines, always from left to right, till the work was completed to his satisfaction.

The remaining “Gifts” include coloured paper to fold and cut either to produce such objects as boats, boxes, purses, chairs, etc., or to form patterns, or to weave together for the well-known paper mat; drawing and paper materials; modelling clay and sand, and so on.

The weakness of the series is the semi-psychological semi-mathematical arrangement, which has been dealt with in the following chapter. What Froebel meant to do was to pick out from among the material he saw given to children, or appropriated by them, those things which seemed to him best adapted to call out the activities of children at various ages or stages, in accordance with his idea that “the man advanced in insight should make clear to himself the purpose of playthings, viz. to help the child to express himself, and to bring the phenomena of the outer world nearer to him.”

Surprise has often been expressed that Froebel did not include such toys as dolls in his series.

One reason is that he did not live long enough, for he does speak of doll-play and says that later the time will come “when we shall speak of the doll and the hobby-horse as the plays of the awakening life of the girl and of the boy.” In his brief reference he does speak of the child’s own nature becoming objective through the doll-play, and he adds that by such play she “anticipates and feels her destiny.” He notes, too, with interest that:

“Little girls make their favourite dolls of the heavy bootjack or like piece of wood. I was informed by a mother that a heavy sandbag which she accidentally found became her most cherished doll, because it had in it the weight of an actual child, and so she gave herself up to the illusion and imagined herself to be carrying a real child.”

Undoubtedly Froebel was right in demanding simple toys and in characterizing the “too complex toy” as a “viper under the roses,” and also in demanding that toys should be carefully considered and chosen so as to meet the needs of the child’s developing mind. But the plays and the toys of a developing child cannot be definitely prescribed, and every similar attempt is likely to fail, as Froebel’s has done. In his choice, Froebel was biased by the great idea which obsessed him, the idea of development. Like all human beings, he had the defects of his virtues, and it is to these defects that we must now turn our attention.