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.