Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel was a German pedagogue, a student of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who laid the foundation for modern education. His theory was based on recognizing that children have unique needs and capabilities. This book is an account of his life and deeds.

FROEBEL'S GIFTS BY FATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN AND NCRA ARCHIBALD The i rue teacher is a student of human nature, and the student of human nature is the pupil of God. HORATIO STEEBINS BOSTON AND NEW YORK EOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY PEEPACE THE tliree little volumes on tLat Republic of Childhood, the kindergarten, of which this hand book, dealing with the gifts, forms the initial number, might well be called Chips from a Kin dergarten Workshop. They are the outcome of talks and conferences on Froebels educational principles with successive groups of earnest young women here, there, and everywhere, for fifteen years, and represent as much practical work at the bench as a carpenter could show in a similar length of time. They are the result of mutual give and take, of question and answer, of effort and experience, of the friction of minds against one another, of ideas struck out in the heat of argument, and of varied experience with many hundred little children of all nationalities and conditions. They are not theories, written in the seclusion of the study and if perchance they have the defects, so should they have the virtues, vi PREFACE too, of work corrected and revised at every step by the child in the midst. If It is objected that many things in them have been heard before, we can but say with Montaigne Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who spake them first than his who spake them after. The various talks have been cut down here, enlarged there, condensed in one place, amplified in another, from year to year, as knowledge and experience have grown many of the ideas which they advocated in the beginning have been elimi nated, as being completely reversed by thepassage of time, and much new matter has been added as the kindergarten principle has developed. They are as much a growth as a coral reef, though the authors have little hope that they will be as enduring. The kindergarten of 1895 is not the kinder garten of 1880, for the science of education has made great strides in these past fifteen years. Many things which were held to be vital principles when we began our talks with kindergarten students, we now find were but lifeless methods after all. It is not that time has reversed the fundamental principles on which the kindergarten PBJSFACE vii rests, these are as true as trutli and as change less but the Interpretation of them has greatly changed and broadened with the passage of years, and many of the instrumentalities of education which Froebel devised are destined to further transformation in the future. For this reason, the last book on the kindergarten is sometimes the best book, since it naturally embodies the latest thought and discovery on the subject. These talks on the kindergarten have purposely been divested of a certain amount of technicality and detail, in the hope that they will thus reach not only kindergarten students, but the many mothers and teachers who really long to know what Froebels system of education is and what it aims to do. They will never of themselves make a kindergartner, and are not intended to do so but they certainly should shed some light on Froebel s theories, and establish a basis on which they can be worked out in the home and in the school. We shall attempt no defense of the kindergar ten here. It has passed the experimental stage It is no longer on trial for its life and no longer humbly begging, hat in hand, for a place to lay its head. As an educational idea, it is a recog viii PREFACE nized part of the great system of child-training and to say, in this year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and ninety-five, that one does not believe in the kindergarten is as if one said, I do not believe in electricity, or, I never saw much force in the law of gravitation...

Inventing Kindergarten reconstructs the origins of the most successful system ever devised for teaching young children about art, design, mathematics, and natural history.

An essential resource for all students and scholars of early childhood education, this book offers a rich array of material about Maria Montessori and the Montessori Method. Distinguished education scholar Gerald Gutek begins with an in-depth biography of Montessori, exploring how a determined young woman overcame the obstacles that blocked her educational and career opportunities in Italy during the late Victorian age. The author then analyzes the sources and influences that shaped the Montessori philosophy of education. After laying the foundation for Montessori's development, Gutek presents an annotated and abridged edition of The Montessori Method (1912), the seminal work that introduced her educational innovations to a U.S. audience. The book concludes with key historical documents, including disciple Anne E. George's notes on the Montessori lectures and William H. Kilpatrick's critique of the Montessori method. Preserving the historical context of Montessori's contribution, Gutek also shows the continuing relevance of her thought to educational reform in the twenty-first century.

"Created for children but designed by adults with considerable ingenuity, architectural toys have long offered a window on a much larger world. In Architecture in Play, Tamar Zinguer explores the nearly two-hundred-year period over which such playthings have reflected changing attitudes toward form, structure, and permanence, echoing modernist experiments and stylistic inclinations in fascinating ways while also incorporating technological advances in their systems of construction. Zinguer's history of these toys reveals broader social and economic trends from their respective periods. Used in the intimacy of the domestic environment, a setting that encouraged the eradication of formal habits and a reconceiving of visual orders, architectural toys ultimately intimated notions of the modern. Amply illustrated and engagingly written, this book sheds valuable light on this fascinating relation between household toys and the deeper trends and ideas from which they sprang ... Focusing on four primary building materials (wood, stone, metal, and paper), Tamar Zinguer discusses a series of important architectural toys: Friedrich Froebel's Gifts (1836), cubes, spheres, and cylinders that are gradually broken down to smaller geometrical parts; Anchor Stone Building Blocks (1877), comprising hundreds of miniature stone shapes that yield castles, forts, and churches; Meccano (1901) and Erector Set (1911), including small metal girders to construct bridges and skyscrapers mimetic of contemporary steel structures; and The Toy (1950) and House of Cards (1952), designed by Charles and Ray Eames, which are lightweight cardboard 'kits of parts' based on methods of prefabrication"--Book jacket.