The Child under Eight | Page 5

complete and well-furnished kitchen, a bathroom, a courtyard with sand for digging, with pebbles and pine-cones, moss, shells and straw, etc., a garden, and a series of rooms and halls suitably furnished and arranged for games, occupations, handwork and instruction.
"The occupations pursued in the Kindergarten are the following: free play of a child by itself; free play of several children by themselves; associated play under the guidance of a teacher; gymnastic exercises; several sorts of handwork suited to little children; going for walks; learning music, both instrumental (on the method of Madame Wiseneder[5]) and vocal; learning and repetition of poetry; story-telling; looking at really good pictures; aiding in domestic occupations; gardening; and the usual systematic ordered occupations of Froebel. Madame Schrader is steadfastly opposed to that conception of the Kindergarten which insists upon mathematically shaped materials for the Froebelian occupations. Her own words are: 'The children find in our institution every encouragement to develop their capabilities and powers by use; not by their selfish use to their own personal advantage, but by their use in the loving service of others. The longing to help people and to accomplish little pieces of work proportioned to their feeble powers is constant in children; and lies alongside of their need for that free and unrestrained play which is the business of their life."
[Footnote 5: From certain old photographs, I suppose this to have been what we now call a Kindergarten Band.]
"The elder children are expected to employ themselves in cleaning, taking care of, arranging, keeping in order, and using the many various things belonging to the housekeeping department of the Kindergarten; for example, they set out and clear away the materials required for the games and handicrafts; they help in cleaning the rooms, furniture and utensils; they keep all things in order and cleanliness; they paste together torn wallpapers or pictures, they cover books, and they help in the cooking and in preparations for it; in laying the tables, in washing up the plates and dishes, etc. The children gain in this manner the simple but most important foundations of their later duties as housekeepers and householders, and at the same time learn to regard these duties as things done in the service of others."
It is worth while to notice the order in which the necessities of this place are described. First comes a kitchen and next a bathroom, then an out-of-doors playground with abundant material for gaining ideas through action--sand, pebbles, pine-cones, moss, shells and straw. Then comes the garden, and only after all these, the rooms and halls for indoors games, handwork and instruction. It is worth while also to note the prominence given to play, music, poetry and story-telling pictures, domestic occupations and gardening, all preceding the "systematic and ordered occupations" which to some have seemed so all-important.
If we compare this with the current ideas about Nursery Schools, we do not find that it falls much below the present ideal. There has been a time when some of us feared that only the bodily needs of the little child were to be considered, but the "Regulations for Nursery Schools" have banished such fear. In these the child is regarded as a human being, with spiritual as well as bodily requirements.
To put it shortly, the physical requirements of a child are food, fresh air and exercise, cleanliness and rest. It is not so easy to sum up the requirements of a human soul. The first is sympathy, and though this may spring from parental instinct, it should be nourished by true understanding. Next perhaps comes the need for material, material for investigation, for admiration, for imitation and for construction or creation. Power of sense-discrimination is important enough, but in this case if we take care of the pounds of admiration and investigation, the pence of sense-discrimination will take care of themselves.
Besides these the child has the essentially human need for social intercourse, for speech, for games, for songs and stories, for pictures and poetry. He must have opportunity both to imitate and to share in the work and life around him; he must be an individual among other individuals, a necessary part of a whole, allowed to give as well as to receive service. In the National Kindergarten of 1873 no one of these requirements is overlooked except the provision for sleep, and from old photographs we know that this, too, was considered.
Nursery Schools are needed for children of all classes. It is not only the children of the poor who require sympathy and guidance from those specially qualified by real grasp of the facts of child-development. Well-to-do mothers, too, often leave their children to ignorant and untrained servants, or to the equally untrained and hardly less ignorant nursery governess.
Mothers in small houses have much to do; making beds and washing