tunity for correcting erroneous impressions that have been given, and it is pretty to see how much they learn by this amusement. The teacher preserves a certain method in what she represents. She sometimes divides the table into Asia and Africa; and occasionally adds Australia, America, and Europe; and keeps her animals in their own quarter of the world. If any child has an animal in his or her story, she is asked of what country it is; and if several animals, of different countries, are in the story, a question arises of how it can be; and sometimes a menagerie is imagined to account for inconsistencies of geography. It is obvious to the slightest reflection how much can be taught in this way. But the teacher must be well posted in Natural History, and is obliged to read books of travels, &c., to get anecdotes. We have found the works of J. G. Woods, "Common Objects of the Country," "My Feathered Friends," and especially the large work he edits, called "Routledge's Illustrated Natural History," very useful.

In order to make these lessons in Natural History still more useful, we have some large cards, imported from Europe, on which birds and other animals are represented in the proportions of their size; and these are exhibited when the animals are spoken of. In order to impress the forms still more strongly, I draw the animals on paper, and let the children prick their outlines, which forms another exercise, and is very much delighted in by the children. They thus have something to carry home which they have done themselves.

I have said that Froebel's First and Second Gifts are published in Boston. I think the other Gifts that is the Third and Fourth, together with some of Fifth and Sixth, will presently be published in one box, with some lithographic plates of the forms they can make. For it is indispensable that every child in a Kindergarten should have a box of blocks; and the book of plates would enable them sometimes to play with the blocks when the teacher cannot be super

intending them. The box and book would also be quite a resource for children at home, especially after they have learnt how to play from a good teacher. All is accomplished when the child makes a plan, embodies it, and gives an account of what he has done.

But blocks may also be used to give the elements of arithmetic and geometry, as I shall show in the proper place.

STICK-LAYING.

Barley straws can be used with much advantage to form a pleasant amusement for children. They should be cut into pieces of an inch, two inches, three inches, four inches, five inches, and six inches; and each of the children should have a hundred in a box. They can then be taught to lay them so as to make windows, doors, houses, fences, and the various rectilinear figures, regular and irregular polygons. They can make these figures with their barley-straws, and then copy them on their slates, one side of which it is a good plan to have marked with a steel point in squares of half an inch, or a third of an inch dimension; for there is nothing so hard in drawing as to make a straight line. Several of the capital letters can be made by these barley-straws, as A, E, F, H, I, K, L, M, N, T, V, W, X, Y, Z. Then these can be copied upon the slate, and the children will soon add the rest of the letters on their slates, making the curves with their pencils. Froebel used stiff wooden sticks; but I mention barley-straws, because I have found it difficult to get the straight wooden sticks.

PEA-WORK.

But hard wooden sticks, sharpened at both ends, are necessary for pea-work. The object, in this kind of work, is to make frames of houses, chairs, tables, &c., by using peas, first dried, and then soaked in water.

The peas

make points

of union for the sticks. Among Froebel's gifts a box of sticks and peas is found, and it would pay any toy-dealer to get the box up in this country. The best way to prevent in children the habit of destruction, is to give them means for construction.

The first step in pea-work is, as usual, the most simple: a certain number of sticks and peas are given to the child, and the question is asked, What can you form? When the teacher has ascertained, by having heard the children's answers to her question, what is the peculiar individuality of each child, she commences with the most simple forms. She takes a stick, and places at each end a pea, and asks what is this like? The answers will be various: a candle, a pin, a pillar, the letter I, and the round of a chair. On this last hint she may proceed and form two rounds in the same way, and then set sticks in the peas at right angles, and at last unite these so as to make a square. This will become the foundation of the chair. Then four more sticks may be stuck into the same peas, vertically at right angles with the others, and these can be united by horizontal lines representing the seat of the chair. Then by means of three more sticks the outline of the back of the chair may be made. Many frames can be made on the basis of a square, among which is a barn. Again, there can be a triangle for the basis, on which can be constructed a pyramid, an obelisk, a church spire, a prism. At first a limited number of sticks can be given to each child, afterwards an unlimited number.

For this pea-work special preparation and strict order are required; the sticks must be properly pointed and graduated in length, the peas properly softened, or the child will not be benefited.

We shall append a plate to give an idea of the pea-work, and a few patterns for the weaving spoken of in the next chapter.

1

CHAPTER VI.

MANIPULATIONS.

BLOCK-BUILDING, stick-laying, and pea-work follow the more violent kinds of exercise, and seem to the children only forms of playing. While the former cannot fill up more than a quarter of each hour, the latter should not do more than fill up another quarter. Some form of manipulation can take up another quarter.

First is SEWING. On perforated board should be drawn (both sides) simple rectilinear forms, such as spades, shovels, saws, watering-pots, bee-hives, wigwams, guns, drums, barracks, the United States flag, &c., and the children will learn to use a needle and thread with great pleasure, especially if different colored threads are used. As they become more skilful, more complicated forms and cross-stitches can be taught; and by and by canvas can be substituted for the perforated board. Plain sewing can also be taught, the girls having dolls' clothes to sew, and the boys bags for their fishing-tackle, pincushions, &c.

2. WEAVING.

into

Another quiet amusement is to weave paper, cut for the purpose, narrow strips of card-board of different colors. Colored cards of various colors can be bought by the thousand, and cut up carefully into strips an eighth of an inch broad. Each color should be in a different compartment of the teacher's box, and the children be allowed to choose their own colors. For a time, a simple checker-work is all that can be accomplished. By and by different patterns may be proposed by the teacher for imitation by the children. It will be necessary to cut the paper into which the card

board is to be slipped, which is a nice process, as the cuts must be very exact. Possibly it might be done by machinery. But in my own Kindergarten we have done it ourselves, doubling the paper and using the scissors, and making the cuts correspond in size with the strips of card-board. Any colored paper may be used, but I have always used white. Among Froebel's Gifts is a box of papers already cut, and strips of paper which he proposes should be slipped into thin pieces of wood and drawn through according to the pattern proposed. But we found that it was much better to have stiff slips than to have paper with the apparatus of the wooden needle.

When Kindergartens become as common as they certainly will, as soon as the method is known enough to be appreciated, prepared boxes of cut paper and slips of colored card-board will doubtless come into commerce, and boxes of perforated board, with the patterns already drawn on both sides, all ready for the needle.

3. PRICKING. — Another very attractive thing is for the teacher to draw the forms of birds and animals on paper for children to prick. They are greatly delighted to hold these pricked forms upon the window-pane, and see the lines of light which they have made, and also to see the raised work on the other side of the paper.

A teacher can easily furnish herself with a large quantity of patterns by tracing, with a fine pen, upon engineer's cambric, from "Jardine's Naturalists' Library," or, still better, from " Routledge's Illustrated Natural History," edited by Woods, the forms of beasts and birds, with more or less detail of feathers in the case of the birds. From these patterns, tracings can be made upon paper. If children are taught a good deal about the habits, &c., of birds and beasts, it will be a very good plan to choose for the pricking the forms of what has been talked about, so that they may have exact ideas of these forms; and while they are pricking, what has been taught may be brought again to their memory by the