, sofas, garden-seats,
and innumerable forms of symmetry, make an immense resource for
children, who also should be led to invent other forms and imitate other
objects. So quick are the fancies of children, that the blocks will
serve also as symbols of everything in Nature and imagination. We have
seen an ingenious teacher assemble a class of children around her large
table, to each of whom she had given the blocks. The first thing was to
count them, a great process of arithmetic to most of them. Then she made
something and explained it. It was perhaps a light-house,--and some
blocks would represent rocks near it to be avoided, and ships sailing in
the ocean; or perhaps it was a hen-coop, with chickens inside, and a fox
prowling about outside, and a boy who was going to catch the fox and
save the fowls. Then she told each child to make something, and when it
was done hold up a hand. The first one she asked to explain, and then
went round the class. If one began to speak before another had ended,
she would hold up her finger and say,--"It is not your turn." In the
course of the winter, she taught, over these blocks, a great deal about
the habits of animals. She studied natural history in order to be
perfectly accurate in her symbolic representation of the habitation of
each animal, and their enemies were also represented by blocks. The
children imitated these; and when they drew upon their imaginations for
facts, and made fantastic creations, she would say,--"Those, I think,
were Fairy hens" (or whatever); for it was her principle to accept
everything, and thus tempt out their invention. The great value of this
exercise is to get them into the habit of representing something they
have thought by an outward symbol. The explanations they are always
eager to give teach them to express themselves in words. Full scope is
given to invention, whether in the direction of possibilities or of the
impossibilities in which children's imaginations revel,--in either case
the child being trained to the habit of embodiment of its thought.

Froebel thought it very desirable to have a garden where the children
could cultivate flowers. He had one which he divided into lots for the
several children, reserving a portion for his own share in which they
could assist him. He thought it the happiest mode of calling their
attention to the invisible God, whose power must be waited upon, after
the conditions for growth are carefully arranged accordi