nd round the Village, or it may be one of the best
of the old Kindergarten games. After lunch the washing up is to be done
in a beautiful new white sink which is displayed with pride.

Our next visit is to a Free Kindergarten. The rooms are quite as
attractive, as rich in charming friezes as in the others, and the
furnishing in some ways is much the same. But here we see what we have
not seen before, for here is a large room filled with tiny hammock beds.
The windows are wide open, but the blinds are down, for the children are
having their afternoon sleep.

Here, as in all Free Kindergartens, the children are provided with
simple but pretty overalls which the parents are pleased to wash. House
shoes are also provided, partly to minimise the noise from active little
feet, but principally because the poor little boots are often a
painfully inadequate protection from wet pavements. The children are
trained to tidy ways and to independence. They cannot read, but by
picture cards they recognise their own beds, pegs and other properties.
They take out and put away their own things, and give all reasonable
help in laying tables and serving food, in washing, dusting and sweeping
up crumbs, as is done in any true Kindergarten.

In the garden of this Free Kindergarten there is a large sand-pit,
surrounded by a low wooden framework, and having a pole across the
middle so that it resembles a cucumber frame and a cover can be thrown
over the sand to keep it clean when not in use.

Froebel's own list of playthings contains, besides balls and building
blocks, coloured beads, coloured tablets for laying patterns, coloured
papers for cutting, folding and plaiting; pencils, paints and brushes;
modelling clay and sand; coloured wool for sewing patterns and pictures;
and such little sticks and laths as children living in a forest region
find for themselves. Considered in themselves, apart from the traditions
of formality, these are quite good play material or stimuli, and Froebel
meant the time to come "when we shall speak of the doll and the hobby
horse as the first plays of the awakening life of the girl and the boy,"
but he died before he had done so. In the _Mother Songs_, too, we find
quite a good list of toys which are now to be found in most
Kindergartens.

Toys for the playground should be provided--a sand-heap, a seesaw, a
substantial wheel-barrow, hoops, balls, reins and perhaps
skipping-ropes. Something on which the child c