geography lessons.

The child then who is making, especially making for use, is to a certain
extent developing himself as an artist.

The little boys at Keilhau were well provided with sand, moss, etc., to
use with their building blocks, and it was a former Keilhau boy who
suggested to his old master that some kind of sand-box would make a good
plaything for the children in his new Kindergarten. Miss Wiggin tells us
that indirectly we owe the children's sand-heaps in the public parks to
Froebel, since these were the result of a suggestion made by Frau
Schrader to the Empress Frederick, and the idea was carried out during
her husband's too brief reign.

Another very early "making" is the arranging of furniture for shops,
carriages, trains, and the "ships upon the stairs," which made bright
pictures in Stevenson's memory.

Building blocks are truly, as Froebel puts it, "the finest and most
variable material that can be offered a boy for purposes of
representation." The little boxes associated with the Kindergarten were
originally planned for the use of nursery children two to three years of
age, and in most if not in all Kindergartens these have been replaced by
larger bricks. It is many years now since, at Miss Payne's suggestion,
we bought some hundreds of road paving blocks, and these are such a
source of pleasure that the children often dream about them. Living out
the life around presents much opportunity for making, which may be done
with blocks, but which even in the Kindergarten can be done with tools.
Care must be exercised, but children have quite a strong instinct for
self-preservation, and if shown how real workmen handle their tools,
they are often more careful than at a much later stage. To make a
workable railway signal is more interesting and much more educative than
to use one that came from a shop. The teacher may make illuminating
discoveries in the process, as when one set of children desired to make
a counter for a shop, and arranged their piece of wood vertically so
that the counter had no top. It was found that to these very little
people the most important part was the high front against which they
were accustomed to stand, not the flat top which they seldom saw.
Another set of children made a cart on which the farmer was to carry his
corn, and exemplified Dewey's "concrete logic of action." At first they
only wanted a board on wheels, but the corn fell off, so they nailed on
sides, but the car