would be "a sort of clay basin. Then they
could make more! and plates and cups!"

Experiments depend upon circumstances and upon the age of the children.
A thick and tiny basin put into a hot part of an ordinary fire does
harden and hold water to a certain extent even without glazing. But
elaborate baking may also be done.

I have found it convenient to take weaving as a bridge to history
stories, by using Sir Frederick Leighton's picture of the Phoenicians
bartering cloth for skins with the early Britons. The children are told
that the people dressed in cloth come from near the Bible-story country,
and those dressed in skins are the long-ago people of this very country.
What would these people think of the cloth? "They would think it was
animals' skins." And what would they do? "They'd feel it and look at
it." So cloth is produced and we pull it to pieces, first into threads
and then into hairs, and the children say the hairs are like "fur." Then
sheep's wool is produced and we try to make thread. Attempts at
thread-making and then at weaving last a long time, and along with this
come some history stories, probably arising out of the question, "How
did people know about all this?" The children are told about the
writings of Julius Caesar, and pictures of Roman ships and houses are
shown, beside pictures of coracles and bee-hive dwellings, etc. Old
coins, a flint battle-axe, some Roman pottery are also shown, along with
descriptions and pictures of the Roman villa at Brading and other Roman
remains. The children are thus helped to realise that other countries
exist where the people were far ahead of those in this country, and they
can begin to understand how social conditions vary, and how nations act
upon each other.

The work varies considerably from year to year, according to how it
takes hold upon the children's interest. But children of eight to nine
are usually considered ready for broad ideas of the world as a whole,
and the inquiry into where Julius Caesar came from, and why he came,
gives a fair start.

CHAPTER XIII

NEW NEEDS AND NEW HELPS

I am old, so old, I can write a letter.

Writing and reading have no place in the actual Kindergarten, much less
arithmetic. The stories are told to the child; drawing, modelling and
such-like will express all he wants to express in any permanent form,
and speech, as Froebel says, is "the element in which he lives." His
counting is of the simplest, an