discover the value of the bricks in
furniture-making, and set to work at once on tables and chairs, or
bureaus and sofas and bedsteads.

They engage too in a lively contest with the law of equilibrium, and
experiment long and patiently until they comprehend its practical
workings.

When they understand the fourth gift fairly well, know the different
faces and can handle the bricks with some dexterity, the third gift
should be added and the two used together. They complement each other
admirably, and give variety and strength to the building, whether
forms of Life, Beauty, or Knowledge are constructed.

Froebel, however, is most emphatic in directing that each set of
blocks should be given to the child in its own box, opened so as to
present a whole at the first glance, and carefully rebuilt and packed
away when the play is over. The cubes and bricks should never be left
jumbled together at the close of the exercise, nor should they be kept
in and returned to a common receptacle.

"Unimportant as these little rules may appear," he says, "they are
essential to the clear and definite development of the child, to his
orderly apprehension of external objects, and to the logical unfolding
of his own concepts and judgments."

"The box of building blocks should be regarded by the child," he
concludes, "as a worthy, an appreciated, and a loved comrade."

The mathematical forms are constructed and applied in precisely the
same manner as before. The fourth gift, however, offers a far greater
number of these than its predecessor, while it is particularly adapted
to show that objects identical in form and size may be produced in
quite different ways.

Throughout all these guided plays, it should be remembered that time
is always to be allowed the child for free invention, that the
kindergartner should talk to him about what he has produced so that
his thought may be discovered to himself,[45] and that in all possible
ways Group work should be encouraged in order that his own strength
and attainments may be multiplied by that of his playfellows and swell
the common stock of power. Froebel, the great advocate of the
"Together" principle says, "Isolation and exclusion destroy life;
union and participation create life."[46]

[45] "The child is allowed the greatest possible freedom of
invention; the experience of the adult only accompanies and
explains."--Froebel's _Pedagogics_, page 130.

[46] _Pedagogics_, p