What the subjects should be, around which the child's mental,
physical, and spiritual activities may crystallize, furnishes a
fruitful field for discussion; but, above all, they should be vital
ones, for, as Miss Blow says, "Serious injury may be done the mind by
developing concentric exercises which belong not to the centre, but
the circumference of thought."

It would be fruitless to suggest suitable subjects here, for if they
do not, on the one hand, conform to the growing mind of the particular
child or class of children, they may either arrest or overtax
development, and if, on the other hand, they do not proceed from the
kindergartner's insight into principle, it would be but "superstitious
imitation" for her to follow them out. No manual, no guide-book, no
treatise, no lecture, can supply the want of fine intelligence and
judgment in all these matters, and not until the teacher "comprehends
the genesis of any principle from deeper principles can she emancipate
herself from even the hypnotic suggestion of the principle itself, and
convert external authority into inward freedom."[88]

[88] W. T. Harris.

Effect of Froebel's Gifts on the Kindergartner.

Although uninterested and uninitiated persons doubtless regard the
various gifts of Froebel as very ordinary objects, made from
commonplace materials, yet that this view of the matter is only a peep
through a pin-hole is abundantly proven by their effect on the
kindergartner. Those of us who have seen successive groups of young
women in training-classes approach the first few gifts have noted that
interest is commonly mingled at first with a slight surprise that the
objects should be considered worthy of so much study, while underneath
lies a half-concealed amusement at the simple forms produced. Yet this
attitude of mind endures but for a season, for as soon as the gifts
are studied and used practically, it is seen that they contain
possibilities of indefinite expansion. When they are looked at through
the glasses of imagination, it is wonderful how large they appear, and
when one has toiled long hours to invent some sequence with them, one
wonders at the reality and fascination of the forms produced.

The outsider who glanced at the materials hastily would undoubtedly
suppose them capable of only a limited number of changes and
combinations, but the fact remains that every year kindergarten
students invent hundreds of new forms with these simple, insigni