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As an educator Friedrich Fröbel believed that stimulating voluntary activity in the young was the necessary form of pre-school education. He based his kindergarten "garden of children" on this premise and provided the children with many stimulating activities and "gifts" for play.
One of Froebel's gifts was three common solids (sphere,cube and cylinder) suspended in such a way that the children could examine their different properties by rotating, spinning and touching. The sphere, because of it's symmetry, had only one loop hole by which it was to be suspended. But the cube and cylinder had multiple loops so the children could suspend the solids in different ways and examine the complexity of these seemingly simple shapes.
A significant idea behind the gifts is the importance for developing minds of examining things around them in a freely structured manner. It is not difficult to imagine a three or four year-old playing with the wooden solids and learning from their play.
Fröbel thought that the child´s encounter with the objective reality in the form of geometric bodies opened specific perspectives in the perception of reality. The gifts and occupations follow from Fröbel´s interest in geometry, and his Spheric law. The gifts start with the sphere and move over surfaces to lines and points. The occupations, according to Fröbel, move from points and lines back to two-dimensional surfaces and to solids in three dimensions. They consist of paper perforating, paper cutting and folding, interlacing, weaving, drawing, clay modeling etc. which today are easily recognised as traditional components of a Kindergarten educational programme.
"The structural figues to be made with peas and small straight sticks; slender constructions, the jointings accented by the little green pea-globes. The smooth shapely maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterwards leaves the fingers: so form became feeling. And the box with a mast to set upon it, on which to hang with string the maple cubes and spheres and triangles, revolving them to discover subordinate forms"
"That early kindergarten experience with the straight line; the flat plane; the square; the triangle; the circle! If I wanted more, the square modified by the triangle gave the hexagon -- the circle modified by the straight line would give the octagon. Adding thickness, getting 'sculpture' thereby, the square became the cube, the triangle the tetrahedron, the circle the sphere. These primary forms and figures were the secret of all effects which were ever got into the architecture of the world"
Frank Lloyd Wright, from An Autobiography
Fröbel used origami to familiarise children with geometric forms. In a letter to his brother, he recalled the happy evenings when the whole family was gathered together and paper-folding was one of the diversions which they enjoyed.
Emily Rosenthal studied to be a Froebel kindergarten teacher. During the air raids in England, she would take the children down into the subways and keep them busy with materials that didn't cost anything and were available. That was her specialty, taking discarded things and making recognizable things out of them.
More information and links to pictures of the Froebel Gifts.
Fröbel thought that the child's encounter with the objective reality in the form of geometric bodies opened specific perspectives in the perception of reality. The gifts and occupations follow from Fröbel´s interest in geometry, and his Spheric law. The gifts start with the sphere and move over surfaces to lines and points. The occupations, according to Fröbel, move from points and lines back to two dimensional surfaces and to solids in three dimensions. They consist of paper perforating, paper cutting and folding, interlacing, weaving, drawing, clay modeling, which today are easily recognised as traditional components of a Kindergarten educational programme.
"The smooth shapely maple blocks with which to build, the sense of which never afterwards leaves the fingers: so form became feeling." Frank Lloyd Wright
The influence of Froebel blocks on architecture continues today.
More information and links to pictures of the Froebel Blocks.
Kindergarten - Fröbel blocks - Fröbel gifts
influence on
Alfred Adler - Frank Lloyd Wright
Friedrich Fröbel quotes - ancestors - relatives
Baroness von Marenholtz Bülow reminiscences - her life
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