Kindergarten and Froebel Gifts

influence of Friedrich Froebel 1782-1852

German educator
the originator of the kindergarten
worked and studied with the noted Swiss educational reformer Johann Pestalozzi
1816, founded athe Universal German Educational Institute for children aged 3 to 7
established in 1837 the first Kindergarten, meaning "children's garden"
begins training of kindergarten teachers in 1849
stressed the natural growth of children through play
kindergartens to be established throughout western Europe, and the US in the 1850's and in Germany and Japan after 1860.

Froebel's Kindergarten

Froebel's kindergarten was a school for the psychological training of little children by means of play and occupations. The kindergarten method as defined by Froebel is based upon a series of geometrical gifts and a system of categories. In the kindergarten, the child plays with one of the gifts at a time to discover its properties and possibilites for design. The gifts were presented to the child in sequence and the child was allowed to play with them freely. Whenever the child ran out of ideas for play, the mother or teacher can invoke one or more of the categories to suggest another way to play. The child is thus encouraged to think about certain kinds of designs that can be made with the gifts.

Froebel's Gifts

colored balls - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple
solid wood sphere, cylinder, and cube with dowels to make them tops and connect them and a gibbet for swinging them
wooden cube divided into 8 smaller cubes
wooden cube divided into 8 oblong blocks
wooden cube divided into 21 smaller cubes, 6 half-cubes and 12 quarter-cubes, an elaboration of gift 3
wooden cube divided into 18 oblong blocks, 6 pillars, and 12 squares, an elaboration of gift 4
parquetry - flat wood shapes to be arranged on a grid

Other gifts consisted of slats, sticks, rings, strings and points, colored tablets, colored papers to cut and fold, clay and sand, pencils and paints.

The wooden blocks, gifts two to six are sold by The Froebel Gallery

Froebel's Categories

Forms of Knowledge

- mathematical and logical ideas such as number, proportion, equivalence and order. These ideas serve to define natural divisions of a gift and to suggest ways of rearranging or transforming these parts.

Forms of Life

- represent things that can be seen in the outside world . . . buildings, house, table, sofa, tree, etc.

Forms of Beauty

- blocks arranged on a grid without stacking to have some kind of symmetry, to form patterns viewed as ornament

Sources:

"Kindergarten Grammars: Designing with Froebel's Building Gifts" by G. Stiny, Enviroment and Planning B, 1980, vol. 7, pp. 409-462.
Inventing Kindergarten by Norman Brosterman, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1997.
"Froebel, Friedrich,"Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia, 1993-1997, Microsoft Corporation.