LB
1141
158
KINDERGARTEN CIRCULAR No. 8: FEBRUARY, 1920

The Child
and the
Kindergarten
ACLINED:
TREE'S
AS
THE
TIVIG
IS
Department of
the Interior.
Bureau of Education
:: Washington::
WASHINGTON : GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1920
4

"Annie thought it was a rat, but teacher says it's called a squirrel."
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
"As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined."
By JULIA WADE ABBOT.
FOREWORD.
Please read as well as look at the pictures! You have to do that
even in the movies. Of course, the pictures of the children are
charming, and even in glancing over them you can see that all these
little boys and girls are absorbed in wholesome, childlike work and
play. But all this did not "just happen." These experiences were
planned for the children by grown-ups for a definite purpose, and if
you will read you may discover why "the twig is bent" in just this
way.
As you glance through the pictures,¹ it may seem strange to see
children playing with dolls and blocks and going on excursions; for,
when you went to school, “in-school" and "out-of-school" were two
very different kinds of places.
But now this is all changed, for why should not schools change
and grow better, as well as other things in this modern world? We
have waked up to the fact that "the whole boy comes to school."
Long ago children were expected to become disembodied intellects
when once they had stepped over the solemn threshold. But the
children remained the same children, and they did not shed their
interests in the cloakroom as they did their hats and coats. Long
before manual training and nature study were recognized parts of
the school curriculum, they were introduced surreptitiously by the
small boy on the back seat. Jackknives operated upon woodwork,
as many a deep-scarred desk can testify. Nature study also was
introduced unofficially; and June bugs, turtles, and hop-toads played
their part in the drama of teacher versus boy. We are beginning to
realize that children learn many valuable things outside of school
through their work and play and social intercourse, and we are
beginning to realize that we may well use some of these interests in
school.
¹ The pictures in this monograph, with the exception of those on pages 2 and 11, were
made in Minneapolis, Minn., and are used with the permission of the board of education
of that city. The pictures on pages 2 and 11 were loaned by the Supervisor of Kinder-
gartens, of Providence, R. I. The cover design was contributed by Mr. E. D. Gourley,
of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, under the direction of Mr. Carl N. Werntz,
president.
!
1

2
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
An editorial in the Saturday Evening Post on "Teaching chil-
dren," states the fact in this way:
Laziness is an adult vice. Children are almost never lazy. The ant and the
little busy bee have nothing on a company of small children engaged in digging
a canal through the sand on the beach. Watch any normal group of children of
any age from 2 to 15. They are busy all the time-expending energy. Children
work gladly and zealously at their own business. They balk only at business
that is prescribed for them by some one else and that does not engage their own
creative and imitative instincts. Make a boy think he is really doing some-
thing, really getting a grip on the world about him-and there will be no more
complaint of laziness. It is a very familiar fact that, if a grammar-school boy
once gets into the real creative world of industry, he can hardly be dragooned
back to textbooks and school routine. The big thing in education is so to link
We like to work and we like to play in the kindergarten."
up the school with the visible bustling world as to keep the child's workman-
like instincts engaged. The fairly common pedagogic and natural complaint
that children are lazy is entirely wrong. Anybody, teacher or parent, who
thinks that, is on the wrong track.
The way a little child gains knowledge of the big world is through
the lively and energetic way in which he plays out the life around
him. At the age of 5 or 6, if he is thinking, he is "in action" at the
same time. A large part of kindergarten education consists in fur-
nishing the right kind of play material and the boys and girls to play
with. The ability to work and play with other people, respecting
their rights and enjoying their companionship, is one of the most
valuable lessons anyone can learn. No child can be educated alone.
We are judged by the relationship we establish with our peers, not
by our relationship to our inferiors nor to our superiors! In
In many
families the younger child must either defer to his older brothers or
sisters because they are older, or else he is babied and indulged be-

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
3
cause he is younger. Adjustment to 30 children of his own age
creates an entirely different situation. It is most interesting to
watch how children of different temperaments and with different
home training find themselves in the social life of the kindergarten.
"Teach children by children! If men were made for men, so are
children for children, only much more beautifully," said Jean Paul
Richter more than one hundred years ago.
But through their play, kindergarten children are not only learn-
ing the give-and-take of social life, but what they play about fosters
"Speak, Fido!" "Don't make him bark, he'll wake my babies!"
an interest in the life around them, and they begin to understand it
better. Little mothers from time immemorial have gone "Round the
Mulberry Bush," and ambitious small boys have played out what they
wanted to be when they grew up. Spectacular callings make their
appeal in the dash of the fire engine, the clang of the street car, or
the siren note of the pop-corn wagon! Finance and the professions
are too subtle for an intelligence only 5 years old, though in one
kindergarten, prize fighter, garbage man, and millionaire were sug-
gested in connection with future callings. "Playing house" leads
to a series of delightful plays through the year. The doll babies are
cared for, washed and dressed, and taken for walks; but by and by
the play grows bigger, and father is given his breakfast in the morn-

4
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
2001
#0
"The big picture is the way we sit in the kindergarten circle. The next picture-no,
those are not the three bears; they're squirrels ! You can guess what the other
pictures are."

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
5
ing and goes to his work. Mother must shop at the store, and street
cars are made of kindergarten chairs; and after work the family
must be entertained, and small actors on a mimic stage develop their
art. Then the circus comes to town, and its glories are lived over
again in the kindergarten. This dramatic play, with all its wealth
of interests, is illustrated in song and picture and story. On the
low bulletin boards in the kindergarten room are pictures of mothers
and babies, and different kinds of workmen, and animals on the
farm; pictures in bright and pretty colors that all children love. To
bring good pictures to a child's attention early, and to awaken in-
"Doesn't it hurt the horse? I'm glad my shoes aren't put on that way."
terest in them, is an effective means of shutting out all the crass and
ugly things that crowd on his consciousness every day.
The children make picture books of their own and illustrate these,
too, with that sublime childish faith in one's own ability which says,
"I started to make a blacksmith, but he looks more like a monkey;
but see! he has a hammer in his hand, so you'll know what he is!"
And when you, gentle reader, look at the pictures of the children's
drawings in this book, use your intelligence to interpret the real in-
telligence of the children.
All the children's plays are made more vivid and interesting by
the excursions of the whole kindergarten to see the real things that
they have played and talked about. When gardens have been planted
in the window boxes, it is gardens that leap into consciousness as the

6
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
66
This pretty place is far away from our school, but we didn't mind getting tired!"

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
7
trolley car bears the children away from the city for one happy day
in the country. After one such excursion the kindergarten children
heard some of the older children in the school assembly sing a
song which had a line, "Hear the happy children singing in the
fields!" When the kindergarten children had come back to their
own room, and were sitting rather awed and quiet on their small
chairs, after the "big" experience of being with the whole school,
one little maiden said with a sigh, "We were happy, and we were
singing in the fields!"
The poet said, "Things we have passed perhaps a hundred times
nor cared to see 99
we learn to love because a picture of these common
things opens our eyes to their beauty; so Archie's eyes were opened.
"Where we live, where we go to school, where we shop, and where we go to church."
Jessie Wilcox Smith's picture of "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" had
been placed on the low bulletin board in the kindergarten room, and
the next day while Archie was looking at it he said to the teacher,
"Last night I went to the corner to git a paper for my father, and a
bunch of stars followed me over and the same bunch followed me
back." If you had met the little street Arab with the pennies held
tight in his grubby little hand, you might have seen only the commer-
cial instinct that the city fosters in its children, but the kindergarten
had opened the child's eyes to the sky above him, whose beauties have
to compensate the city child for the lack of trees and brooks and
flowers.
Happy experiences in school, enjoyed with so many little boys and
girls, open the door to a new world.
156923°-20-2

8
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
"I made this dolly and her clothes myself. And I hammered the rockers on the cradles.
We like to use hammers as much as the boys."

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
9
The family plays develop into an interest in mother's work and
in father's work. Mothers shop at many kinds of stores, and fathers
have to do many kinds of work. Excursions to grocery store and
blacksmith shop give suggestion for new and richer expression in
plays and games and handwork. Every teacher who has had the sat-
isfaction of taking 30 or 40 eager little boys and girls out into the
world to see things knows how much such an expedition means.
They chatter joyously on the way, they skip and run races, and when
they are "there," be it park or store or blacksmith's shop, "it" all
exists for them. The walk home is more sedate, hands and pockets
are filled with trophies, and dandelions from the field or rusty nails
from the shop are equally interesting, and must be brought back to
school and talked about and played with.
A child's first interest in things is very superficial; the tick of the
watch, the color of a flower, the noise and motion of the train, hold
66 Where the farmer lives."
his attention for a few minutes. But this interest leads to the mean-
ing of things, and this is well illustrated in the village that the
kindergarten children made near the end of the year.
All the buildings were made of paper. When these children
first came to the kindergarten some of them could not even cut
straight across a piece of paper. They were interested in such sim-
ple things as pasting little strips of paper into rings and fastening
them together to make a chain. At first some of the most immature
children would put paste on each end of the strip of paper to be
sure it would stick, not realizing that the sticky surface had but
to be placed over the smooth end to join the strip and make it into
a ring. This very simple beginning in cutting and pasting had de-
veloped into the ability to construct the different stores and school-
houses and churches in a community. The many things they had
seen and talked about on their excursions through the year were
brought together and represented through their own handiwork. In
the picture you may see the schoolhouse in the center, the streets,

10
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
0
味
​"You can walk up my bridge on one side and down the other."
"Isn't mine pretty? Don't touch it, it might fall."

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
11
and houses. Milliner's shop and butcher store and church are all
included. There is the jitney bus with its enticing motto, "Come
and ride with us," and the hose wagon with a ladder inside.
When the children began to assemble the different parts of the
village on the floor, each child brought what he had contributed,
house or church or store. Then the children began to talk about where
they would put the streets, and one child said, "We will put the
school at one end of town and the church at the other, and then
the children who have to go very far to church will only have to
"We like this school. We have the right kind of things to play with and we don't have
to play alone."
go a little way to school, and the children who have to go far to
school will be right by the church!" The more convenient plan
of having all community buildings in the center of the village was
finally worked out by the group of children, but the first little child
had given her contribution in concrete form. Church and school
must be situated to serve the needs of all alike.
The picture of the two farms is too small for you to see the
original details worked out by the children. There is a forget-me-
not bed of little blue, paper flowers, and a mother hen has her head
through the fence. The fences were constructed with infinite patience
and persistence, for you can not have a farm without a fence.

12
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
It was all very real to them, and in this concrete way they were
bringing together the facts which had been growing through the
year-the relationship of the family to the community and the de-
pendence of the city upon the country for its food supply.
Young children do not learn in a contemplative way, as do their
elders. They must work out their thoughts in concrete expression,
and though the form of that expression be very crude it does rep-
A
"Each one of us made a man or a lady the best we could. The first is the worst and
the last is the best."
resent thinking. When an idea has been expressed, whether it be
in conversation or in writing, in drawing or in clay, the next think-
ing is always clearer. We are so accustomed to thinking of educa-
tion in terms of a b c's that we may not realize that it takes in-
telligence for a child to express the essential characteristics of the
objects about him in paper cutting or block building or in other
materials.
I
"The first clock has a funny face, but look at the last one-real numbers on it!"
And when little hands can work skillfully with scissors and
brush and crayon, the step to writing is a very short one.
While we are teaching children to use their hands, we do not
forget that it is a very one-sided kind of education that is only
concerned with a mastery of the tools of learning. We would
build up in the child, through his natural interests, a wholesome,
childlike, and intelligent interest in the world about him; then,
while he is mastering the means of expression, he has at the same
time ideas to express. The modern child has too much done for him

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
13
in school and out. He has too little active participation in working
out his own problems in study or in play. He is surfeited with
mechanical toys which offer no scope for the imagination. A minia-
ture train with real tracks must always run the same way, but what
ingenuity can the small boy use when he manufactures his own
trains out of chairs, blocks, or boxes and spools! How mobile
are his invented toys, and how ready and accommodating is his
imagination to supply all deficiencies!
A little girl who has not played with a doll of her own making is
not yet qualified to grow up.
THEATRE
"This is where we have to play."
Rag dolls are so comfortable to hold and feel like real babies,
while the hard, perfected, and overdressed product of the manu-
facturer is more likely to awaken a feeling of awe than a feeling of
parental affection. The little girl who stuffed the doll herself, and
made its clothes and manufactured a cradle out of a grape basket,
enjoyed these simple toys because she had a part in their making.
A child's own production, even if it is only a crude, smudgy little
drawing, is very dear to him. The kindergarten uses this interest
in encouraging original expression in many kinds of material.
When children first come to school, they seem to have a much
stronger tendency to work out their own ideas than to copy what
other children are doing or to imitate the teacher's perfect model.
The modern school believes in fostering original expressions and
recognizes the great divergence in natural ability and in maturity
in groups of children of the same age.

14
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
It is the art of teaching, indeed it is the art of motherhood, to be
able to give little children of different temperaments the right kind
of training. Too often mothers and teachers can play on only one
kind of instrument. They feel aggrieved because the type of child
that is pleasing to them to train and teach can not be standardized
from the beginning. Parents and teachers seem oblivious of the
fact that dealing with different types of children successfully is the
real test.
In the picture of the children building on the floor, each child is
making a bridge, but every bridge is different because every child is
different.
"Out-doors is our kindergarten, too."
The little boy at the right has a plain, well-constructed, covered
bridge, but see the little boy who has become interested in the high,
well-balanced structure as it grows beneath his hands. Behold the
embryo engineer and the budding architect!
The interest in making bridges and trains and boats and different
kinds of buildings develops into an interest in making docks for
the boats, tracks and stations for the trains, and houses on a street,
and other buildings in a community. And what is education but
learning to make larger associations?
Spontaneous groups of little workers are formed to carry out
these play projects. The desire to accomplish a definite end calls
forth the power of the leaders in the group, and helps "Little Scat-
ter-Brain" to expend his energies on something that is worth while.

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
15
The differences in maturity in a group of children are illustrated
by the reproduction of their drawings of people and of clocks. All
these children were 5 years old, but their conception of a person va-
ries from the indefinite hieroglyphic of No. 1 to the "clothed-and-
in-his-right-mind" person of No. 7.
In the picture of the clocks there is a mental gulf between the
child who did not even outline a face on his clock and the child
who not only realized that there were symbols on a clock but who
could draw in the correct numbers.
We teachers must take children as they come to us, mature and
immature, children who have had the opportunity for a normal,
66
They'll never come up if we make the holes too deep!"
childlike experience, and those whose lives have been dwarfed and
stunted. But this does not mean that all the tendencies of this early
"bending of the twig" can not be taken into consideration. If chil-
dren come to school hungry, we would not deny them bread and
give them a stone, and the babies who have never played, nor looked
at picture books, nor seen the real country, must be given the bread
of experience and not the stone of mechanical training. "The a b c
of things comes before the a b c of words." We must live and learn.
Many little city children do not know a pig by sight! They have
never, as babies, grunted and mooed as they turned the leaves of the
animal picture book; much less have they ever been in the country.
When these children begin to read, they find the primer full of
words which have no meaning for them, and so they are faced with

16
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
"Do you see all the things the farmer gets from his garden in the fall? And we found the leaves and the berries
- ourselves.
We're singing a song about it-
'Sing a song of seasons,
Something bright in all.'"

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
17
麻藥
​"We found some milk-weed seeds when we were out walking. It's fun to try and catch
them."
66 Geraniums take a lot of water."

18
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
unnecessary difficulties in learning. The kindergarten children go
on excursions to the beautiful parks, they take walks into the coun-
try, and learn to know the birds in the springtime. In the fall they
feed the squirrels, they rake up the leaves, and gather milkweed
seeds and cocoons. "Outdoors is our kindergarten too" in a very
real sense. Outdoors is the real school for children.
Children run across the threshold to the play terrace that opens
off the kindergarten room as naturally as they would pass into an-
other room in school. They do not wait for "recess." In the mod-
ern school, "in school" does not mean "in the schoolroom." The
playground for the younger children, with its swings and sand boxes
"Some one made a lovely picture of the swans."
and seesaws; the older children playing ring games, basket ball, base-
ball or jumping rope and spinning tops and playing marbles; this is
school and this is life. The playground activities may count more
toward real character development than all the maxims conned from
books in a musty schoolroom.
Curiosity is a child's key to knowledge. "Where does clay come
from? Is it cooked?" "Are rubbers made out of elephants' skin?"
"Oak meal grows on oak trees." "Miss A, you'll be dead
when I'm grown up, won't you?" Amazing innocence and crudities
of a little child's mind, food for grown-up laughter and "the funny
column." Is that all that you can see in these bits of kindergarten

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
19
conversation? Too often the children in our schools are regarded as
a small army, remarkably adaptable, and taking kindly to drill, the
recruits for the upper grades where children can begin to think and
enjoy. This view is only too common with those who are interested
in securing finished results, and who do not understand the ways in
which a little child expresses himself.
The subjects of study in the upper grades are just the fruition of
all the wonder and questioning of the minds of the younger children.
A recent writer, in one of the monthly magazines, said that murder
was committed every year in our elementary schools, the murder of
curiosity. The power to think and feel grows when opportunity
"The swans come close to us and let us feed them."
is given for thinking and feeling, and drill is only a tool which helps
thoughts and emotions to find expression. Not that the "drill "
aspect of school has no place in the kindergarten. Good habits are
the foundation of all education, and in the kindergarten we must
realize the responsibility of taking little children when they are
young and tender, and we must start them in right paths. But too
often the formal aspect of school makes one blind to the fact that
there are other habits besides those usually associated with the
mastering of the technic of school subjects; habits of enthusiasm
and curiosity that lead to adventures on the sea of thought. The
leap of the imagination, "the divine guess," are keys to the mean-
ing of science as well as of art, and if we are to expect thought and
appreciation of our older children in school, we must develop
thought and appreciation from the beginning.

20
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
Every child is curious to know what is inside boxes and bundles.
Every little child is interested in things that move and things that
are alive. The fluffy milkweed seeds close packed in the seed pod
which float in the air and are such fun to play with, the hard round
bulbs and tiny seeds that we dig holes for and hide in the ground,
these are the experiences which bring the children into sympathy
with nature. The charming songs and verses connected with these
interests are the beginning of literature and music.
In the heart of a seed,
Buried deep, so deep,
A dear little plant lay fast asleep.
"Awake," said the sunshine,
"And creep to the light";
"Awake," said the voice of the raindrops bright.
The little plant heard
And it rose to see
What the wonderful outside world might be.
This verse does not need interpretation or explanation when each
child has felt in the palm of his hand the little, round, brown thing
"We tried to make pictures of the swans, too."
which looks so uninteresting and lifeless, and then has rejoiced over
the first green shoot, the fulfillment of the promise that a little plant
was asleep in that brown seed. I have never seen a child who was
indifferent to this experience.
The children at the piano are singing the Stevenson verse:
Sing a song of seasons,
Something bright in all.
On the bulletin board is the nature material that thé children have
themselves gathered, cornstalks and squashes from the garden, and
bright-colored leaves and berries. The song is not a mere singing
exercise, but a joyous expression of something that has happened.
We can teach children to recite glibly words which never awaken
a thought in their minds, and children can learn to read in this way,

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
21
too; and yet what is education for except to awaken thought? In
the spring the kindergarten children were dramatizing one of their
songs. A little girl had been chosen to represent a bluebird because
she wore a blue dress. As she flew away the children sang:
Pretty little bluebird, why do you go?
Come back, come back to me.
and the little girl sang back in the words of the song:
I go, sang the bird, as he flew on high,
To see if my color matches the sky.
And then a boy was chosen, and the children called him a robin
because he wore a red necktie. He was puzzled. "I'm not a blue-
"Hallowe'en is coming."
bird, I can't sing about my color matching the sky," he said. "Why,
yes you can," said a little girl, "if you're flying at sunset"!
Pictures are used in the same way. The picture of the swans may
have been hung on the wall in the kindergarten room or in the hall
of the school for many months, and the children have not been aware
of its existence; but when the children have fed the swans in the
park, and the picture is brought down to them, it awakens real
interest. And when the children themselves have made a picture
of the swans, the art experience is complete.

22
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
See the picture of Washington? It's his birthday this month, so we are playing soldiers and building a fort. We are
bringing the blocks in the wagons we made ourselves."
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
23
Too often the school kills appreciation of art and literature by
a tedious analysis of picture, or poem, or story. When children
are living through an experience, and trying to express in art forms
the emotions which this experience calls forth, there is no need of
catechism and lecture method! The development of art appreciation
in young children depends upon their being made familiar with
the right art form in relation to an immediate emotional experience.
Every child's calendar dates from Christmas to when Christmas
will come again. His calendar is all red-letter days-Easter, and
Halloween, and Fourth of July, and "My birthday!" All the days
in between sink away into a dull, gray monotony. In the kinder-
garten the celebration of the festivals and holidays through the year
gives rich material for songs and stories, dramatization and rhyth-
mic games.
At Halloween the kindergarten children sometimes entertain the
first-grade children, and so enter into the larger social life of the
school. At Thanksgiving the kindergarten children often invite their
mothers to a party which they themselves have helped prepare. The
bread is spread with butter and jelly which they have helped to make.
At each place is a little card decorated by the children with pictures
of fruits and vegetables. At Christmas time the tree is not for the
children, but the children give their party for fathers and mothers.
The tree is hung with gay trimmings of the children's own making,
and there are presents for mothers and fathers, expressing the chil-
dren's love.
The kindergarten room is decorated appropriately for each holi-
day with the children's work. Paper borders of pumpkins and
grapes
at Thanksgiving time, pictures of Christmas trees and holly at Christ-
mas, flags and soldiers at Washington's Birthday, and flowers and
rabbits at Easter, reflect the children's interests at each holiday sea-
son, and provide for a type of handwork that expresses thought.
The children's games reflect the spirit of the holidays. Brownie
games at Halloween, the dramatization of Santa Claus and his rein-
deer at Christmas, soldier games at George Washington's Birthday
are not only the means for dramatic expression, but develop a sense
of rhythm and give poise and bodily control which is the basis for
the more formal physical training which comes later in school life.
The life lived in the kindergarten provides an inexhaustible supply
of things to be talked about. Spoken language is a child's natural
means of communication, and all the written expression of later
years must have for its foundation this spontaneous, untrammeled
conversation of children living together. The social recitation is the
direct outcome of the social intercourse of the lower grades. A
kindergarten child said, "Teddy Roosevelt was the first President.”
•

24
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
"These are really truly chickens and they're in the kindergarten because it's Easter. We pasted the pictures of the
rabbits and the lillies to make our room look like Easter, and our teacher drew a picture on the board."

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
25
"It is hard to look at the leader when you are having your picture taken! But other times we do just what his stick tell us to ."

26
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
"Tell it again!" "Did Goldilocks ever see the Three Bears another day?"

THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
27
The teacher did not need to question the accuracy of this statement,
for another child quickly said, "No, he wasn't; George Washington
was the first President, and then Teddy Roosevelt was just a little
baby in heaven waiting to be born!"
The beautiful traditional stories, the nursery rhymes which are
every child's heritage, are told and retold in the kindergarten.
The cultivation of the imagination is as important for the scientist
as for the artist; each sees the picture of his creation before it be-
comes a reality. No little child would enjoy stories unless he had
these mental pictures which come in his mind as he hears the words
fall from the lips of the story-teller.
Sometimes the children make up stories and verses quite naturally.
One child made a book with three stories in it, one about an aero-
THE MOON SEES
TWO CHRISTMAS TREES
THREE PUMPKINS IN A ROW
THE FARMER HELPS
THEM GROW
THE TREE SAID
"WHEN THE SUN COMES OUT
YOU WILL MELT."
plane, another entitled "A Boarding House Truck," which met a
cruel fate at the hands of the enemy, and a third story which was
called "The Friends." Each story was illustrated, and the mother
wrote the text at the child's dictation. When this little boy goes on
to the primary room, his reading book will be more to him than
meaningless symbols; to him a book contained the expression of some
one's thought, as he had expressed his own thought through picture
and story. All our children should begin reading with the idea of
getting thought and not with the idea of repeating sounds that have
no meaning. This is the child's story as he repeated it to his mother.
"THE FRIENDS."
"Once upon a time there was a cat and a little dog. They were
little friends. They were run over by an automobile one time. They
were real brave. They went to a hospital, and each got a wooden
leg and a wooden tail."
Sometimes the children make up verses about the pictures they
have made. The three poems beneath these pictures of cut paper
are examples, though one poem may have to be classified as
libre."
66
vers
28
THE CHILD AND THE KINDERGARTEN.
One kindergarten child made up a spring song which he sang to
the familiar tune of "Three Blind Mice."
Grass, grass, grass,
Grasshoppers are coming, I know.
You better look out or they'll all jump on you!
You better look out or they'll all jump on you!
Grass, grass, grass.
Buzz, buzz, buzz,
Mosquitoes are coming, too.
Put up your screens or they'll be in the house,
Put up your screens or they'll be in the house,
Buzz, buzz, buzz.
A casual and somewhat puzzled observer in a kindergarten re-
marked, "This does not look like school, but the children seem to be
living their life to the full!" Unconsciously she had given a very
good definition of education, for all the knowledge that is bound up
in textbooks had to be lived out by human beings before it was writ-
ten. Just because our children are human, they are beginning to
live these experiences over again. Children are eager to know and to
do. This monograph has tried to suggest that in providing the
right kind of experiences thought has been stimulated, and in en-
couraging childlike expression skill has been developed. In the
necessary law and order which must grow out of the relationships
in any group, control has been established and school education has
begun. And so "the twig is bent," and to other hands its future
growth must be intrusted.
O
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OCT 271917
UNIN
KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION CIRCULAR, 1917, No. 2.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION.
ORGANIZING KINDERGARTENS IN CITY SCHOOL
SYSTEMS.
FORMS OF ORGANIZATION.
The factors determining the form of organization of kindergartens
in a system of public schools are:
1. The needs of each specific locality.
2. The possibilities of each specific locality.
It is sometimes necessary to adopt different types of organiza-
tion in different parts of the same city. In a section populated
by foreigners, it becomes the obvious duty of the kindergarten
teacher to visit in the homes and do social work for the entire school.
In a section where the mothers are employed in factories the kin-
dergarten teacher's time must be devoted altogether to the children.
In the somewhat better residential sections the parents desire that
their children shall be in the open air during the afternoon hours
and attend kindergarten only in the morning.
The main points in which the prevailing types of organization
differ are:
1. Number of sessions.
2. Number of children in a group.
3. Number of teachers.
4. Methods of assigning teachers.
5. Length of sessions.
6. Age of children.
7. The work of the kindergarten teachers.
8. Salaries of kindergarten teachers.
9. Rooms.
10. Gardens and playground equipment.
1. NUMBER OF SESSIONS.
Current opinion agrees that one session, held in the morning,
with 40 children and two teachers, is ideal. Under these conditions
children and teachers alike are unwearied and best fitted for edu-
cative play. This practice prevails in communities where public
3284°—17
2
opinion demands that school organization shall give plenty of space
and the best opportunities to the growing child.
The practice of holding morning and afternoon sessions is fre-
quently adopted in the more crowded sections of cities in order
to accommodate more children in the same space or because “the
expense of the one-session plan with groups small enough to be of
value to the children has been found too costly for practical pur-
poses." Seldom do the same children return for the afternoon ses-
sion. Where this occurs, however, it is usually the more advanced
children, those of first-grade development, who return for work in
primary subjects.
These different hours of attendance, morning and afternoon, suit
the convenience of the parents, for some mothers who are employed
desire to send their children early in the day; others prefer the later
hour. Some children sleep late in the morning; others take an after-
noon nap.
A third type of organization has been proposed, modeled some-
what after the Gary plan of alternating classes. This arrangement
provides for a morning and an afternoon session for each of two
classes, one class coming early in the morning, going home for an
early lunch, and returning to the kindergarten for another period
in the afternoon, and the other class attending on a later-time sched-
ule.The advantages of the alternating plan are that both classes
have the benefit of a morning session. The children who attend in
the morning are fresher and advance more rapidly than those who
come in the afternoon, and the teacher herself is fresher and has
more spontaneity with which to vitalize her work.
2. NUMBER OF CHILDREN IN A GROUP.
It is considered advisable to have not more than 50 children in one
room at one time. The social excitement of a larger group is exhaust-
ing to the nerves of little children and the social demands are too
great for their degree of self-control. This is an important point in
organization.
3. NUMBER OF TEACHERS.
In systems where the best practice prevails one teacher is respon-
sible for not more than 20, or at most 25, children at one time. When
the enrollment exceeds this number, an assistant teacher is employed.
The assistant should be a regularly trained kindergartner.
These limits as to the number of children under the care of one
teacher at one time apply to the organization of both single and
double session kindergartens. The smaller number, 20, prevails
where one teacher is responsible for two classes.
3
4. METHODS OF ASSIGNING TEACHERS.
Methods of assigning teachers in the case of two sessions are:
(1) One teacher with two small classes, one morning one afternoon;
not more than 20 children in each if these hours are to yield the best
education for all the children.
(2) Two teachers with the two classes, one teacher taking the
morning session, the other the afternoon session; both teachers devot-
ing their nonteaching hours to home visiting, assisting in the grades,
or doing clerical work for the school. This arrangement affords the
best conditions for the afternoon children, since the teacher is un-
wearied by a morning session.
(3) Two teachers with two classes of 40 children each, both teachers
teaching both morning and afternoon. In case a director and an
assistant are employed, the director takes charge of the morning
kindergarten and the assistant (a regularly trained kindergartner)
of the afternoon kindergarten. It is conceded to be more practical,
however, to employ two kindergartners of equal rank for the two
sessions, each to take charge of one session and assist during the
other session. This plan gives equal advantages to the children in
both sessions, for the kindergartner in charge in the afternoon has
ability equal to that of the morning teacher, and having been spared
much of the responsibility for the morning work she is fresh for the
afternoon responsibility. Furthermore, much of the work with
little children is designed to give motor coordination, and to this
end rhythmic exercises are used often during the day. At these
periods it is desirable that there be two teachers, one to have general
oversight and the other to supply the piano music.
5. LENGTH OF SESSIONS.
The length of the sessions is from two to three hours, depend-
ing upon the sessions of the regular school. A period of three
hours seems to be the limit advisable for supervised and organized play
and work for children of kindergarten age. Exceptional cases occur
where all the mothers are employed outside the home and children
have no place to play but the street. In these cases the children who
have had a morning session return to the kindergarten for the after-
noon session and thus have four or five hours of supervised work
and play.
The afternoon session is usually made shorter than the morning
session, since children tire more quickly of social restraint at that
time of day, and the teacher is not as able to give of herself spon-
taneously and creatively.
·
4
:
6. AGE OF CHILDREN.
The age of normal children who desire social play and are not
yet ready for reading and writing is from four to six years, al-
though home training and temperament make for variations in this
respect. The usual practice is to set no rigid age limit for promo-
tion from the kindergarten. While six years is the approximate age,
flexibility is used for particularly bright children and also for the
slower ones, who may remain longer in the kindergarten in order
to receive the education best suited for their development.
7. THE WORK OF THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS.
The number of hours of work required of a kindergartner is
approximately the same as that required of the teacher of the next
higher grade. A large part of the kindergartner's legitimate work
lies outside of the school building. In many localities it is realized
that the afternoon hours are more advantageously employed in social
work than in teaching another class. Especially is this true in
foreign sections of large cities. The kindergarten child is a bond
between the home and the school, and through him the kindergartner
becomes a strong influence in shaping the home.
In localities where social work is not needed, or where economic
stress does not admit of extending the influence of the school into the
home, the kindergartner's nonteaching hours are employed in taking
charge of groups of grade children in story-telling, dramatization,
and handwork, thus releasing the grade teacher for special work
with bright or with backward children; or taking groups of grade
children on excursions; or, if the kindergarten room is available,
bringing in grade children for games and rhythmical exercises.
8. SALARIES OF KINDERGARTEN TEACHERS.
The salaries of kindergarten teachers vary according to the
standards adhered to in the school systems. The range is from $45
to $100 a month. Cities should not expect to secure the services of
well-trained kindergartners for less than $60 or $70 in the smaller
communities and $90 or $100 in larger communities.
9. ROOMS.
Where the best practice prevails the rooms devoted to the kinder-
gartens are sunny and spacious. Fifteen square feet of floor space is
allowed for each child in order that the large muscles developing at
this age may not be hampered in the free movement necessary for
health and growth.
Where two sessions are held in the same room, extra space should
be allowed for the children's construction work to remain in the room
5
from day to day. Handwork stands as a means of expression for lit-
tle children, occupying the same place as handwork for adults and
also taking the place of the composition or theme-writing of the up-
per grades. An older child finds his written work of to-day in the
same stage that he left it yesterday. In the meantime he has clari-
fied his ideas and is ready to rewrite and to improve it. A 4-year-old
child expresses a loosely arranged composition in his handwork
which is quickly torn apart to express another fleeting idea; but as he
progresses in ability to control material, he desires his composition
to remain in more permanent form that he may enjoy and improve
the result. At 5 years of age a child is not able to produce a truly
lasting result, but he uses modifiable material and desires it to be
more than temporary. This is a very definite step toward making
durable things; it means holding a purpose a longer period, clarify-
ing or adding ideas as the result is changed, and persevering until
the product tells as complete a story as possible. All of this develop-
ment along the line of continuity of ideas, of perseverance, is denied.
the children by the duplicate plan of using rooms unless extra space
is allowed for constructions to be left in the room until children
can return to them. Perseverance and organized thought are very
evident results of such continuity in handwork.
10. GARDENS AND PLAYGROUND EQUIPMENT.
Space for gardens is sometimes provided within the school grounds,
sometimes in the neighborhood. If outdoor gardens seem to be an
impossibility, window boxes or at least flowerpots are used as an
emergency measure. All children should have an opportunity to
experience the joy and the mystery of watching the unfolding life of
a seed or a bulb.
The playground should have space for animals, plants, toys, a
sand box, and such simple gymnastic apparatus as slide, swing, and
seesaw. Opportunities for educative play on the playground must be
supplied in order that the free play period may have advantages over
the unsupervised play.
WASHINGTON: GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1917
LB
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Kindergarten Circular No. 17
A
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D. C.
September, 1924
HOW THE KINDERGARTEN AIDS CHILDREN'S PROGRESS
IN THE GRADES
By NINA C. VANDEWALKER
Specialist in Kindergarten Education
One of the questions frequently asked concerning the kinder-
garten is to what extent it furthers children's progress through the
grades. This question is not unlike others that one hears concerning
the value of this or that special subject, such as art or music, as parts
of the elementary school curriculum. Like the kindergarten, such
subjects are relatively new additions to the old-time school, and their
purpose and value are not yet clear to many people. The kinder-
garten was added in order to give children a beginning suited to their
interests and abilities, as a preparation for the customary instruction
in the three R's. The special subjects were included in response to
the idea that education should do more than give children of the ele-
mentary school period a mastery of the tools of learning. Such ad-
ditions are evidence of progress. If each of these additions is to
make its fullest contribution, however, it must be so adjusted to the
work of the school as such as to enable it to function in the life of
the school as a whole. These adjustments can not be made offhand.
To adjust the work of the kindergarten to that of the first grade so
that there shall be no break between them; and to adjust the special
subjects to the general curriculum so that each may constitute an
organic part of the whole requires time, thought, and cooperative
effort on the part of those concerned. Such adjustments are in
progress throughout the country, and have been brought to a reason-
able completeness in many communities. Because they are still
largely in process only, such estimates as may be made of their
value must be recognized as largely tentative.
ADJUSTMENT OF KINDERGARTEN TO THE SCHOOL AS SUCH
The adjustment of the kindergarten to the school as a whole has
presented difficulties because it involved changes in both the kinder-
garten and the primary grades. The kindergarten conception was
7787-24
2
that education is the organization and guidance of children's inter-
ests and activities at the successive stages of their development;
while that of the school was still that of instruction in the
three R's. The theoretical solution for these differences has been
found in the modern doctrine that the period from 4 to 8 years is
psychologically one. Since this includes both the kindergarten and
the first two grades, it is evident that the work of these must show
an unbroken continuity as to aims and methods. This doctrine
is now generally accepted by both kindergarten and primary
teachers, and they have given much thought to the problems which
that acceptance implies. The unification of kindergarten and pri-
mary procedure is one of these, but by no means the only one.
Among the causes of the "break" between the kindergarten and
the first grade, the difference in the training of kindergarten and
primary teachers has been one-perhaps the chief one. The larger
problem in the adjustment of the kindergarten to the school is
therefore the reorganization of the training of kindergarten and
primary teachers so that both shall have a unified course to cover
the whole kindergarten-primary period. Such a course is in fact
implied in the conception of the kindergarten-primary period as
a psychological unit. The recognized need for such training as a
means to this end is shown in the fact that at least two-thirds of
the teacher-training institutions that formerly gave separate kinder-
garten and primary courses now give unified kindergarten-primary
courses to both groups alike. The result of this unified training is
a marked improvement in the quality of both kindergarten and
primary work. It is needless to say that this is contributing
materially to the children's rate of progress through the grades.
THE SCHOOL MUST FURNISH THE CONDITIONS FOR GOOD WORK
These varied efforts at adjustment are contributing in several ways
to the effectiveness of the work of the kindergarten as a part of the
school. There are other adjustments that are needed, however, if
the best work is to be done. Some of these are administrative in
character. In many schools the space and the equipment allowed are
far from adequate for the kindergarten type of work. Then, too,
the number of children per teacher is much too large for work of
the right kind. According to the latest statistics given by the
Bureau of Education, the average number of kindergarten children
per teacher is 50, while the number for the grade teacher is but 38.
This can not be defended on any grounds. In many cities, too, the
children are still classified and promoted on the basis of chronologi-
cal age, instead of upon the basis of physical and mental maturity.
In consequence, children can not progress according to their ability.
3
•
Much therefore remains to be done before the work of the kinder-
garten as such can be considered as good as it should be and before
it can be justly estimated.
STUDIES THAT SHOW CHILDREN'S PROGRESS
In view of the fact that the conditions for the best work are far
from general, the kindergarten has made a very fair showing in the
matter of furthering children's progress beyond the kindergarten.
This is apparent from a number of studies that have been made.
One of these was a study of 3,000 children who were just about to
enter high school, made by the efficiency expert of the Kansas City
public schools. Of these, 1,500 had received kindergarten training
and the other 1,500 had not. He found that the kindergarten chil-
dren were, on the average, three months in advance of those who
had not had kindergarten training. This gain of three months may
not seem much to the average person, but it implies that these chil-
dren had not only made a better start than the other children in
their progress through the grades, but that they had apparently gone
through the grades without failure. One hears much at the present
time about the cost of retardation. In this case the city gained be-
cause of the accelerated speed of these 1,500 children. If this ac-
celeration is due to the kindergarten, it is a measure of economy
rather than of expense.
A COMPARISON BETWEEN KINDERGARTEN AND NONKINDER-
GARTEN CHILDREN IN LOUISVILLE
Another study of similar character was made in Louisville, Ky.
According to an article in SCHOOL LIFE in February, 1923, a study
was made in nine of the public schools of that city of the effect of
kindergarten training in the primary grades. The report was made
by Mr. S. J. Bell, the principal of the F. T. Salisbury School. It is
as follows:
The records compiled represent 3,064 nonkindergarten children and 1,497
kindergarten-trained children, from nine of the Louisville (Ky.) public schools.
The percentage of failures among kindergartners is in all schools very
much lower than among nonkindergarten children. It is also shown that
the per cent of retardation in all of the schools is much lower among the
kindergarten group than it is in the nonkindergarten group, while the reverse
condition prevails with regard to acceleration. In consideration of initiative
and responsiveness, the results obtained in each case are favorable to the kin-
dergarten group except in the case of school No. 2, where the kindergarten
children are 1.1 per cent lower in responsiveness than the nonkindergarten
children. It seems clearly demonstrated in the foregoing that the kidergarten
training seems to reduce failure, retardation, and withdrawal, and at the
same time to increase the possibilities of promotion, acceleration, initiative,
and responsiveness. The effects of kindergarten training as shown by the in-
vestigation described prove conclusively that the broader the experience got-
4
ten early in life, the more certain is the child to remain interested and active
in his school work, and the more capable he will be in the inauguration of prob-
lems of his own. He is less liable to fail of promotion and is more likely to
remain one of a group of accelerated or normal children. He will respond
more rapidly to situations confronting the class and individual child, and will
manifest greater initiative in the creation of situations or the elucidation of
conditions.
RESULTS OF A SIMILAR STUDY IN CALIFORNIA
Another comparison of the progress of kindergarten versus non-
kindergarten children has recently been made in California by Mr.
W. J. Peters. This was published in the Journal of Educational Re-
search, February, 1923, under the title "The progress of kinder-
garten pupils in the elementary grades." In this Mr. Peters traced
through the first five grades the school careers of 187 pupils who had
attended and 187 who had not attended kindergarten. The two
groups completed the work in these grades in the same time, but the
kindergarten group averaged 3.4 months longer than the non-
kindergarten group. Mr. Peters's summing up of the study is as
follows:
The investigation shows that children trained in the kindergarten can make
the same progress as older children not so trained, all other things being equal.
It follows logically that a kindergarten group will proceed faster than a group
of the same age and intelligence who have not had kindergarten training.
Therefore the kindergarten expedites school life. Intelligence being constant,
kindergarten training makes it possible to meet the first-grade situation at an
early age. When we are able to control the age factor the gain will show di-
rectly in educational progress in the elementary grades.
In commenting on this study, Dr. William T. Root, of the Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh, makes the estimate that a kindergarten teacher
at a salary of $1,000 a year saves the State $6,400 future wages with
each class of 24 children that she teaches.
CONCLUSIONS CONCERNING THE KINDERGARTEN IN
MINNEAPOLIS
The value of the kindergarten in preventing retardation has been
proved also in Minneapolis. In a recent study of school attendance,
Superintendent Webster found that in the years from 1900 to 1910
approximately one-third of the children in the Minneapolis schools
were obliged to repeat the work of the 1B grade, but as kindergartens
began to be established, the distribution of children for each grade
became more normal. To quote Mr. Webster:
The gradual decrease of wasteful retardation was largely effected by the
proper functioning of the kindergarten. Children get off on the right foot,
and it is easy for these fortunate children to go from grade to grade without
stumbling. For getting the right start the time in the kindergarten appears
to be just as worth while as the time spent in the first grade.
5
}
Certain habits necessary to school life are established here as easily as a
year later.
Children have to be broken the same as a colt. To do as told
when told, to live amicably in a group, to establish solidarity, and to recog-
nize the rights of others are at the very foundation of democracy's ideal
school. This training is valuable in its effect, just as learning to read is
valuable, and the cost is almost negligible.
Mr. Webster then goes on to show that it has been the best kind
of economy to provide kindergarten training for the beginning chil-
dren instead of paying for them to do the work in the 1B grade
twice over. He describes "the happy confidence of the child who
never stumbles and falls," and his conclusion is that, in the light of
the facts that he has presented, " the kindergarten is an asset and
not a liability."
SOME CONCLUSIONS
A number of additional studies of this type have been made to
show that the kindergarten in a school is not a luxury, but a ne-
cessity to the most effective work, both from an educational and
an economic standpoint. The percentage of failure on the part of
children just entering schools in which there are no kindergartens,
mentioned by Superintendent Webster, is no larger than that in
other cities, while in those quoted above or having kindergartens the
percentage is consistently lower. This alone is a sufficient argu-
ment for the establishment of kindergartens where they do not now
exist. The value of the work which the kindergarten gives as a
preparation for the first-grade work can only be touched upon here.
In a study recently made concerning the causes of the high percentage
of first-grade failures, the lack of a background of ideas was given
as one such cause. In working for the development of the chil-
dren's intelligence the kindergarten is contributing to their mastery
of the first-grade work indirectly. The many ways in which it
contributes directly to the work in the different subjects has already
been mentioned. The value of the kindergarten to the school can
therefore be summed up in a single sentence. In preparing the
children to undertake the work of the first grade successfully it
makes for their unbroken progress through the grades and therefore
prevents retardation with its accompanying evils.
BETTER RESULTS IN ANTICIPATION
These studies are encouraging, in part because they furnish definite
evidence of the value of the kindergarten as a part of the school, and
in part because they contain the promise of a greater value in the
future. The data which these studies represent were compiled
recently, but the inquiries covered a period of from 4 to 10 years.
The kindergartens upon which the conclusions were based were
those of 1914 to 1918 or 1919. During the years from 1914 to the
6
present, however, there has been a marked improvement in the work
of the kindergarten throughout the country. It is during these
years, in fact, that several of the movements that have contributed
to this improvement, such as the project method, unified kinder-
garten-primary training, and the classification and promotion of
children on the basis of maturity instead of age, have been inaugu-
rated. If therefore the kindergartens of nearly a decade ago were
of the value which these studies indicate, the contribution of those
of 1924 may reasonably be expected to be much greater.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Waite, Mary G. How the kindergarten prepares children for primary work.
U. S. Bu. of Educ., Kindergarten Ed. Circ., No. 15.
Root, Wm. T. Prefirst-grade training. U. S. Bu. of Educ., Kindergarten Ed.
Circ., No. 13.
Vandewalker, Nina C. Suggestions concerning the application of the project
method to kindergarten education. U. S. Bu. of Educ., Kindergarten Educ.
Circ., No. 12.
Parker, S. C. and Temple, Alice.- Unified kindergarten and first-grade teaching.
Dept. of Educ., Univ. of Chicago.
ADDITIONAL COPIES
OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON, D. C.
AT
5 CENTS PER COPY
LB
1141
458
FEB20 1917
UNIV. OF
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
US BUREAU OF EDUCATION.
KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION CIRCULAR, 1917, No. 1.
A SELECTED LIST OF BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF
EARLY CHILDHOOD.
(Compiled by the literature subcommittee of the Bureau of Education com-
mittee of the International Kindergarten Union, appointed by the Commis-
sioner of Education, 1914.')
INTRODUCTION.
By Amalie Hofer Jerome, Head Resident, Fellowship House, Chicago, Ill.
The selection of the accompanying list of books and monographs
on child development was undertaken in response to a demand
emanating from a reading public which exists quite outside of school
or professional circles.
It was made originally under the following classification:
1. For parents:
a. Books giving practical suggestions as to the best methods of dealing
with the problems of early childhood--physical, intellectual, moral, and
religious.
b. Books dealing with the purpose and value of the kindergarten, and its
attitude toward the problems of child life.
c. Books embodying the results of present-day child study along various
lines.
2. For teachers and principals of schools:
a. Books dealing with the aims and methods of education by development.
b. Books showing the application of the principles which the kindergarten
embodies to the work of the grades.
c. Books dealing with the spread of the kindergarten movement.
3. For graduate kindergartners:
a. Books on child study and its influence in reorganizing educational aims
and methods, those of the kindergarten included.
b. Books showing tendencies in present-day education.
c. Books on the kindergarten itself.
Each of the five members of the compiling committee was requested
to send in 10 titles of the best books suitable for each group. Three
hundred different titles were submitted and distributed to their
1 Members of committee: Mrs. Amalie Hofer Jerome, Chicago, Ill.; Miss Ella C. Elder,
Buffalo, N. Y.; Miss Margaret Trace, Cleveland, Ohio; Miss Julia Bothwell, Cincinnati,
Ohio; and Mrs. Sallie Allen Davis, Chicago, Ill.
68812°-16
羹
​
2
EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
;
various classes. But the same books were found to reappear under
several or all of the subdivisions of each class, and the interesting
fact soon became apparent that those concerned with the nurture of
young children were all in one class, whether parents, teachers, school
superintendents, or professors of education. The tentative classifi-
cation was therefore discarded, the titles reduced by one-third, and
all arranged into one alphabetical list. In the process of elimination
the following considerations were kept in view: To confine the list to
books pertaining entirely to the development of the youngest chil-
dren; to select two or three only from one author; to give preference
to the more authoritative and more readable when several books
covered the same field; to list such books as are readily accessible.
For one or all of these reasons, certain volumes long favored by the
teaching profession, especially by kindergartners, were omitted; a
strikingly large number of well-known and valuable books were
found to be out of print because limited to a small edition, and only
to be found in private libraries. The committee has taken pains to
replace these with later publications dealing with the same aspects
of the subject.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Adjustment between kindergarten and first grade. Including a study of
double sessions in the kindergarten. LUELLA A. PALMER. Washington, Gov-
ernment Printing Office, 1915. 36 p. (U. S. Bureau of Education. Bulletin,
1915, No. 24.)
!
A discussion of the problems of "adjustment of the two grades to the best growth
of the developing child." The writer compares the returns from two letters sent out
by the Commissioner of Education to superintendents of various cities, one to be an-
swered by primary teachers and the other by kindergartners. A brief summary indi-
cates the trend of thought concerning the problem and the means suggested for
bridging the gap between the kindergarten and first grade.
The study of double sessions is based on facts obtained from 112 answers to a
questionnaire sent out to 92 cities, replies having been received from 45 of these. The
necessity of double sessions, the basis of organization, the effect on children and teach-
ers are some aspects of the question to receive consideration.
All the children of all the people. WILLIAM HAWLEY SMITH. New York, Mac-
millan, 1912. 646 p. $1.50.
"The task of trying to educate everybody, in which our public schools are en-
gaged, has proved to be far more difficult than the originators of the idea of such a
possibility thought it would be when they set out upon this undertaking." This is the
general problem which the author discusses with keenness and practical wisdom.
American child (The).
1913. 190 p. $1.25.
ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.
An appreciation of the American child illustrated with beautiful photographs by
Alice Austin. The author discusses the following topics: The child at home; the
child at play; the country child; the child in school; the child in the library; the
child in the church.
Aspects of child life and education. G. STANLEY HALL, T. L. SMITH, eds.
Boston, Ginn & Co., 1907. 321 p. $1.80.
A series of papers upon topics pertaining to child study that are of practical and
popular interest. Chapters deal with Contents of children's minds; Psychology of
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
3
daydreams; Curiosity and interest; Collecting and ownership impulses. The discus-
sion of dolls opens up a new field of interest to mothers and one that is important
and significant to psychology and pedagogy.
Beckonings from little hands.
1895. 166 p. 75 cts..
PATTERSON DU BOIS. Philadelphia, Wattles,
A father's appre-
Contains eight prose chapters, an introduction, and two poems.
ciation of the spiritual and emotional lives of his children. The book is unusual in
its appeal for a more sympathetic and tender regard for the personality of young
children. Of interest to parents and all lovers of children.
Better schools. B. C. GREGORY. New York, Macmillan, 1912. 283 p. $1.25.
The basic belief in Dr. Gregory's theory of education is in the self-activity of the
child as the one means of developing power. The first three chapters deal with a
discussion of the Froebelian principles and their utilization through the grades. Later
chapters deal with special school subjects--language, spelling, geography, and arith-
metic.
Biography of a baby (The). MILLICENT WASHBURN SHINN. Boston, Hough-
ton Mifflin Co., 1900. 247 p. (Riverside Press.) $1.50.
This very entertaining volume, which is a careful study of the author's own niece
through her first year, is in reality an accurate and quite exhaustive record of the
"Process of becoming." "A fresh copy of the whole history of the race is written
out every time an infant is conceived and born and grows to manhood." Miss Shinn
has made of this study "a drama that sometimes catches one's breath in the throat
with excitement and wonder.”
Brief course in the history of education (A). PAUL MONROE. New York, Mac-
millan, 1913.
409 p.
$1.25.
This story of education begins with the simplest forms used by primitive people
and sketches the systems down to the present highly developed eclectic tendency.
The volume avoids generalizations, seeking rather to preserve in a concrete way
with pictures and original documents the actual practices of the various civilizations.
This volume is a condensation of the author's "A Textbook in the history of edu-
cation.'
""
Care and training of children. LE GRAND KERR. New York, Funk & Wagnalls,
1910. 233 p. 75 cents.
Some of the topics treated are: Education at home and in the kindergarten;
Relations of parents to children; Punishments; Moral failings of nervous children;
The child's literature and friends; Amusements; and The question of sex.
Career of the child (The). MAXIMILIAN P. E. GROSZMANN. Boston, R. G.
Badger, The Gorham Press, 1911. $2.50.
A discussion of educational principles, methods, and material, based at every step
upon consideration of the individual child, his interests, activities, and needs. It is
the outgrowth of extended and varied experience and familiarity with the collective
results of scientific child study.
Changing conceptions of education.
Houghton Mifflin Co. [1909]. 69 p.
35 cents.
ELWOOD PATTERSON CUBBERLEY. Boston,
(Riverside educational monographs.)
"An excellent brief survey of the evolution of our educational ideals from Colonial
times to the present, including the story of the rise and growth of our public-school
system, and discussing the kind of education needed to meet the demands of a mixed
population and an increasingly complex mode of life."
Child nature and child nurture. EDWARD PORTER ST. JOHN. Boston, The Pil-
grim Press [1911]. 106 p. 75 cents.
A textbook for parents' classes, workers' clubs, and training teachers, dealing with
the instincts that are associated with the young child's physical and moral life.
Nervousness, fear, anger, altruism, courtesy, honesty, and ownership are some of the
topics considered, with carefully selected references for a fuller discussion of these
same topics.
4
EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Child training an exact science. GEORGE W. JACOBY. New York, Funk & Wag-
nalls, 1914. Illus. $1.50.
A treatise based on the principles of modern psychology, medicine, and hygiene.
Its purpose is to show the dependence of vital psychic manifestations upon physical
processes; to give to teachers sufficient understanding of "medico-pedagogic prob-
lems to enable them to distinguish between normal and atypical cases, and to co-
operate efficiently with physicians in securing for the individual child the education
best suited to his needs.
Children of the future (The). NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH. Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Co. 165 p. $1.
Discusses the function of the kindergarten from the standpoint of the need for a
study of each child's individual character, the use of stories, work, and play in the
development of the child's higher nature. Especially good for kindergarten students
and mothers.
Children's rights.
1892. 235 p.
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
$1.50.
Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
A practical and delightful book for mothers, treating of The rights of the child,
Children's plays, Children's playthings, Children's stories, What shall children read?
The relation of the kindergarten to social reform, How shall we govern our chil-
dren? The magic of "together," The relation of the kindergarten to the public
schools, and Other people's children.
Coming generation (The).
ton & Co. 1912. 402 p.
1912. 402 p.
WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH. New York, D. Apple-
$1.50.
Discusses concisely and simply the forces at work to make better the lives of the
young people of America. The first part emphasizes the need of training of parents;
the second deals with the life and health of the child; the third with education; the
fifth with the influence of religious and social nurture and service. The book is
easy to read, offers illustrations from life, and gives a list of references at the end
of each chapter.
Conservation of the child (The). ARTHUR HOLMES. Philadelphia, Lippincott,
1912. 345 p.
$1.25.
Describes the examination and treatment of backward children in psychological
clinics. Interesting and valuable to teachers, physicians, or others with a sufficient
background of knowledge and interest to appreciate the material.
Constructive and preventive philanthropy.
millan, 1902.
242 p.
JOSEPH LEE. New York, Mac-
Contains 16 chapters in addition to an introduction by Jacob Riis. In the first
chapter the author states the aim of constructive and preventive philanthropy
as the "fostering of life through the protection and cultivation of the spiritual
elements in individuals and communities whom it seeks to benefit."
""
66
Some means
to this end are savings and loans, health and building laws, vacation schools, play-
grounds, and industrial education.
The book is written from the viewpoint of the social worker who believes in
helping the individual to help himself and that the community grows through the
efforts of its individual members united and inspired by a common purpose.
Democracy and education. An introduction to the philosophy of education.
JOHN DEWEY. New York, Macmillan, 1916. $1.40.
The book embodies, as Dr. Dewey says, an endeavor to detect and state the ideas
implied in a democratic society and to apply these ideas to the problems of the
enterprise of education." The philosophy set forth in the book connects the growth
of democracy with the development of the experimental idea in the sciences, evolu-
tionary ideas in the biological sciences, and the industrial reorganization. It
endeavors to point out the changes in subject matter and method of education
indicated by these developments.
Demonstration play school of 1913 (The). CLARK W. HETHERINGTON.
Ber-
keley, University of California Press [1914]. p. 241–288. (University of
California Publications. Education, vol. 5, No. 2, July 30, 1914.)
•
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
5
The report of an effort made in connection with the summer session of the Uni-
versity of California, "to solve the problems of elementary education by harmonizing
the child's extra home educational experiences through combining in one institution
the functions of the play center and those of the school." The value of the report
lies in its suggestive discussion of the theory underlying the organization of the
play school," the analysis of the activities utilized, and the description of the
experiment as it was carried on.
66
Development of the child (The). NATHAN OPPENHEIM. New York, Macmillan,
1902. 296 p. $1.25.
That a child is, to a large extent, what his environment makes him, and that
the responsibility for his development rests heavily upon those who provide the
environment, are conclusions which are convincingly presented by Dr. Oppenheim.
Present methods teach too much and allow too little opportunity for development.
Greater freedom is urged, especially for young children, much out-of-door life, the
most competent teachers for the youngest children.
Dickens as an educator. JAMES LAUGHLIN HUGHES. New York, D. Appleton
& Co., 1906. 319 p. $1.50.
66
The author aims to present Dickens as the greatest educator England has ever
produced, in that he defended the nature, instincts, and normal tendencies of child-
hood against inhuman institutions and systems. He opened the heart of the
English reading world to the "new education." To this end the works of Dickens
are reviewed and generous excerpts illustrate the chapters: "Cramming," Natural
depravity," and "The training of poor, neglected, and defective children." The
author says: "Froebel revealed the true philosophy and Dickens gave it wings.”
Education and social progress. ALEXANDER MORGAN. London, Longmans, 1916.
252 p. $1.25 net.
Aims to present some of the wider aspects of education and to show that, since
the "whole gamut of human capacity is represented in the children," their education
is the most important form of social endeavor. It is based upon a study of condi-
tions in England, but the conclusions are largely of universal import.
Education by plays and games. GEORGE ELLSWORTH JOHNSON. Boston, Ginn,
1907. 234 p. $1.10 and 90 cts.
This volume is designed to help parents and teachers utilize play in the training
of children. It gathers up the theory and history of play in education in a concise
but readable way, placing emphasis upon the periods of development. The course of
plays and games is outlined with distinct reference to these periods, which the
author casts as follows: First 3 years; ages 4 to 6; ages 7 to 9; ages 10 to 12; ages
13 to 15.
Education in religion and morals. GEORGE ALBERT COE. Chicago, Revell, 1904.
434 p. $1.35.
An interesting and valuable discussion of the problems of moral and religious
education. The author shows that the present-day conception of the child as a
thinking, feeling, and acting unity implies a development of the moral and religious
consciousness, and that education can not be considered complete without such
development. The discussion of the type of education of which this development
is an organic part is suggestive, practical, and inspiring.
Education through play. HENRY S. CURTIS. New York, Macmillan, 1915.
Illus. $1.25.
A book for parents, teachers, and playground directors. It discusses theories of
play; the relation of play to the training of the intellect and the formation of habits
and character; playgrounds, their construction, equipment, and care; and the
qualifications and training of playground directors. The author finds the solution
of the play problem in putting play into the curriculum of our schools. A bibliog-
raphy follows each chapter.
Education of man (The). FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. Translated from the German
and annotated by W. N. Hailmann. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1903.
340 p. $1.50.
6
EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
This work of Froebel was first published in 1826. It is an inspiring account of
how human society may find itself through education. It is a general survey of the
education of mankind as a whole and includes a discussion of theory, practice, and
methods suitable to the different stages of childhood, boyhood, and manhood. The
last chapter urges the educational value of religious maxims, physiology, poetry,
nature study, dramatic expression, modeling, drawing, color study and painting, plays
and games, story-telling, excursions and walks, and, last in the list, arithmetic, read-
ing, and writing. The book concludes with a discussion of all-sided development, the
true aim of education.
Educative process (The). WILLIAM CHANDLER Bagley. New York, Macmillan,
1905. 358 p. $1.25.
66
A systematic and comprehensive view of the task to be accomplished by the
school, based upon the conception of education as a process by means of which
the individual acquires experiences that will function in rendering more efficient
his future action." It deals with principles considered under these general heads:
Functions of education, The acquisition of experience, The functioning of experi-
ence, The organization and recall of experience, The selection of experiences for
educational purposes, The transmission of experience, and The
The technique of
teaching.
Elementary school standards.
FRANK M. MCMURRY.
N. Y., World Book Co., 1913. 218 p. $1.50.
Yonkers-on-Hudson,
In the New York City school inquiry, completed in 1913, it was Dr. McMurry's
task to estimate the quality of the teaching, the course of study, and the super-
vision by the principals of the elementary schools. Four tests were applied:
1, Motive on the part of pupils; 2, consideration of values by pupils; 3, attention
to organization by pupils; 4, initiative by pupils. The significance of these stand-
ards and their application to instruction, courses of study, and supervision are
presented in "Elementary school standards."
Experimental studies in kindergarten theory and practice. PATTY S. HILL,
ed. New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1914. 70 p. 30 cts.
Includes the following papers: Reasoning in childhood, by Dr. John Dewey;
Development of reasoning in young children, by Meredith Smith; Play motive and
experimental method in kindergarten occupations, by Grace L. Brown; Use of
materials in kindergarten, by Julia W. Abbot; Principles underlying the organization
of kindergarten materials, and The gifts, by Luella A. Palmer.
Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology. E. R. MURRAY. London, G. Phil-
lip & Son, 1914. 230 p. $1.25.
The author shows by passages from Froebel's writings that Froebel was not only
fully aware of the necessity for a psychological basis for his educational theories,
but that on many points now regarded as fundamental, and generally recognized as
modern, his views are in accord with those of such psychologists as Stout, Ward,
Lloyd Morgan, Irving King, and others.
Froebel's kindergarten principles critically examined. WILLIAM HEArd Kil-
PATRICK. New York, Macmillan, 1916. 90 cts.
·
•
The result of "a critical study of Froebel with successive classes of experienced
kindergarten and primary students. It makes no pretense to a complete discus-
sion of Froebel, but confines itself mainly to the disputed points of kindergarten
theory which, diversely taken, lead to diverse practice. The general aim of the
book is to help spread the reform of kindergarten theory and practice." (Quoted
from the introduction.)
Froebel's educational laws for all teachers.
). Appleton & Co., 1900. 296 p. $1.50.
JAMES L. HUGHES. New York,
In this book the author gives a simple exposition of the most important principles
of Froebel's educational philosophy and shows how they may be applied to the
work of the schoolroom, contains chapters on Self-activity, Play, Control and spon-
taneity, and Froebel's ethical principles.
From Locke to Montessori.
271 p. $1.25.
WILLIAM BOYD. London, G. G. Harrap, 1914.
A study of the historical development of the ideas fundamental to the Montessori
system, followed by a critical study of the method, etc., principles, and its results.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
7
Genetic psychology for teachers.
CHARLES HUBBARD JUDD. New York, D.
Appleton & Co., 1903. 329 p. (International education series.) $1.50.
"
A series of lecture-discussions on phases of genetic psychology that bear upon the
work of the elementary school. The first five chapters present various aspects of
the idea of development. The last tive seck to apply these principles to the specific
work of elementary education." The author interprets education as the process by
which experiences are given a meaning, and shows the part that individuality,
environment, adaptation, and expression play in the developmental process. Habit
formation is discussed in its relation to the teaching of reading, writing, and
number.
Growth and education.
1907. 294 p. $1.50.
JOHN MASON TYLER. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co,
A valuable book for parents and teachers on the bodily growth and development
of children, with a discussion of educational agencies for each period of childhood
and youth. Subjects of special interest to people having the care of little children
are the following: Chapter II, Man in the light of evolution; Chapter X, The kinder-
garten period; Chapter XI, The child entering school; Chapter XIV, The place of
play in education.
Guidebook to childhood. A handbook for members of the American Institute
of Child Life. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH, assisted by various authorities.
Philadelphia, American Institute of Child Life, 1913. 236 p. $2.50.
Part I, Outline of child life, with discussion of problems physical, mental, social,
and moral. Part II, A guide to child training, containing answers to parents' ques-
tions upon a wide range of problems and a list of books for parents and teachers,
with descriptions.
Helping school children. ELSA DENISON. *New York, Harper,
$1.40.
1912. 351 p.
A report of an investigation made under the direction of the Bureau of Municipal
Research of New York into the work done by various agencies in 400 cities in
cooperation with the public schools. Women's clubs, medical societies, dental asso-
ciations, and chambers of commerce have found ways of supplementing the work
of the schools.
Homemade kindergarten (The). NORA A. SMITH. Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1912. 116 p. 75 cts.
A delightful little book for mothers, containing practical suggestions for directing
the work and play of their children according to practical kindergarten methods.
The chapters deal with Outdoor work and play; Indoor work and play; Stories,
games, and songs.
How shall I tell my child? MARY W. A. CHAPMAN. New York, Revell, 1912.
62 p. 25 cts.
A comprehensive book dealing in a direct, practical, and satisfactory way with a
child's questions concerning the origin of life. Some of the chapters are: Why I
should tell my child; At what age; How to tell a child; When a child has heard;
A wrong habit formed; At the adolescent period.
How to know your child. MIRIAM FINN SCOTT. Boston, Little, Brown & Co.,
1915. 316 p. $1.25.
In the preface Mrs. Scott says: "If this book has any purpose, if my life has any
aim, it is to try to tell mothers and fathers what children have told me; to try to
interpret children to their parents; to try to help parents to see the vast riches,
hitherto but dimly seen or perhaps not perceived at all, which exist unutilized in
their children; and to try to help parents recognize and develop this wasted human
wealth." It is a book of practical advice, made clear by concrete examples, pre-
sented sympathetically, interestingly, and simply enough to reach the majority of
mothers.
How we think.
JOHN DEWEY. Boston, Heath, 1910. 224 p. $1.
An epoch-making book in education. The author points out the vital need of what
he calls "scientific thinking." Examining the reason for one's common beliefs and
8
EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
opinions leads to scientific thinking. The 16 chapters discuss the needs, resources,
conditions, and means of training thought; induction, deduction, judgment, concrete
and abstract thinking; the relation of activity, language, and observation to the
training of thought.
Individual in the making (The). E. A. KIRKPATRICK. Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Co. [1911]. 339 p. $1.25.
This work is intended "to meet the needs of parents and teachers who have had
little training in psychology"; to offer to the educator, parent, or teacher a chart,
more or less complete, by which "to guide the child into the most favoring channels
and past the most serious dangers that are found in each stage of development from
childhood to maturity."
Kindergarten and the Montessori method.
An attempt at synthesis, with an
introduction by G. Stanley Hall. MARTHA MACLEAR. Boston, R. G. Badger,
1915. 114 p. $1.
A brief treatise from the viewpoint of "a teacher of kindergarten and a close
student of Montessori, but who has also had experience in other lines of educational
work," directed toward the inevitable reconciliation of these two methods.
Miss MacLear has confined her criticisms and her suggestion of adjustments to
the kindergarten, because, as she explains, her purpose has not been to modify the
Montessori school by kindergarten influence but to effect certain changes in the
kindergarten through the influence of Dr. Montessori's methods.
Kindergarten in American education (The). NINA C. VANDEWALKER.
York, Macmillan, 1908. 274 p. $1.25.
New
This book is a survey of kindergarten progress in the United States. It takes the
view that the kindergarten is the educational expression of the principles upon
which American institutions are based and proceeds to give an accurate and com-
prehensive account of the first 50 years of the movement. The 12 chapters review
the beginnings and early extension of the kindergarten, including publications and
books; the kindergarten as promoted by church, Sunday schools, missions, women's
clubs and settlements, and general child-welfare work; the kindergarten in the
public-school system and its influence upon elementary education; progressive tend-
encies in the direction of child study and psychology.
Kindergarten in the home (The). CARRIE S. NEWMAN. Boston, L. C. Page,
1909. 259 p. $1.50.
Written especially for mothers, but containing a message for all interested in
child training. It presents in a very simple, practical, and attractive form some of
the vital truths underlying Froebel's system of education. Emphasis is upon simple
ways of solving some of the problems of the child's mental and spiritual life.
Kindergarten principles and practice. KATE DOUGLASS WIGGIN and NORA
ARCHIBALD SMITH. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1896. 205 p. $1.
Discusses the American embodiment of Froebel's system of education in a simple,
untechnical way. It contains much wit and wisdom. Good for mothers or begin-
ners in the study of the kindergarten.
Letters to a mother on the philosophy of Froebel.
York, D. Appleton & Co., 1899. 311 p. $1.50.
SUSAN E. BLOW. New
The letters are addressed to the mother of the boy Harold and frankly aim to
share with her the insights and methods which the kindergarten has drawn from
Froebel's mother play book. The emphasis is placed on the philosophy of life and
society which Froebel has set up as a background for the young to react against.
The volume contains nine chapters, each of which takes one or more of the original
"mother plays" for its text, shows their equivalents in different current theories,
and seeks to promote the value of the poetic rather than the realistic influences in
life.
Linguistic development and education.
York, Macmillan. 1907. 347 p. $1.25.
MICHAEL VINCENT O'SHEA. New
Contains 13 chapters, general bibliography, footnotes, and subject index. Part 1
deals with the nonreflective processes in linguistic development; part 2 with the
reflective processes. The special value of the book lies in the organization of mate-
rial from scattered articles and treatises in a way to make it available for edu-
cators.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
9
Literature in the elementary schools.. PORTER LANDER MACCLINTOCK. Chi-
cago, University of Chicago Press, 1913. 305 p. $1.
A practical book, comprising a full-course outline for literature for children
from the kindergarten to the eighth grade. It discusses in charming style the story,
choice of stories, folk tale and fairy story, myth, poetry, and drama. It is equally
a guide for literature out of school and for children's reading other than literature.
Love and law in child training. EMILIE POULSSON. Springfield, Mass., Brad-
ley, 1899. 235 p. $1.
In this book for mothers Miss Poulsson applies kindergarten principles in home
education, giving many helpful suggestions for the training of young children.
Some of the questions considered are the following: How play educates the baby;
From nursery to kindergarten; Early virtues; A few hints on keeping Christmas;
The Santa Claus question.
Meaning of education and other essays and addresses. NICHOLAS MURRAY
BUTLER. New York, Macmillan, 1905.
1905. New ed. 230 p. $1.
A series of able and scholarly essays and addresses on various aspects of educa-
tion, the nature of which is indicated by the titles of the chapters: The meaning
of education; What knowledge is of most worth; Is there a new education? and
Democracy and education. The last three chapters are on The American college
and the American university; The function of the secondary school; and The
reform of secondary education in the United States. Of special interest to principals
and superintendents.
Meaning of infancy (The). JOHN FISKE. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909.
49 p. (Riverside educational monographs.) 35 cts.
In two chapters, with an introduction by the editor, Henry Suzzallo, and an
outline. Together these papers set forth in a clearer and more detailed manner the
biological interpretation of childhood and education than can be found elsewhere.
Montessori method (The). Dr. MARIA MONTESSORI.
Stokes, 1912. 377 p. $1.75.
New York, Frederick A.
A complete presentation of the Montessori system of education, including a
description of the didactic material and specific directions for its use. The method
emphasizes the attitude of scientific observation for the teacher, discipline founded
on liberty, conditions favoring the development of the entire individuality of the
child, education of the senses as of prime importance. and "spontaneous writing"
as a practical result.
Montessori method and the kindergarten.
ELIZABETH HARRISON. Washing-
ton, Government Printing Office, 1914. 34 p.
Discusses Dr. Montessori's service to the kindergarten in showing some of its
limitations. Also criticizes Dr. Montessori's overemphasis of individual training,
her elimination of stories, and her lack of definite attitude in religious training.
Montessori method examined. WILLIAM HEARD KILPATRICK. Boston, Hough-
ton Mifflin, 1914. 71 p. 35 cts.
The purpose of the monograph, as stated by Dr. Kilpatrick, is to examine the
doctrines promulgated by Dr. Montessori so as, first, to bring out their relations to
one another and to other similar doctrines elsewhere held; and, second, to ascertain,
as far as the author may, the contribution which Dr. Montessori has to offer to
American education. The chapters on "The doctrine of liberty" and "Sense train-
ing by means of the didactic apparatus" are of special interest.
Montessori mother (A). DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER. New York, Holt, 1912.
240 p. $1.25.
The author writes for American mothers from the standpoint of a mother. Her
theme is the possibility of adapting the Montessori system for American children.
She spent some time in Rome studying, and from her personal observations pictures
the school in the Casa dei Bambini and describes the didactic materials. The book
contains also a discussion of the philosophy of the system and its application to
American home life.

10
EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Moral education. EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS. New York, Huebsch, 1913. 352 p.
$1.60.
A clear delineation of characteristics which distinguish various stages in child
development and ways presented to meet them which will make "possible the
happiest and most healthful living."
Moral instruction of children (The). FELIX ADLER. New York, D. Appleton
& Co. 1901. 278 p.
!
$1.50.
Em-
Discusses practical nonsectarian methods for the moral training of children.
phasizes the responsibility of the public schools for teaching filial, fraternal, and
civic duties and awakening the moral consciousness.
Mothers and children. DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER.
DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER. New York, Holt, 1914.
285 p. $1.25.
A very readable book, presenting in a sane, simple way the modern relationship of
parents and children and replete with many apt illustrations.
The book gives some very practical solutions for the problems discussed and lays
special emphasis upon the part the parent must play if the child is to be rightly
trained.
Mother in education (The). FLORENCE HULL WINTERBURn.
Bride, 1914. 335 p.
$1.50.
New York, Mc-
Mottoes and commentaries of Friedrich Froebel's mother play. Verse ren-
dered into English by HENRIETTA R. ELIOT. Prose translated by SUSAN E.
BLOW. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1895. 316 p. $1.50.
This is a collection and study of nursery rhymes and play most prevalent among
mothers of young children 75 years ago. Many of them are still counted among the
greatest nursery favorites. Each play rhyme is accompanied by a full-page illustra-
tion and a motto which aims to point the moral that deep meaning oft lies hid in
childish play." Invaluable as this collection and its commentaries are to mothers,
it is indispensable to kindergartners and teachers, and is used as the major text-
book in training courses.
My little boy. CARL EWALD. (A. T. Mattas, translator.) New York, Scrib-
ner's, 1906. 120 p. $1.
The author of this volume has also written a series of fairy tales and other
psychological and half-mystical stories which have been translated from the Danish.
Even in the translation the reader is charmed by the simplicity both of story and
style. This sketch is based entirely upon personal experience and observation of
his own and other children and gives a sweet dignity to childhood very rare and
beautiful.
National Society for the Study of Education. Yearbooks. Chicago, Univer-
sity of Chicago Press. 75 cts. each.
Sixth Yearbook, Part II.-The kindergarten and its relation to elementary educa-
tion. 42 p.
Seventh Yearbook, Part II.-The coordination of the kindergarten and
the elementary school. Ninth Yearbook, Part II.-The nurse in education. Tenth
Yearbook, Part I.-The city school as a community center. Twelfth Yearbook, Part
I. Supervision of city schools. Fourteenth Yearbook, Part I.-Methods of meas-
uring the teachers' efficiency.
Normal child and primary education (The). ARNOLD S. GESELL and BEATRICE
C. GESELL. Boston, Ginn [1912]. 342 p. $1.25.
Written for the elementary teacher and “other traditional guardians of children.
mothers, aunts, some fathers, supervisors. and child-study and reading circles, with
the purpose of raising the standard of normality in children.” It includes: Part I.
A historical introduction; Part II. The genetic background; Part III. The pedagogy
of the primary school; and Part IV. The conservation of child life.
Notes on child study. EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE.
sity Press, 1903. 157 p. $1.
New York, Columbia Univer-
A series of studies originally prepared for class use. Designed to give students
an insight into the facts that are of significance in the child's development, and of
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
11
practical importance in dealing with children. The studies are so organized as to
show how valid general conclusions may be derived from observed facts, and how
these may be applied. They therefore indicate methods of inquiry and aid in
determining the value of studies already made. Each chapter contains suggestions
for practical work.
Nursery ethics. FLORENCE HULL WINTERBURN. New York, Doubleday, Page
& Co. [1895]. 241 p. $1.
This little volume is just what the title implies. It is very wise and sane advice
to parents and guardians and, as the author says, "the principle underlying every
line is that of justice to children.” Some of the chapter headings are: The right
attitude of parents; The natural limitations of authority; Demand obedience to
circumstances, not to personal force.
On the training of parents.
ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT.
Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1908. 140 p. $1.
In this little book the author deals in a very practical manner with some of the
problems of childhood in the home. The value of habit and imagination in rela-
tion to discipline; the training of the will; the adjusting of the child to his environ-
ment and early formation of religious habits are some of the subjects discussed.
Philosophy and psychology of the kindergarten (The). JAMES E. RUSSELL,
J. A. MCVANNEL, and EDWARD L. THORNDIKE. New York, Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1903. 76 p.
76 p. (Teachers' College Record.) 30 cts.
The portion of this book by Dr. McVannel is an admirable survey of the philo-
sophic movement in which the kindergarten has its roots, and "a brief but more or
less systematic exposition of Froebel's view concerning the world and man in their
mutual relation, in order that by focusing attention upon these we may have before
us the philosophic basis of his educational doctrine and of those principles which
still survive as recognizable features in the educational theory of the present."
The portion by Dr. Thorndike is an excellent discussion of present-day psychology
and its bearing upon kindergarten procedure.
Philanthropy and social progress.
social progress. JANE ADDAMS. New York, Crowell, 1893.
268 p. $1.50.
Seven essays delivered before the School of Applied Ethics, 1892. CONTENTS.—
The subjective and objective necessity for social settlements, by Miss Addams; The
university settlement, by R. A. Woods; Philanthropy, its success and failure, and
Philanthropy and morality, by J. O. S. Huntington; The ethics of social progress,
by F. H. Giddings; The principles and chief dangers of the administration of
charity, by B. Bosanquet.
Play in education. JOSEPH LEE. New York, Macmillan, 1915. 494 p. $1.50.
The author aims in this book to present a true picture of the child rather than
discourse on the general theories of play or of education. He asserts that play is
a poor word to describe what is the chief business of child life; that play in the
child corresponds to what in grown people is called work, art, science, genius, etc.
The author follows Froebel as to the main characteristics of the successive stages
of growth and gives a set of human definitions of such terms as impulse, instinct,
habit, play, work, hunger, etc. The volume is rich with incidents taken from the
actual life of Mr. Lee's own children, and also from his wide experiences as a
leader in philanthropic and free kindergarten work in the city of Boston.
Play of animals (The). KARL GROOS. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1898.
341 p. $1.75.
The pages of this scientific study of the play impulses of animals are filled with
delightful stories and observations of animal life. The author, an authority in
psychology, has carefully analyzed the data with reference to the various theories of
play. He canvasses the surplus-energy theory and finds it an insufficient one.
He discusses the theory that play in animals and children is chiefly experimenting
preparatory to the serious business of later life. This was the first book that con-
cerned itself with the significance of play in physical and mental development and
it still leads the way for students of this subject.
12 ·
EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Play of man (The). KARL GROOS. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1901. 406 p.
$1.50.
This is the companion volume to The Play of Animals, and may be counted a
source book for the subject. Part I deals with "Playful experimentation," 160
pages being given to the playful activities of the sensory, motor, and mental powers.
Part II presents the playful exercise of social impulses, including, among others,
fighting, hunting, courting, imitating, and dramatizing play. Part III discusses fully
six viewpoints of the theory of play-the physiological, biological, psychological,
aesthetic, sociological, and pedagogical.
Problems of babyhood. RACHEL KENT FITZ and GEORGE WELLS FITZ. New
York, Holt, 1906. 127 p. $1.25.
An admirably clear presentation of the practical conclusions reached from the
standpoint of the physician, the teacher, the mother, and the father upon some of the
problems relating to building a constitution and forming a character.
Psychology of child development (The). IRVING KING. Chicago, The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1903. 265 p. $1.
"The purpose of these studies is to interpret as far as possible the phenomena of
mental development from the point of view of functional psychology." This point of
view emphasizes the intimate interrelation of all forms of mental activity, and seeks
to discover the causes, conditions, and after history of specific manifestations.
Psychology of thinking (The). IRVING ELGAR MILLER. New York, Macmillan,
1909. 303 p. $1.25.
A discussion of thinking from the biological and functional point of view. The
author's purpose is "to show the actual working of mind as it struggles with prob-
lems in the concrete life of the individual, the significance of the mental processes as
they are brought to bear upon these, and the growth in control over the forces of the
world and of life that comes through the development of the higher psychical. process
which we designate as thinking." The book is "written from a strong pedagogical
bias, and the educational bearing of the doctrines set forth has been indicated and
illustrated.'
School in the home (The). ADOLPH AUGUSTUS BERLE. New York, Moffatt,
Yard & Co., 1912. 210 p. $1.
A discussion of intensive child training for parents and teachers, dealing with
home training which is preliminary and supplementary to the school. The chapters.
following the introduction are: Language, the instrument of knowledge; Mind ferti-
lization; Questions and answers; The elimination of waste; Harnessing the imagi-
nation; Mental self-organization; Breeding intellectual ambition; The pleasures of
the mind.
Schools of to-morrow.
JOHN DEWEY and EVELYN DEWEY. New York, Dutton
[1915]. 316 p. $1.50.
The purpose of the book is to show what happens when some of the more widely
recognized and accepted views of educational reformers are actually applied. Among
the schools selected for purposes of illustration are Mrs. Johnson's school at Fair-
hope, Ala.; the Francis Parker School, Chicago; the elementary school of the Univer-
sity of Missouri, at Columbia; the Gary schools; and some public schools in Indian-
apolis and Chicago.
Sensitive child (The), as revealed in some talks with a little boy. KATE
Whiting PATCH. New York, Moffat, Yard & Co., 1910. 93 p. 75 cts.
This book contains suggestions for dealing with children of the sensitive type, in
the form of talks between a mother and a little boy. It touches upon such problems
as the physical care needed, the dispelling of fear, the development of the creative
impulse, and the mysteries of birth and death as they present themselves to the child.
Sketches of Froebel's life and times. NATIONAL KINDERGARTEN ASSOCIATION.
New York, Bradley, 1914. 194 p. $1.
This volume contains four sketches: (1) Education, by Froebel, taken from John
Jay Chapman's "Causes and Consequences." (2) In Keilhau, the account given by
Georg Ebers of his own school life at Keilhau with Froebel. (3) Infant Gardens,
written by Charles Dickens in 1855, and reprinted as a chapter by James L. Hughes
in the volume called "Dickens as an educator." (4) Girlhood days at Keilhau,
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
13
translated from letters written by a niece of Froebel to her parents, telling all her
personal experiences in the early days of kindergartening. These sketches are re-
published for the purpose of emphasizing the idealism of Froebel. In the introduc-
tion Dr. P. P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, declares:
"In a
time when there is danger of overemphasis on the trade school and narrow prepara-
tion for vocational efficiency alone, there is need that we refresh ourselves with the
call of Froebel's high aim."
Social service and the art of healing. RICHARD M. CABOT. New York, Moffat,
Yard & Co., 1912. 192 p. $1.
This is a very readable little book, and shows how medical, social, and educational
work may be drawn together for the public good through the teamwork of physi-
cian, teacher, and social worker. The doctor can not give a true diagnosis of a dis-
ease until he knows the home and industrial conditions, as well as the moral and
spiritual influences, that may be at work.
Song of life (A). MARGARET WERNER MORLEY. Chicago, McClurg, 1899. 155 p.
$1.25.
An unusually attractive book, which tells in an artistic as well as scientific way
how everything springs from the egg-the world's cradle.” It is literally the song
of life and the story of how life reproduces its kind in flower, fish, frog, bird, and
the mammal of the higher order. This book is suitable for young people as well as
for parents and teachers. It helps to create the right attitude toward the subject of
reproduction, and at the same time furnishes the wonderful facts of nature's proc-
esses in a manner which appeals to every healthy, growing mind.
Songs and music of Friedrich Froebel's mother play. Prepared and arranged
by SUSAN E. BLOW. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1898. 272 p.
272 p. $1.50.
This volume contains portions of Froebel's comprehensive mother play book, which
is suitable for nursery use. It contains reproductions of the original pictures and
the words of 59 songs, many of which are transcribed from the old folk rhymes
originally collected by Froebel. Many of these are set to newer music. These songs
are widely used by kindergartners, mothers, and teachers, and are adaptable for
finger plays and circle games. The subject matter of the songs concerns itself with
the finer experiences of child life which have poetic value and spiritual meaning.
The poems and songs of the mother play are justly classed as Volk literature.
Street land, its little people and big problems. PHILIP DAVIS and GRACE
KROLL. Boston, Small, Maynard & Co., 1915. 291 p. $1.35.
""
A vivid portrayal of the hazards of the street, the only playground of 95 per
cent of the children of most American cities.' The purpose of the book is to stimu-
late the movement to provide safer and saner environment for city children.
graphy of exceptional value.
Studies of childhood. JAMES SULLY. London, Longmans, 1903. 527 p.
Biblio-
$2.50.
Prof. Sully brings to his task the wisdom of a philosopher combined with the sym-
pathetic insight of a lover of children, and the result is a fascinating record of his
own observations and those of other parents, of the mental development of children.
The age of imagination; The dawn of reason; Raw material of morality, and the
child as artist are some of the chapter headings.
Study of child life (A). MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE. Chicago, American
School of Home Economics, 1907. 183 p.
183 p. $1.50.
Published by the American School of Household Economics. Among the subjects
discussed are: Development of the child, Faults and their remedies, Character build-
ing, and Art and literature in child life.
Symbolic education. SUSAN E. BLOW.
251 p. $1.50.
New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1897.
This volume of eight chapters is a commentary on Froebel's educational writings.
It is a philosophic interpretation of idealism as presented by Froebel, for home and
nursery guidance. Development from within is the key note and every aspect of this
idea is fully presented, restated, and discussed by Miss Blow until the volume as a
whole becomes a valuable survey of the social philosophy of Froebel and his followers.
The text is illustrated with quotations from poet and thinker, and also from the con-
vincing experiences of little children. Such single chapters as "Pattern experiences?
and Symbolism of childhood" teem with valuable material for the inspiration of
parent and educator.
14
EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Study of child nature from the kindergarten standpoint (A). ELIZABETH
HARRISON. Chicago, The Chicago Kindergarten Training School, 1891.
207 p. $1.
The author states that this study is made from the kindergarten standpoint; a
series of talks originally given for mothers and teachers, rich in anecdote and per-
sonal experience. The studies aim to strengthen a mother's natural instinct as to
what is right for her children into clear insight. The chapters are grouped into
three parts, dealing with the training of the body, the mind, and the soul.
The child, his thinking, feeling, and doing. AMY ELIZA TANNER. Chicago,
Rand McNally, 1904. 430 p. (Revised, 1916.)
1916.) $1.25.
"A summary of the important work done thus far, in child study." It includes
study of the physical nature of the child, his mental growth, his feelings, and emo-
tions, and the expression of thoughts and feelings through speech, play, drawing, and
music. Full lists of references follow many chapters.
Theory and practice of teaching art. ARTHUR WESLEY Dow. New York,
Teachers College, Columbia University [1908]. 37 p. $1.
A brief, somewhat technical account of a two-years' course in art given at Teach-
ers' College, Columbia University. It is a reaction from the academic method to one
based on the three fundamental principles of the space arts; line, dark, and light,
and color. The aim is the development of skill and appreciation of the beautiful
which the author feels is sadly lacking in modern life. The book is fully illustrated
with reproductions of students' work.
Training of children in religion (The). GEORGE HODGES.
Appleton & Co., 1912. 328 p. $1.50.
New York, D.
This book deals with the religious (not the ethical) education of children up to the
age of 15 years. "It is one thing to understand the difference between good and
evil, but an altogether different thing to refuse the evil and to choose the good."
Dean Hodges feels that parents are often called upon to practice not only domestic
medicine but domestic theology. In the practice of domestic medicine they may find
many helpful books, but similar assistance in theology is less accessible. Hence, the
purpose of several chapters is to suggest parental answers for the child. Chapter IX
gives a series of prayers for the different days of the week which may be memorized.
Two children of the foothills.
Chicago, Sigma Pub-
lishing Co. [1900]. 294 p.
ELIZABETH HARRISON.
$1.25.
A record of a year spent with two children, aged 4 and 6, in the foothills of Call-
fornia, showing how the principles of Froebel's mother play may be applied in simple,
everyday home life.
The last two chapters discuss "The science of motherhood" and "The value of
the ideals set forth in the mother play book."
What is it to be educated? C. HANFORD HENDERSON. New York, Houghton
Mifflin, 1914. 462 p. $1.50.
"A thought-provoking and stimulating discussion of the true basis and spirit of
education; illustrated by practical details of the author's experiments as an educator.
Appeals to parents and teachers and all thoughtful persons."
When children err; a book for young mothers.
ELIZABETH HARRISON, Chi-
cago, The National Kindergarten College, 1916. 177 p.. $1.
"A book for mothers," but valuable for anyone who has to do with the training of
children. It treats of moral standards, of various types of punishment, natural,
retributive, and educative, and offers suggestions for the avoidance of the need of
punishment.
Your child to-day and to-morrow. SIDONIE MATZNER GRuenberg.
phia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1913. 234 p. Illus. $1.25.
Philadel-
Discusses problems concerning punishment, reasoning, lies, ideals, and ambitions,
fear, work and play, imagination, social activities, obedience, adolescence, will,
heredity, with a foreword by Bishop John H. Vincent.
LB
114!
JUN
6 1924
U58 Kindergarten Circular No. 7.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR,
BUREAU OF EDUCATION,
WASHINGTON, D. C.
December, 1921.
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
(Compiled by the literature subcommittee of the Bureau of Education Committee of
the International Kindergarten Union, Amalie Hofer Jerome, chairman.)
INTRODUCTION.
The selection of the accompanying list of books and monographs on child
development was undertaken in response to a demand emanating from a read-
ing public which exists quite outside of school or professional circles. The list
includes also a number of books that give the modern viewpoint in general
education or special phases of educational work. When several books cover the
same field the preference has been given to the more authoritative and readable
ones.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
All the children of all the people. WILLIAM HAWLEY SMITH. New York, Mac-
millan Co., 1912. 646 p.
"The task of trying to educate everybody, in which our public schools are en-
gaged, has proved to be far more difficult than the originators of the idea of such a
This is
possibility thought it would be when they set out upon this undertaking."
the general problem which the author discusses with keenness and practical wisdom.
American child (The). ELIZABETH MCCRACKEN. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1913. 190 p.
An appreciation of the American child illustrated with beautiful photographs by
Alice Austin. The author discusses the following topics: The child at home; the
child at play; the country child; the child in school; the child in the library; the
child in the church.
Aspects of child life and education. G. STANLEY HALL and T. L. SMITH, eds.
Boston, Ginn & Co., 1907. 321 p.
A series of papers upon topics pertaining to child study that are of practical and
popular interest. Chapters deal with Contents of children's minds; Psychology of
The discus-
daydreams; Curiosity and interest; Collecting and ownership impulses.
sion of dolls opens up a new field of interest to mothers and one that is important
and significant to psychology and pedagogy.
Beckonings from little hands.
1895. 166 p.
PATTERSON DU BOIS. Philadelphia, Wattles,
A father's appre-
The book is unusual in
Contains eight prose chapters, an introduction, and iwo poems.
ciation of the spiritual and emotional lives of his children.
its appeal for a more sympathetic and tender regard for the personality of young
children. Of interest to parents and all lovers of children.
Beginners' book in religion (The). EDNA DEAN BAKER. Chicago, Abingdon
Press, 1921. 271 p.
This book is intended primarily for teachers of beginners' classes in Sunday
The first part consists
schools but its suggestions are valuable for the home also.
of a discussion of the young child and his religion on the present child-study basis,
and the second of a series of lessons to be worked out during the year in the spirit
and method of the kindergarten. The suggestions for carrying those out include
appropriate songs, stories, pictures, and other material.
76689°—21
2
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
D
Biography of a baby (The).
ton Mifflin Co., 1900. 247 p.
66
MILLICENT WASHBURN SHINN. Boston, Hough-
(Riverside Press.)
This very entertaining volume, which is a careful study of the author's own niece
through her first year, is in reality an accurate and quite exhaustive record of the
Process of becoming." "A fresh copy of the whole history of the race is written
out every time an infant is conceived and born and grows to manhood.” Miss Shinn
has made of this study "a drama that sometimes catches one's breath in the throat
with excitement and wonder,' This book is now out of print, but may be obtained
in public libraries.
29
Care and training of children. LE GRAND KERR. New York, Funk & Wagnalls,
1910. 233 p.
Some of the topics treated are: Education at home and in the kindergarten;
Relations of parents to children; Punishments; Moral failings of nervous children;
The child's literature and friends; Amusements; and The question of sex.
Career of the child (The). MAXIMILIAN P. E. GROSZMANN. Boston, R. G.
Badger, The Gordon Press, 1911.
A discussion of educational principles, methods, and material, based at every step
upon consideration of the individual child, his interests, activities, and needs. It is
the outgrowth of extended and varied experience and familiarity with the collective
results of scientific child study.
Changing conceptions of education. ELWOOD PATTERSON CUBBERLEY. Boston,
Houghton Mifflin Co. [1909]. 69 p. (Riverside educational monographs.)
"An excellent brief survey of the evolution of our educational ideals from Colonial
times to the present, including the story of the rise and growth of our public-school
system, and discussing the kind of education needed to meet the demands of a mixed
population and an increasingly complex mode of life."
Child life and the curriculum. JUNIUS L. MERRIAM. Yonkers-on-Hudson, N. Y.,
World Book Co., 1921. 538 p.
This is a discussion of the newer types of educational procedure as worked out
in the elementary school of the University of Missouri. The author justifies the
theories advanced because they are based on more than a dozen years of experience.
The book contains an excellent chapter on tests and measurements, adequate in-
formation on the causes of children's withdrawal from school and related problems,
and a very good bibliography.
Child nature and child nurture. EDWARD PORTER ST. JOHN. Boston, The Pil-
grim Press [1911]. 106 p.
A textbook for parents' classes, workers' clubs, and training teachers, dealing with
the instincts that are associated with the young child's physical and moral life.
Nervousness, fear, anger, altruism, courtesy, honesty, and ownership are some of the
topics considered, with carefully selected references for a fuller discussion of these
same topics.
Child psychology. VILHELM RASMUSSEN. London, Cyldendal, 11 Burleigh St.,
Covent Garden, 1913.
These three small volumes on child psychology contain a series of fresh observa-
tions on child life which are a great addition to the litereature on this subject. The
author discusses various aspects of the child's development from birth through what
is usually known as the kindergarten period. He treats of such subjects as
4.4 The
emotions in the first year," and "The child's thinking and morals." The second volume
contains a most interesting chapter on "The child's drawing
"" which is illustrated
with drawings made between the ages of 2 and 7 years. He emphasizes the value of
natural development and is a little sceptical of specially devised methods of testing
children's powers or of attempts to guide children's interests and tastes in definite
directions.
}
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
3
Child training an exact science. GEORGE W. JACOBY. New York, Funk & Wag-
nalls, 1914. Illus.
A treatise based on the principles of modern psychology, medicine, and hygiene.
Its purpose is to show the dependence of vital psychic manifestations upon physical
processes; to give to teachers sufficient understanding of "medico-pedagogic" prob-
lems to enable them to distinguish between normal and atypical cases, and to co-
operate efficiently with physicians in securing for the individual child the education
best suited to his needs.
Children of the future (The). NORA ARCHIBALD SMITH.
Mifflin Co. 165 p.
Boston, Houghton
Discusses the function of the kindergarten from the standpoint of the need for a
study of each child's individual character, the use of stories, work, and play in the
development of the child's higher nature. Especially good for kindergarten students
and mothers.
Children's rights.
1892. 235 p.
KATE DOUGLAS WIGGIN.
Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
A practical and delightful book for mothers, treating of The rights of the child,
Children's plays, Children's playthings, Children's stories, What shall children read?
The relation of the kindergarten to social reform, How shall we govern our chil-
dren? The magic of "together," The relation of the kindergarten to the public
schools, and Other people's children.
Coming generation (The). WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSH. New York, D. Apple-
ton & Co., 1912. 402 p.
Discusses concisely and simply the forces at work to make better the lives of the
young people of America. The first part emphasizes the need of training of parents;
the second deals with the life and health of the child; the third with education; the
The book is
fifth with the influence of religious and social nurture and service.
easy to read, offers illustrations from life, and gives a list of reference at the end
of each chapter.
Conservation of the child (The). ARTHUR HOLMES. Philadelphia, J. B. Lip-
pincott Co., 1912. 345 p.
Describes the examination and treatment of backward children in psychological
clinics. Interesting and valuable to teachers, physicians, or others with a sufficient
background of knowledge and interest to appreciate the material.
Constructive and preventive philanthropy. JOSEPH LEE. New York, Mac-
millan Co., 1902.
242 p.
In the first
Contains 16 chapters in addition to an introduction by Jacob Riis.
chapter the author states the aim of constructive and preventive philanthropy
as the "
fostering of life" through "the protection and cultivation of the spiritual
Some means
elements in individuals and communities whom it seeks to benefit.'
to this end are savings and loans, health and building laws, vacation schools, play-
grounds, and industrial education.
The book is written from the viewpoint of the social worker who believes in
helping the individual to help himself and that the community grows through the
efforts of its individual members united and inspired by a common purpose.
Course for beginners in religion. MARY E. RANKIN.
Sons, 1917. 236 p.
New York, Scribner's.
This book is the outgrowth of an effort to apply present-day ideas of child training
to the work of the Sunday school with children of kindergarten age. It discusses the
aims of the work, the equipment needed, and the methods of using the customary
It gives
agencies-songs, pictures, prayers, stories, and handwork for religious ends.
a series of topics for the different seasons, and shows how these should be worked
out. It is very suggestive and practical.
4
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
•
Democracy and education.
and education. An introduction to the philosophy of education.
JOHN DEWEY. New York, Macmillan Co., 1916.
The book embodies, as Dr. Dewey says, an endeavor to detect and state the ideas
implied in a democratic society and to apply these icdas to the problems of the
enterprise of education." The philosophy set forth in the book connects the growth
of democracy with the development of the experimental idea in the sciences, evolu-
tionary ideas in the biological sciences, and the industrial reorganization. It
endeavors to point out the changes in subject matter and method of education
indicated by these developments.
Dickens as an educator. JAMES LAUGHLIN HUGHES. New York, D. Appleton
& Co., 1906. 319 p.
"6
The author aims to present Dickens as the greatest educator England has ever
produced, in that he defended the nature, instincts. and normal tendencies of
childhood against inhuman institutions and systems. He opened the heart of the
English reading world to the "new education." To this end the works of Dickens
are reviewed and generous excerpts illustrate the chapters: Cramming," Natural
depravity," and "The training of poor, neglected, and defective children." The
author says:
"Froebel revealed the true philosophy and Dickens gave it wings."
Education and social progress. ALEXANDER MORGAN. London, Longmans, 1916.
252 p.
Aims to present some of the wider aspects of education and to show that, since
the "whole gamut of human capacity is represented in the children," their educa-
tion is the most important form of social endeavor. It is based upon a study of
conditions in England, but the conclusions are largely of universal import.
Education by plays and games.
1907. 234 p.
George EllswORTH JOHNSON. Boston, Ginn,
This volume is designed to help parents and teachers utilize play in the training
of children. It gathers up the theory and history of play in education in a conciso
but readable way, placing emphasis upon the periods of development. The course of
plays and games is outlined with distinct reference to these periods, which the
author casts as follows: First 3 years; ages 4 to 6; ages 7 to 9; ages 10 to 12;
ages 13 to 15.
Education in religion and morals. GEORGE ALBERT COE. Chicago, Revell & Co.,
1904. 434 p.
An interesting and valuable discussion of the problems of moral and religious
education. The author shows that the present-day conception of the child as a
thinking, feeling, and acting unity implies a development of the moral and religious
consciousness, and that education can not be considered complete without such
development. The discussion of the type of education of which this development is
an organic part is suggestive, practical, and inspiring.
Education through play. HENRY S. CURTIS. New York, Macmillan Co., 1915.
Illus.
A book for parents, teachers, and playground directors. It discusses theories of
play; the relation of play to the training of the intellect and the formation of habits
and character; playgrounds, their construction, equipment, and care; and the
qualifications and training of playground directors. The author finds the solution
of the play problem in putting play into the curriculum of our schools. A bibliog-
raphy follows each chapter.
Education of man (The). FRIEDRICH FROEBEL. Translated from the German
and annotated by W. N. Hailmann. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1903.
340 p.
This work of Froebel was first published in 1826. It is an inspiring account of
how human society may find itself through education. It is a general survey of the
education of mankind as a whole and includes a discussion of theory, practice, and
methods suitable to the different stages of childhood, boyhood, and manhood. The
last chapter urges the educational value of religious maxims, physiology, poetry,
nature study, dramatic expression, modeling, drawing, color study and painting, plays
and games, story-telling, excursions and walks, and, last in the list, arithmetic, read-
ing, and writing. The book concludes with a discussion of all-sided development, the
true aim of education.
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
5
Education through experience. MABEL R. GOODLAUDER. New York City, Bu-
reau of Educational Experiments, 16 W. 18th St., 1921.
This bulletin describes in detail an experiment carried on in the primary grades
of the Ethical Culture School, New York City, for four years. Its purpose was to
show that the newer types of education can be carried on under the usual school
conditions, and the value of these as compared with the traditional type.
Educative process (The). WILLIAM CHANDLER BAGLEY. New York, Macmillan
Co., 1905. 358 p.
66
A systematic and comprehensive view of the task to be accomplished by the school,
based upon the conception of education as a process by means of which the indi-
vidual acquires experiences that will function in rendering more efficient his future
action."
It deals with principles considered under these general heads: Functions
of education, The acquisition of experience, The functioning of experience, The
organization and recall of experience, The selection of experiences for educational
purposes, The transmission of experience, and The technique of teaching.
Elementary school standards.
FRANK M. MCMURRY. Yonkers-on-Hudson,
N. Y., World Book Co., 1913. 218 p.
In the New York City school inquiry, completed in 1913, it was Dr. McMurry's
task to estimate the quality of the teaching, the course of study, and the super-
vision by the principals of the elementary schools. Four tests were applied: 1,
Motive on the part of pupils; 2, consideration of values by pupils: 3, attention to
organization by pupils; 4, initiative by pupils. The significance of these standards
and their application to instruction, courses of study, and supervision are pre-
sented in "Elementary school standards."
Experimental studies in kindergarten theory and practice. PATTY S. HILL,
ed. New York, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1914. 70 p.
Includes the following papers: Reasoning in childhood, by Dr. John Dewey;
Development of reasoning in young children, by Meredith Smith; Play motive and
experimental method in kindergarten occupations, by Grace L. Brown; Use of
materials in kindergarten, by Julia W. Abbott; Principles underlying the organiza-
tion of kindergarten materials, and The gifts, by Luella A. Palmer.
Froebel as a pioneer in modern psychology. E. R. MURRAY.
Phillip & Son, 1914. 230 p.
London, G.
The author shows by passages from Froebel's writings that Froebel was not only
fully aware of the necessity for a psychological basis for his educational theories,
but that on many points now regarded as fundamental, and generally recognized as
modern, his views are in accord with those of such psychologists as Stout, Ward,
Lloyd Morgan, Irving King; and others.
Froebel's educational laws for all teachers. JAMES L. HUGHES. New York,
D. Appleton & Co., 1900. 296 p.
In this book the author gives a simple exposition of the most important principles
of Froebel's educational philosophy and shows how they may be applied to the
work of the schoolroom, contains chapters on Self-activity, Play, Control and spon-
taneity, and Froebel's ethical principles.
From Locke to Montessori. WILLIAM BOYD. London, G. G. Harrap, 1914.
271 p.
A study of the historical development of the ideas fundamental to the Montessori
system, followed by a critical study of the method, etc., principles, and its results.
CHARLES HUBBARD JUdd. New York, D.
Genetic psychology for teachers.
Appleton & Co., 1903. 329 p. (International education series.)
A series of lecture-discussions on phases of genetic psychology that bear upon the
work of the elementary school. "The first five chapters present various aspects of
the idea of development. The last five seek to apply these principles to the specific
work of elementary education." The author interprets education as the process by
which experiences are given a meaning, and shows the part that individuality,
environment, adaptation, and expression play in the developmental process. IIabit
formation is discussed in its relation to the teaching of reading, writing, and
number.
6
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
•
Growth and education. JOHN MASON TYLER. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co.,
1907. 294 p.
A valuable book for parents and teachers on the bodily growth and development
of children, with a discussion of educational agencies for each period of childhood
and youth. Subjects of special interest to people having the care of little children
are the following: Chapter II, Man in the light of evolution; Chapter X, The kinder-
garten period; Chapter XI, The child entering school; Chapter XIV, The place of
play in education.
Guidebook to childhood. A handbook for members of the American Institute
of Child Life. WILLIAM BYRON FORBUSII, assisted by various authorities.
Philadelphia, American Institute of Child Life, 1913. 236 p.
Part I, Outline of child life, with discussion of problems physical, mental, social,
and moral. Part II, A guide to child training, containing answers to parents' ques-
tions upon a wide range of problems and a list of books for parents and teachers,
with descriptions.
Helping school children. ELSA DENISON. New York, Harper & Bros., 1912.
351 p.
A report of an investigation made under the direction of the Bureau of Municipal
Research of New York into the work done by various agencies in 400 cities in
cooperation with the public schools. Women's clubs, medical societies, dental asso-
ciations, and chambers of commerce have found ways of supplementing the work
of the schools.
Homemade kindergarten (The). NORA A. SMITH. Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1912. 116 p.
A delightful little book for mothers, containing practical suggestions for directing
the work and play of their children according to practical kindergarten methods.
The chapters deal with Outdoor work and play; Indoor work and play; Stories,
games, and songs,
How shall I tell my child? MARY W. A. CHAPMAN, New York, Revell & Co.,
1912. 62 p.
A comprehensive book dealing in a direct, practical, and satisfactory way with a
child's questions concerning the origin of life. Some of the chapters are: Why I
should tell my child; At what age; How to tell a child; When a child has heard;
A wrong habit formed; At the adolescent period.
How to know your child. MIRIAM FINN SCOTT. Boston, Little, Brown & Co.,
1915. 316 p.
In the preface Mrs. Scott says: "If this book has any purpose, if my life has any
aim, it is to try to tell mothers and fathers what children have told me; to try to
interpret children to their parents; to try to help parents to see the vast riches,
hitherto but dimly seen or perhaps not perceived at all, which exist unutilized in
their children; and to try to help parents recognize and develop this wasted human
wealth." It is a book of practical advice, made clear by concrete examples, pre-
sented sympathetically, interestingly, and simply enough to reach the majority of
mothers.
How we think. JOIN DEWEY. Boston, D. C. Heath & Co., 1910. 224 p.
An epoch-making book in education. The author points out the vital need of what
he calls "scientific thinking." Examining the reason for one's common beliefs and
opinions leads to scientific thinking. The 16 chapters discuss the needs, resources,
conditions, and means of training thought; induction, deduction, judgment, concrete
and abstract thinking; the relation of activity, language, and observation to the
training of thought.
Individual in the making (The). E. A. KIRKPATRICK. Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Co. [1911]. 339 p.
This work is intended to meet the needs of parents and teachers who have had
little training in psychology"; to offer to the educator, parent, or teacher a chart,
more or less complete, by which "to guide the child into the most favoring channels
and past the most serious dangers that are found in each stage of development from
childhood to maturity."
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
7
Kindergarten children's hour (The). Set of five volumes. LUCY WHEELOCK,
ed. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1920.
This is a set of five volumes intended to aid mothers in carrying the spirit and
The first volume
method of the kindergarten into children's play life in the home.
treats of stories for little children; the second, of children's occupations; the third,
of talks to children; the fourth, of talks to mothers; and the fifth, of songs and
The volumes are not
music. Each volume is the outgrowth of a large experience.
sold separately.
Kindergarten curriculum (The). Washington, D. C., Superintendent of Doc-
uments, Government Printing Office, 1919. 74 p. (U. S. Bureau of Edu-
cation. Bulletin, 1919, no. 16.)
This curriculum was worked out on the basis of current educational thought by
a subcommittee of the Bureau of Education Committee of the International Kinder-
garten Union. It contains chapters on subject-matter, manual activities, art, lan-
guage, literature, plays and games, and music. Each chapter gives the aims of the
line of work in question, a discussion of the methods to be employed, the attain-
ments to be sought, and an excellent bibliography.
Kindergarten in American education (The). NINA C. VANDEWALKER.
York, Macmillan Co., 1908. 274 p.
New
It takes the
This book is a survey of kindergarten progress in the United States.
view that the kindergarten is the educational expression of the principles upon
which American institutions are based and proceeds to give an accurate and com-
The 12 chapters review
prehensive account of the first 50 years of the movement.
the beginnings and early extension of the kindergarten, including publications and
books; the kindergarten as promoted by church, Sunday schools, missions, women's
clubs and settlements, and general child-welfare work; the kindergarten in the
public-school system and its influence upon elementary education; progressive tend-
encies in the direction of child study and psychology.
Kindergarten in the home (The). CARRIE S. NEWMAN. Boston, L. C. Page &
Co., 1909. 259 p.
Written especially for mothers, but containing a message for all interested in
child training. It presents in a very simple, practical, and attractive form some of
the vital truths underlying Froebel's system of education. Emphasis is upon simple
ways of solving some of the problems of the child's mental and spiritual life.
Kindergarten principles and practice. KATE DOUGLASS WIGGIN and NORA
ARCHIBALD SMITH. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1896. 205 p.
Discusses the American embodiment of Froebel's system of education in a simple,
untechnical way. It contains much wit and wisdom. Good for mothers or begin-
ners in the study of the kindergarten.
Letters to a mother on the philosophy of Froebel.
York, D. Appleton & Co., 1899. 311 p.
SUSAN E. BLOW. New
The letters are addressed to the mother of the boy Harold and frankly aim to
share with her the insights and methods which the kindergarten has drawn from
Froebel's mother play book. The emphasis is placed on the philosophy of life and
society which Froebel has set up as a background for the young to react against.
The volume contains nine chapters, each of which takes one or more of the original
"mother plays" for its text, shows their equivalents in different current theories,
and seeks to promote the value of the poetic rather than the realistic influences in
life.
Linguistic development and education.
York, Macmillan Co., 1907. 347 p.
MICHAEL VINCENT O'SHEA, New
Part 1
Contains 13 chapters, general bibliography, footnotes, and subject index.
deals with the nonreflective processes in linguistic development; part 2 with the
reflective processes. The special value of the book lies in the organization of mate-
rial from scattered articles and treatises in a way to make it available for edu-
cators.
8
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Literature in the elementary schools. PORTER LANDER MACCLINTOCK. Chi-
cago, University of Chicago Press, 1913.
305 p.
A practical book, comprising a full-course outline for literature for children from
the kindergarten to the eighth grade. It discusses in charming style the story,
choice of stories, folk tale and fairy story, myth, poetry, and drama. It is equally
a guide for literature out of school and for children's reading other than literature.
Love and law in child training. EMILIE POULSSON. Springfield, Mass., Brad-
ley, 1899. 235 p.
In this book for mothers Miss Poulsson applies kindergarten principles in home
education, giving many helpful suggestions for the training of young children.
Some of the questions considered are the following: Ilow play educates the baby;
From nursery to kindergarten; Early virtues; A few hints on keeping Christmas;
The Santa Claus question.
Meaning of education and other essays and addresses.
NICHOLAS MURRAY
BUTLER. New York, Macmillan Co., 1905. New ed. 230 p.
A series of able and scholary essays and addresses on various aspects of educa-
tion, the nature of which is indicated by the titles of the chapters: The meaning
of education; What knowledge is of most worth; Is there a new education? and
Democracy and education. The last three chapters are on The American college
and the American university; The function of the secondary school; and The reform
of secondary education in the United States. Of special interest to principals and
superintendents.
Meaning of infancy (The). JOHN FISKE. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1909.
(Riverside educational monographs.)
49 p.
In two chapters, with an introduction by the editor, Henry Suzzallo, and an
outline. Together these papers set forth in a clearer and more detailed manner the
biological interpretation of childhood and education than can be found elsewhere.
Montessori method (The).
Stokes Co., 1912. 377 p.
Dr. MARIA MONTESSORI. New York, Frederick A.
A complete presentation of the Montessori system of education, including a
description of the didactic material and specific directions for its use. The method
emphasizes the attitude of scientific observation for the teacher, discipline founded
on liberty, conditions favoring the development of the entire individuality of the
child, education of the senses as of prime importance, and "spontaneous writing"
as a practical result.
Montessori method examined. WILLIAM HEARD KILPATRICK. Boston, Hough-
ton Mifflin Co., 1914. 71 p.
The purpose of the monograph, as stated by Dr. Kilpatrick, is to examine the
doctrines promulgated by Dr. Montessori so as, first, to bring out their relations to
one another and to other similar doctrines elsewhere held; and, second, to ascer-
tain, as far as the author may, the contributions which Dr. Montessori has to offer
to American education. The chapters on "The doctrine of liberty
" and 66 Sense
training by means of the didactic apparatus" are of special interest.
Montessori mother (A). DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER. New York, Henry Holt
& Co., 1912. 240 p.
The author writes for American mothers from the standpoint of a mother.
theme is the possibility of adapting the Montessori system for American children.
She spent some time in Rome studying, and from her personal observations pictures
the school in the Casa dei Bambini and describes the didactic materials. The book
contains also a discussion of the philosophy of the system and its application to
American home life.
Moral education.
352 p.
Her
EDWARD HOWARD GRIGGS. New York, B. W. Huebsch, 1913.
A clear delineation of characteristics which distinguish various stages in child
development and ways presented to meet them which will make "possible the
happiest and most healthful living."
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
9
Moral instruction of children (The). FELIX ADLER. New York, D. Appleton
& Co. 1901. 278 p.
Discusses practical nonsectarian methods for the moral training of children. Em-
phasizes the responsibility of the public schools for teaching filial, fraternal, and
civic duties and awakening the moral consciousness.
Mother artist (The). JANE DEARBORN MILLS. Boston, Palmer Co., 1904.
This book presents some of the problems that parents must solve as their
children advance from stage to stage in their development. The discussion of the
ways in which the problems mentioned were met show an admirable insight into
the principles of child development and the spirit in which these are to be
applied to secure right results.
Mothers and children. DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER. New York, Henry Holt &
Co., 1914. 285 p.
A very readable book, presenting in a sane, simple way the modern relationship of
parents and children and replete with many apt illustrations.
The book gives some very practical solutions for the problems discussed and lays
special emphasis upon the part the parent must play if the child is to be rightly
trained.
Mother love in action. PRUDENCE BRADISH. New York, Harper & Bros., 1919.
An excellent discussion of "the mother's job" by one who has tried to solve
the many problems involved in bringing children from babyhood to maturity.
The problems of babyhood, those pertaining to and growing out of children's
school life, and those pertaining to the period of adolescence are discussed with
fine insight and in a bright conversational style. The book is not only profitable
but delightful from start to finish.
Prose translated by SUSAN E.
316 p.
Mottoes and commentaries of Friedrich Froebel's mother play. Verse ren-
dered into English by HENRIETTA R. ELIOT.
BLOW. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1895.
This is a collection and study of nursery rhymes and play most prevalent among
mothers of young children 75 years ago. Many of them are still counted among the
greatest nursery favorites. Each play rhyme is accompanied by a full-page illustra-
tion and a motto which aims to point the moral that “deep meaning oft lies hid in
childish play." Invaluable as this collection and its commentaries are to mothers,
it is indispensable to kindergartners and teachers, and is used as the major text-
book in training courses.
My little boy. CARL EWALD. (A. T. Mattas, translator.)
ner's Sons, 1906. 120 p.
New York, Scrib-
The author of this volume has also written a series of fairy tales and other
psychological and half-mystical stories which have been translated from the Danish.
Even in the translation the reader is charmed by the simplicity both of story and
style. This sketch is based entirely upon personal experience and observation of
his own and other children and gives a sweet dignity to childhood very rare and
beautiful.
Normal child and primary education (The). ARNOLD L. GESELL and BEATRICE
C. GESELL. Boston, Ginn & Co. [1912]. 342 p.
Written for the elementary teacher and “other traditional guardians of children,
mothers, aunts, some fathers, supervisors, and child-study and reading circles, with
the purpose of raising the standard of normality in children." It includes: Part I.
A historical introduction; Part II. The genetic background; Part III. The pedagogy
of the primary school; and Part IV. The conservation of child life.
Notes on child study. EDWARD LEE THORNDIKE. New York, Columbia Univer-
sity Press, 1903. 157 p.
A series of studies originally prepared for class use. Designed to give students
an insight into the facts that are of significance in the child's development, and of
practical importance in dealing with children. The studies are so organized as to
show how valid general conclusions may be derived from observed facts, and how
these may be applied. They therefore indicate methods of inquiry and aid in
determining the value of studies already made. Each chapter contains suggestions
for practical work.
10
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD,
Nursery ethics.
FLORENCE HULL WINTERBURN. New York, Doubleday, Page
& Co. [1895]. 241 p.
This little volume is just what the title implies. It is very wise and sane advice
to parents and guardians and, as the author says, "the principle underlying every
line is that of justice to children." Some of the chapter headings are: The right
attitude of parents; The natural limitations of authority; Demand obedience to
circumstances, not to personal force.
Nursery school (The). MARGARET MCMILLAN. New York, E. P. Dutton & Co.,
1919. 356 p.
This book is an admirable description of the nursery school and the nursery-
school movement in England. The first part is devoted to a description of the
school, its scope, purpose, and equipment; and its work from the standpoint of
nurture as well as education. The second part is devoted to the training of nursery-
school teachers. It shows that such an institution was in process of evolution
before the passage of the Fisher Bill in 1918, because of the great need for it in
cities like London. The development of the movement will be watched with great
interest by all who see the importance of right beginnings.
Nursery school education. GRACE OWEN, ed. London, Methuen Co., limited,
1920. 176 p.
This is a discussion of the different aspects of the nursery schools of England
made possible by the passage of the Fisher Bill in 1918. The chapters on the aims
and functions of the school, a part of the chapter on the education it gives, and the
one on the staff and the training of the superintendents are written by the editor.
That on the mind of the child is by Olive A. Wheeler; a part of the one on the
education of the nursery-school child is by Margaret E. Egger, and the one on the
hygiene of the nursery school is by Catherine Chisholm, M. D. The book is a valu-
able contributions to the literature of this new movement.
On the training of parents.
Mifflin Co. 1908. 140 p.
ERNEST HAMLIN ABBOTT.
Boston, Houghton
In this little book the author deals in a very practical manner with some of the
problems of childhood in the home. The value of habit and imagination in rela-
tion to discipline; the training of the will; the adjusting of the child to his environ-
ment and early formation of religious habits are some of the subjects discussed.
LUELLA A. PALMER. Boston, Ginn & Co.,
Play life in the first eight years.
1916. 281 p.
This is a very complete study of the different types of children's play during the
years mentioned. In the first part, the author discusses plays which aid in the
development of the body, of social relations, of the hand and tongue as human tools,
and the interpretation of life; and in the second the environment, under the head-
ings the home, nature, the playground, and institutions. The book contains ex-
cellent suggestions for the use of the different types of play in these years.
Play way (The). H. CALDWELL COOK. New York, Frederich A. Stokes Co.,
1917. 367 p.
The subtitle "An essay on educational method "—gives the keynote of this book.
The author interprets play as the child's natural method of study. He holds that
since a child's life under his own direction is conducted in play, what we wish to
interest him in should be carried on in that medium or connected with play as
closely as possible. The book illustrates and elaborates this theory as applied to
education, in a most interesting and valuable way.
Philosophy and psychology of the kindergarten (The). JAMES E. RUSSELL,
J. A. MCVANNEL, and EDWARD L. THORNDIKE. New York, Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1903.
(Teachers' College Record.)
76 p.
The portion of this book by Dr. McVannel is an admirable survey of the philo-
sophic movement in which the kindergarten has its roots, and "a brief but more or
less systematic exposition of Froebel's view concerning the world and man in their
mutual relation, in order that by focusing attention upon these we may have before
us the philosophic basis of his educational doctrine and of those principles which
still survive as recognizable features in the educational theory of the present."
The portion by Dr. Thorndike is an excellent discussion of present-day psychology
and its bearing upon kindergarten procedure.
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
11
Philanthropy and social progress. JANE ADDAMS. New York, T. Y. Crowell &
Co., 1893. 268 p.
CONTENTS.-
Seven essays delivered before the School of Applied Ethics, 1892.
The subjective and objective necessity for social settlements, by Miss Addams; The
university settlement, by R. A. Woods; Philanthropy, its success and failure, and
Philanthropy and morality, by J. O. S. Huntington; The ethics of social progress,
by F. H. Giddings; The principles and chief dangers of the administration of
charity, by B. Bosanquet.
Play in education. JOSEPH LEE. New York, Macmillan Co., 1915. 494 p.
The author aims in this book to present a true picture of the child rather than
discourse on the general theories of play or of education. He asserts that play is
a poor word to describe what is the chief business of child life; that play in the
child corresponds to what in grown people is called work, art, science, genius, etc.
The author follows Froebel as to the main characteristics of the successive stages
of growth and gives a set of human definitions of such terms as impulse, instinct,
habit, play, work, hunger, etc. The volume is rich with incidents taken from the
actual life of Mr. Lee's own children, and also from his wide experiences as a
leader in philanthropic and free kindergarten work in the city of Boston.
Play of animals (The). KARL GROOs. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1898.
341 p.
The pages of this scientific study of the play impulses of animals are filled with
delightful stories and observations of animal life. The author, an authority in
psychology, has carefully analyzed the data with reference to the various theories of
play. He canvasses the surplus-energy theory" and finds it an insufficient one.
He discusses the theory that play in animals and children is chiefly experimenting
preparatory to the serious business of later life. This was the first book that con-
cerned itself with the significance of play in physical and mental development and
it still leads the way for students of this subject.
46
Play of man (The). KARL GROOS. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1901. 4C6 p.
This is the companion volume to The Play of Animals, and may be counted a
source book for the subject. Part I deals with 'Playful experimentation," 160
pages being given to the playful activities of the sensory, motor, and mental powers.
Part II presents the playful exercise of social impulses, including, among others,
fighting, hunting, courting, imitating, and dramatizing play. Part III discusses fully
six viewpoints of the theory of play-the physiological, biological, psychological,
aesthetic, sociological, and pedagogical.
Problems of babyhood. RACHEL KENT FITZ and GEORGE WELLS FITZ. New
York, Henry Holt & Co. 1906. 127 p.
An admirably clear presentation of the practical conclusions reached from the
standpoint of the physician, the teacher, the mother, and the father upon some of the
problems relating to building a constitution and forming a character.
Psychology of child development (The). IRVING KING. Chicago, The Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1903. 265 p.
"The purpose of these studies is to interpret as far as possible the phenomena of
mental development from the point of view of functional psychology.” This point of
view emphasizes the intimate interrelation of all forms of mental activity, and seeks
to discover the causes, conditions, and after history of specific manifestations.
Psychology of thinking (The). IRVING ELGAR MILLER. New York, Macmillan
Co., 1909. 303 p.
A discussion of thinking from the biological and functional point of view. The
author's purpose is "to show the actual working of mind as it struggles with prob-
lems in the concrete life of the individual, the significance of the mental processes as
they are brought to bear upon these, and the growth in control over the forces of the
world and of life that comes through the development of the higher psychical process
which we designate as thinking." The book is written from a strong pedagogical
bias, and the educational bearing of the doctrines set forth has been indicated and
illustrated.
12
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Roads to childhood. ANNIE CARROLL MOORE. New York, G. H. Doran Co., 1920.
240 p.
The subtitle of this book-" Views and reviews of children's books".
-expresses its
general nature and purpose. It is a plea for the literature of fancy for children
instead of for that of mere fact. It is of great value for parents and teachers, since
it shows the characteristics of the best literature for children, and gives lists of books
appropriate for children of different ages. It contains chapters on the writing of
children's books, on book exhibits, and book reviewing. It is written with the
author's recognized charm of style, and must be read to be appreciated.
School in the home (The). ADOLPH AUGUSTUS BERLE.
Yard & Co., 1912. 210 p.
New York, Moffatt,
A discussion of intensive child training for parents and teachers, dealing with
home training which is preliminary and supplementary to the school. The chapters
following the introduction are: Language, the instrument of knowledge; Mind ferti-
lization; Questions and answers; The elimination of waste; Harnessing the imagi-
nation; Mental self-organization; Breeding intellectual ambition; The pleasures of
the mind.
Schools of to-morrow. JOHN DEWEY and EVELYN DEWEY. New York, Dutton
& Co. [1915]. 316 p.
The purpose of the book is to show what happens when some of the more widely
recognized and accepted views of educational reformers are actually applied. Among
the schools selected for purposes of illustration are Mrs. Johnson's school at Fair-
hope, Ala.; the Francis Parker School, Chicago; the elementary school of the Univer-
sity of Missouri, at Columbia; the Gary schools; and some public schools in Indian-
apolis and Chicago.
Schoolmaster in a great city (A). ANGELO PATRI. New York, Macmillan Co.,
1917. 221 p.
In this book the author tells the story of his efforts to carry out the new educa-
tional ideals with the children in the school of which he is the principal. He
interprets education as covering the whole of the children's lives. In such an edu-
cation the school has an important part, but to enable it to contribute its share it
needs the cooperation of the home and the church-in fact, of the whole community.
As a result of his efforts, workshops, school gardens, playgrounds, a clinic and dis-
pensary, and other agencies for the welfare of the neighborhood were organized.
The book shows unusual insight and is written with rare charm.
Sensitive child (The), as revealed in some talks with a little boy. KATE
WHITING PATCH. New York, Moffat, Yard & Co., 1910. 93 p.
This book contains suggestions for dealing with children of the sensitive type, in
the form of talks between a mother and a little boy. It touches upon such problems
as the physical care needed, the dispelling of fear, the development of the creative
impulse, and the mysteries of birth and death as they present themselves to the child.
Shackled youth.
Boston, Atlantic Monthly Press, 1921.
138 p.
EDWARD YOUMANS.
The subtitle" Comments on schools, school people, and other people "-indicates
the character of this "breezy, amusing, interesting book." A reviewer says: "Mr.
Youman's idea is that teaching is at present under the tyranny of Mr. Gradgrind;
and that what it needs for its improvement is not efficiency experts, but enthusiastic
artists who know their subjects not as book learning but as so much exciting and
enjoyable living; and that until we can find teachers of this sort our school boys
and girls will continue to be shackled youth.
Seven ages of childhood (The). ELLA LYMAN CABOT. Boston, Houghton Mif-
flin Co., 1921. 321 p.
The author his divided the period from the child's coming into the world to his
coming of age into seven overlapping periods; the age of babyhood; the dramatic
age; the angular age; the paradoxical age; the age of the gang; the age of romance;
and the age of problems. Her description of the characteristics of the different
periods show a large and vital contact with children of different ages, adequate
scientific knowledge, and an unusually fine insight into the human aspects of child
life. It is a book of unusual interest and value.
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
13
Sketches of Froebel's life and times.
New York, Bradley, 1914. 194 p.
NATIONAL KINDERGARTEN ASSOCIATION.
This volume contains four sketches: (1) Education, by Froebel, taken from John
Jay Chapman's "Causes and Consequences." (2) In Keilhau, the account given by
Georg Ebers of his own school life at Keilhau with Froebel. (3) Infant Gardens,
written by Charles Dickens in 1855, and reprinted as a chapter by James L. Hughes
in the volume called "Dickens as an educator." (4) Girlhood days at Keilhau,
translated from letters written by a niece of Froebel to her parents, telling all her
personal experiences in the early days of kindergartening. These sketches are re-
published for the purpose of emphasizing the idealism of Froebel. In the introduc-
tion Dr. P. P. Claxton, United States Commissioner of Education, declares: "In a
time when there is danger of overemphasis on the trade school and narrow prepara-
tion for vocational efficiency alone, there is need that we refresh ourselves with the
call of Froebel's high aim.'
Social service and the art of healing. RICHARD M. CABOT. New York, Moffat,
Yard & Co., 1912. 192 p.
This is a very readable little book, and shows how medical, social, and educational
work may be drawn together for the public good through the teamwork of physi-
cian, teacher, and social worker. The doctor can not give a true diagnosis of a dis-
ease until he knows the home and industrial conditions, as well as the moral
and spiritual influences that may be at work.
Song of life (A).
1899. 155 p.
MARGARET WERNER MORLEY.
MARGARET WERNER MORLEY. Chicago, A. C. McClurg & Co.,
An unusually attractive book, which tells in an artistic as well as scientific way
how everything springs from the egg-the world's cradle." It is literally the song
of life and the story of how life reproduces its kind in flower, fish, frog, bird, and
the mammal of the higher order. This book is suitable for young people as well as
for parents and teachers. It helps to create the right attitude toward the subject of
reproduction, and at the same time furnishes the wonderful facts of nature's proc-
esses in a manner which appeals to every healthy, growing mind.
Street land, its little people and big problems.
PHILIP DAVIS and Grace
KROLL. Boston, Small, Maynard & Co., 1915. 291 p.
A vivid portrayal of the hazards of the street, "the only playground of 95 per
cent of the children of most American cities." The purpose of the book is to stimu-
late the movement to provide safer and saner environment for city children.
liography of exceptional value.
Studies of childhood. JAMES SULLY. London, Longmans, 1903. 527 p.
Bib-
Prof. Sully brings to his task the wisdom of a philosopher combined with the
sympathetic insight of a lover of children, and the result is a fascinating record of
his own observations and those of other parents of the mental development of
children. The age of imagination; The dawn of reason; Raw material of morality,
and The Child as artist are some of the chapter headings.
Study of child life (A). MARION FOSTER WASHBURNE.
School of Home Economics, 1907. 183 p.
Chicago, American
Published by the American School of Household Economics. Among the subjects
discussed are: Development of the child, Faults and their remedies, Character build-
ing, and Art and literature in child life.
Suggestions from modern science concerning education. HERBERT S. JEN-
NINGS, and others. New York, Macmillan Co., 1920. 211 p.
This consists of a series of addresses by members of a committee on education
in response to requests from many parents as to the aid that modern science might
render in formulating a school program of the right type. The addresses are as
follows: The biology of children in relation to education, by Herbert S. Jennings;
Practical and theoretical problems in instinct and habits, by John B. Watson;
Mental and moral health in a constructive school program and modern conceptions
of mental disease, by Adolf Meyer; and The persistence of primary-group names in
present-day society and their influence in our educational system, by Wm. I.
Thomas. A very valuable contribution to educational literature.
1
14
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
Symbolic education.
251 p.
SUSAN E. BLOW. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1897.
This volume of eight chapters is a commentary on Froebel's educational writ-
ings. It is a philosophic interpretation of idealism as presented by Froebel, for
home and nursery guidance. Development from within is the keynote and every
aspect of this idea is fully presented, restated, and discussed by Miss Blow until
the volume as a whole becomes a valuable survey of the social philosophy of Froebel
and his followers. The text is illustrated with quotations from poet and thinker,
and also from the convincing experiences of little children. Such single chapters
"Pattern experiences and Symbolism of childhood teem with valuable
material for the inspiration of parent and educator.
as
99
Study of child nature from the kindergarten standpoint (A). ELIZABETH
HARRISON. Chicago, The Chicago Kindergarten Training School, 1891.
207 p.
The author states that this study is made from the kindergarten standpoint; a
series of talks originally given for mothers and teachers, rich in anecdote and per-
sonal experience. The studies aim to strengthen a mother's natural instinct as to
what is right for her children into clear insight. The chapters are grouped into
three parts, dealing with the training of the body, the mind, and the soul.
The child, his thinking, feeling, and doing. AMY ELIZA TANNER. Chicago,
Rand McNally & Co., 1904. 430 p. (Revised, 1916.)
"A summary of the important work done thus far, in child study." It includes
study of the physical nature of the child, his mental growth, his feelings and emo-
tions, and the expression of thoughts and feelings through speech, play, drawing,
and music. Full lists of references follow many chapters.
Theory and practice of the kindergarten. NORA ATWOOD. Boston, Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1916. 184 p.
This is a discussion of present-day kindergarten procedure as contrasted with
that of earlier years. The author shows how the formal work of the past has given
way to the more natural methods of the present as the result of a better knowledge
of the child's development; how the traditional play material has been modified in
accordance with those views; and how the kindergarten program, i. e., the curricu-
lum, has been reorganized on the basis of the children's interests and abilities at
the kindergarten stage.
Training of children in religion (The).
Appleton & Co., 1912. 328 p.
GEORGE HODGES. New York, D.
This book deals with the religious (not the ethical) education of children up to
the age of 15 years. "It is one thing to understand the difference between good
and evil, but an altogether different thing to refuse the evil and choose the good."
Dean Hodges feels that parents are often called upon to practice not only domestic
medicine but domestic theology. In the practice of domestic medicine they may find
many helpful books, but similar assistance in theology is less accessible. Hence, the
purpose of several chapters is to suggest parental answers for the child. Chapter
IX gives a series of prayers for the different days of the week which may be
memorized.
Two children of the foothills.
lishing Co. [1900]. 294 p.
ELIZABETH HARRISON. Chicago, Sigma Pub-
A record of a year spent with two children, aged 4 and 6, in the foothills of Cali-
fornia, showing how the principles of Froebel's mother piay may be applied in
simple, everyday home life.
The last two chapters discuss "The science of motherhood" and "The value of
the ideals set forth in the mother play book."
BOOKS ON THE EDUCATION OF EARLY CHILDHOOD.
15
Very little person (The). MARY HEATON VORSE. Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1911. 164 p.
This little book describes the first two years of a baby's life from the point of
view of the young father and mother engaged in bringing up their first child. Mrs.
Vorse has a delicate touch and a deep appreciation of the meaning of childhood.
In this little book she has achieved what she herself has described as "the eternal
attempt to express a thing so beautiful and so precious and yet so commonplace
that no one can quite put it into words."
What is it to be educated? C. HANFORD HENDERSON. New York, Houghton
Mifflin Co., 1914. 462 p.
"A thought-provoking and stimulating discussion of the true basis and spirit of
education; illustrated by practical details of the author's experiments as an edu-
cator. Appeals to parents and teachers and all thoughtful persons."
When children err; a book for young mothers. ELIZABETH HARRISON. Chi-
cago, The National Kindergarten College, 1916. 177 p.
"A book for mothers," but valuable for anyone who has to do with the training
of children. It treats of moral standards, of various types of punishment, natural,
retributive, and educative, and offers suggestions for the avoidance of the need of
punishment.
Your child to-day and to-morrow. SIDONIE MATZNER GRUENBERG.
phia, J. B. Lippincott Co., 1913. 234 p. Illus.
Philadel-
Discusses problems concerning punishment, reasoning, lies, ideals and ambitions,
fear, work and play, imagination, social activities, obedience, adolescence, will,
heredity, with a foreword by Bishop John H. Vincent.
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OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM
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LB
114!
14158
i
SEP
9 1924
REPRINT FROM SCHOOL LIFE, VOL. IX, NO. 8, APRIL, 1924
Kindergarten Circular No. 16
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D. C.
سلام
May, 1924
KINDERGARTEN PROGRESS FROM
1919-20 TO 1921-22
Large Increases in Many States. Gains in Southern States Significant. Percent-
age of Enrollment Increased from 11 to 11.7 per cent for Country at Large
By NINA C. VANDEWALKER
Specialist in Kindergarten Education, Bureau of Education
An increase of 44,881 in the number of children enrolled in the
kindergartens of the United States is reported for the biennium
from 1919-20 to 1921-22 by the statistical division of the Bureau of
Education. This increase includes both the kindergartens in the
public schools and those "other than public." The increase in ques-
tion brings the total kindergarten enrollment of the country to
555,830. Of this the number enrolled in the public-school kinder-
gartens is 500,807, and that in those "other than public" 55,023.
The estimated number of children between the ages of 4-6 years
in the United States is 4,765,661. The number enrolled in kinder-
gartens is 11.7 per cent of that number; in 1919-20 the percentage
was 11. The increase mentioned has raised this to 11.7.
One of the facts deserving of comment is the surprisingly large
increase in the enrollment of the kindergartens "other than pub-
lic "—an increase of 25,340. This does not include the 1,779 children
in the kindergartens of Hawaii, nor the 300 of those in Porto Rico.
This represents more than the increase during the two years in ques-
tion, and is due to a more comprehensive inquiry into the kinder-
gartens of this type than had been made before. Such kindergartens
are found in every State, and an increase in the enrollment is found
in all but four. The largest gains in enrollment are in Pennsylvania,
New York, Connecticut, Illinois, and Ohio. In Pennsylvania the
increase is 5,374; in New York, 4,763; in Connecticut, 2,099; in Illi-
nois, 1,372; and in Ohio, 1,059. In each of seven other States the
gain is more than 500. The character of the kindergartens classed
under this head will be discussed more fully farther on.
In the public-school kindergartens increases in the enrollment are
shown in 31 States and losses in 15. The 2 remaining States have
98615°-24

2
neither gained nor lost. The gains total 26,635, but this is reduced
somewhat by the losses in other States. The largest numerical
gains are as follows: Missouri, 5,369; California, 4,339; Ohio, 2,707;
Michigan, 2,541; Minnesota, 1,811; Illinois, 1,693; Kansas, 1,544;
Texas, 1,237. From the standpoint of relative increase the palm
must be given to Maryland. In 1919-20 this State had but 4 kinder-
gartens; in 1922 it had 43. This increase is the result of recom-
mendations made by a committee that surveyed the schools of Balti-
more as to the desirability of having a kindergarten in each ele-
mentary school.
The States that reported losses are Arizona, Colorado, Delaware,
Georgia, Florida, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsyl-
vania, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. The
losses are all small excepting in Colorado, Iowa, and Pennsylvania.
It will be noted that 3 of these States are in the East, 3 in the South,
and the remaining 9 in the West.
In this group of Western States the kindergarten had not only
made a good beginning but in many it had made marked progress.
Wisconsin, for example, has been one of the leading kindergarten
States for years. Both Colorado and Iowa made marked gains in
the preceding biennium. It is therefore fair to assume that the losses
shown in these States are temporary only, the result of the agricul-
tural depression throughout the West, and that the losses in kinder-
garten enrollment will be made good as soon as financial conditions
improve.
Increases in Southern States Significant
In view of the situation in the Western States it is deserving of
special note that all but three of the Southern States show an increase
in kindergarten enrollment. The States which show an increase
are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi,
North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. The increase
is not large, to be sure-but the fact is significant since the kinder-
garten has heretofore secured but a slight foothold in the South. A
marked increase is apparent also in the enrollment in the kinder-
gartens" other than public " in these States. In Georgia and Florida
there is a small loss in the enrollment in the public kindergartens, but
an increase in that of the kindergartens of the other type. Virginia
shows a loss in the enrollment of both types of kindergartens.
The more detailed inquiry into the nature of the kindergartens
"other than public" has furnished information concerning these not
available before. It shows that the 1,193 kindergartens thus desig-
nated fall into well-defined groups. More than half of these are
found in institutions. The nature of these and the number having
kindergartens are as follows:

3
(1) Teacher-training institutions, 102. (2) Institutions for de-
fective and dependent children: For the blind, 19; the deaf, 22; the
dependent, 12; the backward, 62. (3) Indian schools, 24. (4) Pri-
vate schools, 132. (5) Parochial schools, 248. (6) Orphanages,
109. (7) Hospitals, 14.
A second group is philanthropic in general character. The nature
and number of these are as follows: (1) Association kindergartens,
173. (2) Mission kindergartens, 76. (3) Social settlement kinder-
gartens, 59. (4) Mill or factory kindergartens, 28.
A third group consists of private kindergartens as such. Of these
there are 113.
The fact that so large a proportion of the kindergarten enroll-
ment is in public-school kindergartens may cause some surprise,
since the first kindergartens in the United States were "other than
public," and the extension of the movement during the early years
was due largely to influences outside the school system. The ex-
periment of making the kindergarten a part of the school was under-
taken in St. Louis in 1873, under the leadership of Supt. Wm. T.
Harris. A knowledge of the new institution was brought to the
general public, however, by means of the demonstration kindergarten
at the Philadelphia Exposition in 1876, and soon after kindergartens
were organized in all the larger cities of the country. By 1880 kin-
dergartens to the number of 400 had been organized in 30 different
States. The majority of these were private or charitable, but they
so demonstrated the value of the kindergarten that they were gradu-
ally taken over by the school. The adoption of the kindergarten
has been increasingly recognized as a means of strengthening the
beginning work of the school, and in consequence the number of
kindergartens increases. The statistics show that the movement for
making the kindergarten an organic part of the school is well under

way.
The following statistics furnish a means of rating the States on the
extent to which they have furnished to their children the opportuni-
ties which the kindergarten offers. The basis for this is the per cent
of children from 4 to 6 years enrolled in kindergartens:
Children of kindergarten age enrolled in kindergartens

California..
New Jersey.
New York.....
Michigan
Rhode Island..
Connecticut..
Wisconsin....
State
Number
of
Children
enrolled
children
4-6
in
kinder-
gartens
Per cent
enrolled
Rank
of
State
119, 758
39, 384
32.9
140, 849
40, 925
29.1
414, 363
116, 094
28.0
164, 763
42, 645
25.9
24, 292
6, 160
25.4
62, 186
15, 248
24. 5
118, 481
25, 903
21.9
1234 MOD & D•
5
6



4
Children of kindergarten age enrolled in kindergartens-Continued

Number
Children
State
of
enrolled
children
in
4-6
kinder-
Per cent
enrolled
Rank
of
State
gartens
Illinois..
Minnesota.
273, 763
52, 017
19.0
Missouri
Massachusetts.
Colorado
106, 701
20, 202
18.9
134, 156
22, 841
17.0
155, 548
24,793
15.9
Nebraska..
37,996
5, 296
13.9
Indiana
57, 381
7,958
13.8
Iowa..
118, 211
14, 368
12. 2
Ohio...
100, 354
11, 921
11.9
Nevada
239, 693
27,995
11. 7
New Hampshire……..
2,829
330
.11.66
16. 735
Arizona.
1,936
11. 6
Utah
17, 063
1,625
9.5
Maine...
24, 337
2, 018
8.3
Pennsylvania..
29, 803
1,980
6.6
Montana.
411, 027
25,751
6.3
Kansas
27,892
1, 665
6. 0
Maryland.
73, 686
4,375
5.93
Louisiana.
59, 291
3, 503
5.9
Washington……………
88, 302
4, 255
4.7
Wyoming.
53, 241
2,333
4.4
Oklahoma.
9, 223
398
4.3
South Dakota..
104, 049
3,792
3.6
Kentucky
31, 603
1, 123
3.5
Texas
117, 770
3, 881
3.3
31
Florida....
225, 419
6, 245
2.8
Vermont.
46,066
1, 021
2.2
Oregon..
13, 743
299
2. 17
34
North Dakota.
30, 338
535
1.8
Virginia...
36, 801
593
1.6
36
Alabama.
112,983
1,.725
1. 5
Delaware...---
127, 393
1,830
1.43
Georgia..
Tennessee.
South Carolina.
New Mexico……….
Mississippi..
North Carolina.
8,947
124
1.38
152, 269
2,093
1.37
40
114, 450
1, 011
.9
41
96, 778
770
.8
42
19, 145
131
.67
43
92, 474
601
.65
44
West Virginia.
Arkansas.
Idaho...
148, 591
936
.63
45
79, 842
266
.3
46
90, 676
230.
.2
47
22, 269
18
.1
48
∞-OINRI=====27******888-23-235889-*******
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
24
26
30
The data for the District of Columbia are given separately, since
it is not a State. They are as follows: Number of children 4-6
years, 12,131; number enrolled in kindergartens, 4,687; per cent, 38.6.
References: The Kindergarten in American Education. Nina C. Vande-
walker. The Macmillan Co., New York City. Statistics of Kindergartens
for 1921-22 (in press), Bulletin 1923 No. 58; Schools and Classes for the
Blind, Bulletin 1923 No. 51; Schools for the Deaf, Bulletin 1923 No. 52;
Schools and Classes, for Feeble-Minded and Subnormal Children, Bulletin
1923 No. 59.
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OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM
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WASHINGTON, D. C.
AT
5 CENTS PER COPY

光
​4-7188 Hems g
LB
1141
158
no. 9
مر
How the Kindergarten
Makes Americans
BY EARL BARNES
11/92-2
J.C.
State Colle
of Washington
Library
Kindergarten Circular No. 9
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D. C.
1923
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 119

How the Kindergarten
Makes Americans
BY EARL BARNES
J.G
Kindergarten Circular No.9
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF EDUCATION
Washington, D. C.
1923
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1923
Lich
Washingto this b
8/5/2
HOW THE KINDERGARTEN MAKES AMERICANS.
The American spirit is the spirit of democracy. However much
we may fail in the doing, we all believe ardently in the government
of the people, for the people, and by the people. This means that
the people must not only love and trust their Government, but they
must understand how it works and they must be able and ready to
pass judgment on the issues of life as they come up.
But government is a vague
word, easily confounded with
leaders, parties, and campaign
issues. What does Joseph
Kantrowitz, a steel worker in
Pittsburgh, or John Cum-
mings, a farmer in Nebraska,
want it to do for them, their
children, and their children's
children? They want a
chance to live life in their own
way. They want to feel, as the
years pass, that they are free to
express themselves in every
way that their natures demand.

J.G.
This means that they want fair play for themselves; and in reach-
ing this they are driven to see that they can have it only when there
is a chance for everyone else. To secure this universal freedom for
everyone, there must be law and order. The game of life must be
lived according to rules always subject to change, but once accepted,
equally binding on everyone.
These are ideas which belong to thoughtful citizens of all lands.
What are the special features that distinguish the Government of
the United States from that of other Republics in South America or
Europe? In the first place, it uses the English language. Its
officials speak that language. Its laws are made and printed in
English. Its courts are conducted in English, and public questions
are discussed in English. Its leading newspapers are printed in the
same language, and Government directions are in English. Any
educated person who has lived in a foreign land, where he did not
understand the language of the people, knows how difficult it is to
28335°-23
1
2
HOW THE KINDERGARTEN MAKES AMERICANS.
keep informed on what is going on around him. No one should
have a citizen's rights in directing American affairs who does not
know the English language.
In the second place, our Government is peculiar in its structure
and in the rules it has developed for carrying on its business. The
citizen should understand that we are a confederation of 48 States,
each having certain rights, while the Federal Government has other
and larger duties and obligations. He should know, in a general
way, the governmental machinery of his city, his State, and of the
Nation, if he is to manage it so as to secure his freedom and protec-
tion. To give a man the right to control the United States by
making him a citizen when he is ignorant of its institutions, is like
giving a child a locomotive as a plaything.
Besides this, our country is peculiar in its money and in the
values it represents. Its industrial life is partly determined by its
Government and its standards of life are its own. There is a type
of home that we call American; and our clothing and our food are
different from those of other peoples. We play baseball while the
English play cricket; and we use steam tractors while the Russian
peasants use wooden plows.
Every foreigner, then, must acquire an understanding of Ameri-
can life before he is given the rights and duties of citizenship in the
United States; but the same is true of every child born in New York
or Iowa. Americanization is generally spoken of as though it had
to do with foreigners only; but no one is born with a knowledge of
what constitutes an American. We say that a child is born an Amer-
ican citizen, and legally this is true; but, from the point of view of
conduct, each child is really born an active, ignorant little baby,
emotional, egotistic, thinking only in fragmentary bits, and quite as
capable of turning out an Englishman, a Frenchman, or a Czecho-
Slovak as an American. He knows nothing of the English language,
of our form of Government or of our national ideals and standards.
Whatever knowledge of these matters he ever possesses he must learn
after he comes to the United States.
Nor is it true that he inherits an American tendency. Acquired
characteristics are not inherited; and, even if they were, a hundred
years is not long enough to establish them. Very few families have
been here for even a hundred years without mixing their blood
through intermarriage with later arrivals. One of my grand-
fathers was English, the other German; one married a Dutch
woman, the other a woman from Scotland. My wife's father was
a Heidelberg German who went out to Australia and there married
an Irish woman. My children are typical Americans, but what
national tendencies can they have inherited?
HOW THE KINDERGARTEN MAKES AMERICANS.
3
No, Americanism is entirely the result of education; and, whether
the individual comes here in the steerage of an ocean liner or is
brought by the stork, he has to be Americanized if he is to be a good
citizen of the United States. Our public schools were established
primarily for this purpose; and, on the whole, they have done their
work remarkably well.
Probably no other part of the school system does this work so
well as the kindergarten, which deals with children generally between
4 and 6 years of age. It was planned by a very wise man, Friedrich
Froebel, and it has been a part of our system for 50 years. Cheap
witticisms have often been turned against the kindergarten, with its
babies, its enthusiastic young women teachers, and its symbolic plays;
but it has been a criticism born of ignorance. The principles and
practices of the kindergarten rest in a profound knowledge of child
nature, singularly developed for the time when Froebel lived, and
in a wise vision of the meaning of life.
The aims of the kindergarten are the same as those of the funda-
mental democracy we have been discussing. When the child comes
into the kindergarten he is a little more than a bundle of possibilities.
He can come into possession of these possibilities only by using them.
They can not be pulled out of him any more than a plant's leaves
can be pulled out of a seed. They must be pushed out by the child's
own impulse. It is the child's desire to do things which makes him
educable.
First and foremost, the kindergarten emphasizes self-expression.
Songs and actions appropriate to the age incite him to express his
natural interest in birds and butterflies, in cooking and washing, and
sowing seeds and gathering crops, in making things with a hammer
or with a needle. He walks and runs and scampers and dances. He
sits down for a few minutes and then rises and continues action. He
makes things with his hands. The products are crude, for he has
small skill; but the kindergartner knows that the children are not
working for products but to incite and to awaken desires in their
little souls. Working for product will come all too soon in the fac-
tory, the store, and on the farm. Blocks, sand, dolls, and playhouses
tempt children to imitate, or, better still, to create. They learn the
joy of having desires and realizing them in action.
In the second place, the kindergarten emphasizes fair play. In
realizing his own desires the child must behave in such a way that
each of the other children has an equal chance. How long does it
take to learn this basal fact in the art of living? For most people
it takes more than a lifetime, for few ever fully achieve it. In the
kindergarten each child has his chance to lead and to follow. He is
alternately general and private, capitalist and workman, president
and private citizen.
4
HOW THE KINDERGARTEN MAKES AMERICANS.
Any intelligent observer who watches a good kindergarten for an
hour can not fail to see the children grow into citizenship in the little
democracy gathered within the room. And the same qualities will
enable the child when a man to be a good citizen of Akron, Ohio,
of the United States, and of the commonwealth of the World.
Senator Leland Stanford had one son, who as a little child was
sent to a kindergarten. So profoundly was his father impressed
by the training his child received that he devoted his vast fortune to
the creation of Stanford University, which he conceived as an ex-
pansion of the kindergarten plan to cover the whole period of life.
Johns Hopkins was established on the same fundamental conception.
With self-expression and fair play the individual powers are ex-
panded and the social consciousness is cultivated. Gradually
orderly behavior is established and safety for the future common-
wealth is insured. The constant need for expression in words leads
to the building up of an English vocabulary and the child is put
in possession of the tools he will need when he votes for a legislator,
or himself sits in Congress.
In a well-regulated middle-class home where there are several
children and a hospitable spirit, ruled by an intelligent mother, we
have a small world very much like a kindergarten. Even there the
child is with others younger and older than himself and he lacks op-
portunity to learn how to play the game of life with equals, and for
any democracy there must be large equality. But it is with the
single child, and especially in the homes of the poor and the rich,
that the kindergarten brings its largest values.
Our worst citizens come from these sources. The single child
can not meet father, mother, or nurse as equals and his position natu-
rally tends to develop rebels and despots. Our most valuable train-
ing in the art of living must always come from our equals. This
need not mean mediocrity, for in any group we shall always find
abler spirits to emulate and weaker ones to help.
In the homes of the very poor there is no time and often there
is lack of intelligence to give the care and attention needed by a soul
just learning to find itself. In the rich family the little child can
hardly escape the sophistication which leads so inevitably to quick
ripening rather than to growth. But take the only child, the poor
child, and the rich child and mingle them together in a good kinder-
garten and we have ideal conditions for training in real democracy,
that is, for Americanization.
It is true that under 6 years of age little can, or should, be done
in teaching the mechanism of our Government. But we can give
habits of conduct and a point of view which are the very founda-
tions of all real democracy. With ripening powers the child will
walk into a democratic community and function with perfect ease.
HOW THE KINDERGARTEN MAKES AMERICANS.
5
LO
Meantime he has been learning the English language, which is to be
the constant medium of exchange in all his relations with the other
people in the United States.
Suppose this training has not been given between the ages of 4
and 6, when the child is emerging from helpless infancy into par-
tially self-directing childhood, then we shall have selfish egoists, lack-
ing social consciousness and with habits of action that will make them
ready to boss and cringe. A generation of such people is prepared
for tyranny or Bolshevism.
If now we turn from the Americanization of each new generation
born in America to those who come to us in ships, or over the
Mexican or Canadian borders, the kindergarten can do the work of
Americanization better than any later period of the school system.
This is due to the fact that parents have a special love for their
little children and that they are in constant contact with them, and so
think and feel with them.
A little child coming from a Slovak, Hungarian, or Syrian home
into a kindergarten in Hoboken, or Seattle, is more generally accom-
panied by a parent than he would be if he were older and came into
a high school or a night school. When he goes home he uses the simple
English words he has learned in a way that forces them upon the
alien parents' attention more than the 14-year old child does. What
he has learned in self-expression and in playing the social game of
life is also more easily imitated by his family than is algebra or
geometry. To get at the story of the "Three Bears" or "Peter
Rabbit," the mother and all the family will penetrate far into the
English language. Meantime the older children's knowledge of
Washington's campaigns or of the boundaries of Dakota may easily
be accepted as a field of knowledge apart from the parents' world.
The parents' brooding watchfulness over their little children makes
them especially open to the approach of their teachers. In some cities
the kindergarten teachers have their classes only in the forenoon;
and the afternoons are given up to visiting the homes of the foreign
parents and holding mothers' meetings. In no other capacity can an
American enter a foreign home with such assurance of welcome as
when she goes as the teacher and friend of the little children.
Through such visits and meetings the teacher can interest the
foreign women in every ideal and practice of American life. Food,
clothing, ventilation, care in sickness, standards of daily life, social
customs, everything can be talked over in simple English or through
interpreters, who are generally the little children themselves. If our
10,000,000 foreign-born people are ever to be won to our national
point of view the most hopeful agency is the kindergarten. It can
not do everything, but it can start the new generation aright, and
it can do much for all ages.
6
HOW THE KINDERGARTEN MAKES AMERICANS.
At present we lack teachers and money for public education and
there is a tendency everywhere to cut out expense. School boards
are not often made up of educational experts and they are prone to
says: "The little ones can wait; they will get it later." This is as
though a hurried farmer should cut out his plowing and sow his seed
late in the season, on the hard earth. The undiscriminating may not
see the results of plowing in the finished crop, but those who have
tried it know that the results of this preliminary process carry over
into every grain bin and basket of vegetables.
All the babies in the United States, American, Irish, Hebrew,
As
German, Czecho-Slovak, and Italian, must be Americanized.
many of their alien parents and friends as can be reached must be
drawn to an understanding and acceptance of our national language,
ideals, and practices. The kindergarten should be extended and
strengthened just now as never before because of the need for an
orderly readjustment following the years of disruption through
which we have just passed.

J.G.
ADDITIONAL COPIES
OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON, D. C.
AT
5 CENTS PER COPY
PURCHASER AGREES NOT TO RESELL OR DISTRIBUTE THIS
COPY FOR PROFIT.-PUB. RES. 57, APPROVED MAY 11, 1922
LB
176
1141
458
ང་ན་
State College
thington

KINDERGARTENS
PAST AND PRESENT
By
JULIA WADE ABBOTT
Reprint from SCHOOL LIFE, January, 1921

J.G.
Kindergarten Circular No. 11
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D. C.
1923
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
Eule
Washington State College Albany
815132
LB
1141
us
KINDERGARTENS PAST AND PRESENT.
A large sunny room, low cupboards filled with large blocks and
other play materials, small tables and chairs grouped informally
around the room-and children! Children working together in small
groups on the floor or seated at little tables; children painting and
working with clay; children looking at picture books; children play-
ing house. This is the modern kindergarten. It is difficult to make
a word picture describe the atmosphere. "Whole-hearted, purpose-
ful activity proceeding in a social environment" is a definition of the
method. This definition ap-

plies equally to the social reci-
tation of the upper grades and
to the earnest work and play
of the little beginners in the
right kind of kindergarten.
Children, seated around
checked tables, building with
tiny blocks at the dictation of
the teacher, may present an
·
edifying sight to the orderly
AUTOTEILIREPL
J.G.
eye of the school principal, but what of the "whole-hearted" aspect
of education?
Caldwell Cook says:
Interest is what matters-the one thing needful. The operation of interest
is play. To do anything with interest, to get at the heart of the matter and live
there active; that is play. You need not ask how we are to come by this
interest, for it is the heart's desire we are born with. There is no truth but
the old truth; interest is only what your hands find to do, and play is but
doing it with your might.
So the kindergarten of to-day begins with "the heart's desire" that
the little child is born with-to handle things, to play with them, and
to find out what he can do with them.
In the picture of the kindergarten children building houses and
stores, the children have a common idea, the different kind of build-
ings in a community. These children have gone through the natural
stages in using materials since they first came to the kindergarten.
They have experimented with sand and clay, with blocks, with paper
and scissors, and they have discovered what they can make with each
kind of material. Crude furniture, pat-a-cakes, and inclosures which
33117°-23
1
2
KINDERGARTENS PAST AND PRESENT.
they call "houses" have been the result of this individual experimen-
tation.
As their kindergarten experience grows and deepens through ex-
cursions and conversation, pictures, and stories, the children begin
not only to relate their own ideas but they begin to relate their activi-
ties to those of the group. Instead of making a little paper mat or a
sewing card which is taken home when it is finished at the end of the
morning, as used to be the practice in the kindergarten, the children's
interest in what they have made begins to extend over a longer time
than one morning. The house must have more details added next
day. A fence must be built around it, or it must be brought into
relationship with the store that the little neighbor has made. And
as the community idea grows clearer the children become more ab-
sorbed in the project and it is carried on over longer periods. In this
type of work the children not only are gaining the valuable habit of
holding to the accomplishment of an idea for
an extended time but they are learning to share
the interests of the group and to relate their
ideas to those of other children.

66
In this "group sharing" judgment develops.
At first "the best" and "the prettiest " is always
my own"; but when children really begin to
share in a group project they begin to recognize
special ability in members of the group, and one hears such sponta-
neous tributes as: "Let Alfred make the barn for our farm; he knows
how"; or 66
Come and show me how you made the ladder in your
store; I want one in mine!"
The children exercise surprising self-control in keeping a project
from day to day without knocking down any of the buildings. In
the smaller kindergarten rooms, children move about freely and play
their games in close proximity to the buildings on the floor, but their
interest in what they have made prevents the destruction of a single
house or store. To quote again from The Play Way, by Caldwell
Cook:
Learning how to move is of immeasurably greater importance than learning
to sit still. In all natural life, for one moment of apparent stillness there are
millions of active moments. A child who is left to profit by experience will
soon learn when to be still, when to move, and even how to move, in due
accordance with the need of the occupation he is engaged upon.
The little child in the second picture looks as if he had learned to
sit still and to move only under teacher direction. Indeed, that is
what he is supposed to be doing. This quaint little picture appeared
in a book published some 25 years ago, entitled "Exposition of the
Kindergarten." Underneath the picture of the child are shown two
sequences" in block building. The child has arrived at the fifth
step in the first sequence.
66
KINDERGARTENS PAST AND PRESENT.
3
In the days of yesterday it was the custom for the teacher to plan
what kind of material should be used in the day's program. If it were
66
a gift," the little boxes were passed to the children and each child
was told to place his box of blocks a certain number of inches from
the front of the table. At a given signal the cover of each box was
opened half an inch, then the box was turned over and the cover pulled
out, and the box lifted carefully so that its cubical contents would
not be disturbed. After this impressive ceremony, the teacher dic-
tated “a sequence " which had been prepared for the occasion. In the
sequence, each form that was built must grow out of the preceding
form, and under no circumstances must the blocks be tumbled over
and the form destroyed.
Unfortunately the child's mind did not always follow the line of
the teacher's "imagining." Children have even been known to rename
the forms, and what was built under teacher dictation as
ment," became "a tele-
graph pole" when the
children were actually en-
gaged in play.
Large numbers of chil-
dren engaged in doing the
same thing at the same
time and in the same way
has too often been re-
garded as social education
in the formal kinder-
具​宙
​用​眼
​E
П
66
a monu-


garten and in the formal elementary school. There is appearance
of unity, but it is purely external. It is the business of the school to
help the child to adjust himself to the group, but this is not secured
by crushing initiative or by suppressing legitimate activity.
In the modern kindergarten a child is not expected to engage imme-
diately in organized group work. This does not mean that the
kindergarten places any less value on the social aspect of education
than formerly. What is desired is the cultivation of social habits
and attitudes in the children rather than the external form of group
activities.
Contrast the two pictures once more. Maggie, on her own initia-
tive, gets an empty box and begins to pick up the extra blocks on
the floor, because she thinks that the children have finished building
and she feels responsible for "clearing up." But Carlotta calls out,
Then Maggie puts the
66
My store isn't done, I need more blocks."
box down and says, "Well, you put them away, then, when you're
through." Then Charles calls to Carlotta, "Give me another block
like this one, so I can finish my chimney." Isn't that social training?
4
KINDERGARTENS PAST AND PRESENT.
Now, look at the child in the other picture. He is pictured as work-
ing alone, but that is only because it is not necessary to show the other
children in the picture, as they would all be doing the same thing.
During this type of lesson there was no opportunity for contact of
child with child, and at the end of the lesson each child automatically
put the blocks back in the box the one right way, which was to build
up the cube and put the box over it. Every child then sat passively
while the boxes were collected and put on the high shelf in the cup-
board by the teacher.
There must be flexibility in any school program in order that situa-
tions may arise that demand thinking on the part of the children in
relation to social situations, and it is this aspect of training that is one
of the great values of the modern kindergarten. In free work, think-
ing is demanded of the child, not only in relation to social situations.
but in using material to carry out his play purposes. When a child
"thinks his way through " to a result that, to him, is worth while, then
there is "whole-hearted purposeful activity." It is the process that
is significant and not the result.
School people are so accustomed to thinking in terms of finished
products they do not always realize that it takes intelligence for a
child to express the essential characteristics of the objects about him
in blocks, in clay, or in other materials. Better a crude result that
expresses some thought of the child than the finished result which is
the expression of the teacher and which the children have been drilled
to reproduce. It is children we are trying to develop in the modern
school and not materials or subject matter.
In the highly organized group activities of the kindergarten chil-
dren often went through mechanical activities that meant nothing to
them. In one kindergarten the children were representing, through
rhythmic activities, the transformation of the caterpillar into the
butterfly. After the performance was over a visitor said to a very
sensible-looking little boy, "What were you playing?" He re-
sponded, listlessly, "Oh, those are just ribbums; we do them every
day!" Of course, there must be some emphasis upon the drill and
habit formation in the kindergarten as well as in the grades, but
when the purpose of an exercise is the expression of an idea the
activity has no meaning if the children do not even realize that an
idea is being expressed.
The modern school is making real progress in breaking up "group
domination," in grading children according to their ability, and in
making provision for the individual to develop as rapidly as his
intelligence will allow. Making the bright child "keep pace" with
the laggards in the class is not giving him a fair deal. In a reading
class a little boy was told by the teacher to read "the next para-
graph." When he began to read four pages in advance of the rest

KINDERGARTENS PAST AND PRESENT.
5
66
of the class the teacher said, severely, "Jack has lost the place!"
Oh, no, I haven't," he naively replied; "I have my own place, but
I can't keep the place of everybody in the class!" Jack got into
trouble because there was really a purpose in his reading; he was
getting thought from the printed page.
The emphasis upon silent reading is one of the tendencies in the
modern elementary school, and Jack would have found his place and
kept it in such a school. The changes in methods and equipment
in the modern primary school are in line with the progressive tend-
encies in the kindergarten. The National Council of Primary
Education is emphasizing the need for rooms for primary children
that will allow more physical activity. Materials and equipment
that will enable children to express thought are emphasized, and
not the kind of materials that have been labeled "busy work."
In Education Bulletin, 1919, No. 69, entitled "Proceedings of the
Fourth Annual Meeting of the National Council of Primary Edu-
cation," is a suggestive equipment list for a modern primary room.
The bulletin also contains reports of progressive work and of formal
work in elementary grades.
• The changes in materials and in equipment in the kindergarten
have created a need for information on this subject, and a bulletin
has been published by the Bureau of Education containing plans of
kindergarten rooms and types of equipment lists.
In a book entitled "Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning
Education," the preface contains this significant statement:
Some mothers whose daily care of little children during the years when
they were acquiring knowledge and developing their powers naturally, in-
stinctively were convinced that school hampered rather than helped them.
They argued if "sensation tends toward motion," why, during the years when
life is largely sensation, do we screw our children into desks five hours a day;
if variety of type is desirable, why strive for uniformity; if surplus energy is
necessary to further evolution, why not conserve that wonderful superabundant
vitality of childhood?
The kindergarten and the elementary school of to-day are pro-
viding for plenty of activity and supplying the kinds of materials that
call for the use of the larger muscles. Individual expression is
encouraged in the members of the school group, and the carrying
out of a more natural program is seeking to preserve the "wonder-
ful superabundant vitality of childhood."
о
LB
1141
.458
Kindergarten Circular No. 12,
April, 1923.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D. C.
SUGGESTIONS CONCERNING THE APPLICATION OF THE
PROJECT METHOD TO KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
By
NINA C. VANDEWALKER.
FOREWORD.
The sections in this circular were written to meet an immediate
need. Each one presents a response made to requests from kinder-
garten teachers concerning the application of the project method
to certain phases of kindergarten education. In order to give the
help desired promptly, the suggestions asked for were written and
sent out in the form of mimeographed circular letters. Since the
letters in question were intended to aid in meeting definite situa-
tions, no attempt was made to present the theory underlying the
project type of education, or to cover all the phases of its applica-
tion to the different phases of kindergarten procedure. The re-
quests indicated points of difficulty, and the purpose of each of the
letters was to aid in solving one or more of these.
Although material prepared with such an end in view must neces-
sarily have its limitations, the letters in question have apparently
met a real need and proved of real value. This is indicated by the
many requests that have been made, and that continue to be made,
either for the letter that discusses a particular topic, or for the
entire series. These requests have not been confined to kindergarten
teachers only. They have come also from training teachers who wish
to use them in their class work, from supervisors who desire them.
as a basis for their conferences, or from grade teachers who find
them of value for their own work.
It is because the call for the letters continues that it seems worth
while to print them and thus to put them into more usable form.
In doing this the letters are given in the order in which they were
issued, each being made a section of the circular as a whole. The
substance has been left unchanged. The bibliography, however, has
been added to and brought up to date.
Some of the additions to the bibliographies are significant in the
fact that they show a marked increase in emphasis upon the work
44208-23
2
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
at the beginning. That this work has not yet been adjusted to the
needs and abilities of the children is shown by the number of first-
grade failures. The two city courses of study listed furnish grati-
fying evidence not only that the beginnings are receiving added at-
tention, but that they are being reorganized upon the basis of the
children's needs and interests. In each of these courses the work
is organized upon the problem-project plan, from the kindergarten
up and upon the same general basis. Work organized upon these
principles is already in process in many cities, and its increasing
adoption for both kindergarten and primary grades in others is a
promise of the better beginnings needed for successful work in the
grades to follow. In the effort to strengthen the work of the begin-
ning it is hoped that this circular may have some part.
Section I.
NEW PROBLEMS AND OLD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
There are new problems-many of them-as every kindergarten
teacher knows. Some of these concern the materials used. Must
the whole stock of gifts and other traditional material be thrown
into the discard to make the kindergarten up-to-date? If the large
materials only are to be used, why are they better?
The changes concern the methods of the kindergarten also. What
the project method is, and how it is to be carried out are questions
still far from clear to many teachers, both in the kindergarten and
the grades. Can it be used with the old material, or is the new essen-
tial to its success? What is the value of Jetting children choose
their material and play with it as they wish? Is such free play
project work or any part of it? If so, what part? What relation
does the work with materials bear to the other phases of the work?
Some kindergartners have had these questions answered in the
supervisors' meetings and others by attending International Kinder-
garten Union meetings or summer sessions of institutions which give
such courses. This letter is intended primarily for those who are still
seeking information. Since the International Kindergarten Union
program at Detroit devoted much time to these problems, some of
these questions will be answered by a brief report of the sessions at
which they were discussed.
SUGGESTIONS FROM MEETING OF INTERNATIONAL KINDERGARTEN UNION.
The topic of one of these meetings was "Materials demanded by
modern methods." To make this as practical as possible a series of
projects that had been worked out with children was on exhibit.
This included houses, stores, and other buildings, furniture for dif-
ferent rooms of the house, dolls, clothing, and toys of different kinds.
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
3
These projects were worked out with the traditional materials, as
well as with the new. The conclusion arrived at from the discussion
of these projects was that, although the new material is desirable and
indispensable to the carrying out of some projects, the project method
as such can be carried out with almost any material if the teacher is
sufficiently resourceful. The discussion showed that having the new
material is by no means an evidence of real up-to-dateness, nor the
lack of it conclusive evidence of the opposite. Real up-to-dateness
is determined by the method of using either the new or the old. The
large material is recognized as superior to the small because it fur-
nishes more effective stimuli to children's play activities, and pro-
vides more of the physical exercise that they need, but it must be
used intelligently to yield its fullest value.
The questions raised at the meeting on materials were carried for-
ward into another meeting on the "Project method." At this session
the basis for the project method was shown to lie in children's natural
tendency to experiment with such play material, as they have and,
having found what they can do with it, to express their ideas by its
means. The essence of the project method consists in directing these
activities to purposeful ends of the children's choosing. The method
in question has therefore been characterized as the "Life method."
As carried out in the kindergarten the teacher does not begin a topic
by talking about it with the children and then giving them material
with which to work it out according to directions. Instead, she
allows the children to choose material-perhaps from a limited
stock-and to play with it freely, and notes and records their inter-
ests and abilities. Having noted these she decides which of the sev-
eral suggestions furnished by the children has the greatest value, and
whether it may be best worked out in the form of small projects with
small groups or by a larger group working as a whole. This will
be determined in large part by the age of the children, the younger
cnes needing the more personal individual work, and the older ones
being capable of a larger degree of cooperation.
EXTENDING THE CHILD'S SPAN OF INTEREST.
The character of the work with the younger children is well
described in a recent article in School Life entitled "Kindergartens
of the present and of the past." The writer says:
These children have gone through the natural stages in using materials
since they first came to kindergarten. They have experimented with sand
and clay, with blocks, with paper and scissors, and they have discovered, what
they can make with each kind of material. Crude furniture, pat-a-cakes,
and inclosures which they call houses have been the result of this individual
experimentation. As their kindergarten experience grows and deepens through
excursions, conversations, pictures, and stories, the children begin not only
to relate their own ideas, but they begin to relate their activities to those of
2
4
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
the group.
Instead of making a little paper mat or sewing card which is
taken home when it is finished, at the end of the morning, as used to be the
practice in the kindergarten, the children's interest in what they have made
begins to extend over a longer time than one morning. The house must have
· more details added next day. A fence must be built around it, or it must be
brought into relationship with the store that the little neighbor has made.
And as the community idea begins to grow clearer the children become more
absorbed in the project, and it is carried on over longer periods. In this
type of work the children not only are gaining the valuable habit of holding
to the accomplishment of an idea for an extended time, but they are learning
to share in the interests of the group and to relate their ideas to those of
other children. In this "group sharing" the judgment develops. At first “the
best and "the prettiest is always "my own"; but when children really
begin to share in a group project, they begin to recognize special ability in
members of the group, and one hears such spontaneous tributes as: "Let
Alfred make the barn for our farm; he knows how "; or "Come and show me
how you made the ladder in your store; I want one in mine."
""
MODIFYING THE FORMAL PROGRAM.
The work described suggests a greater degree of informality than
most kindergarten teachers are accustomed to, and they are likely
to ask about the amount of time to be allowed for this phase of the
work and its relationship to the other phases of the morning's
program. They also wish some estimate as to the time in days or
weeks to be spent on certain projects. These are questions that can
not be answered definitely. Work on the project requires a flexible
program both as to the time devoted to the different phases of the
work during a given day and as to the order in which these are
placed with reference to each other. In general, the work with.
materials should occupy about a third of the session. Whether this
shall be concentrated into one rather lengthy period, or divided into
two briefer ones, depends in part upon the children's development
and their power of sustained interest and attention, and in part
upon the particular task in hand. The program should be such that
it might be the one or the other, according to the nature of the
projects being carried out. Some kindergartners prefer to have
the work period placed at the beginning of the session and continue
for a period of 45 or 50 minutes and followed by a period of con-
versation about the work done, or a game period. If the children
are ready for a new phase of work which needs talking over on the
part of both children and teacher, or if they have had some ex-
perience of interest to the whole group, the conversation period may
better be placed first. The best results will be obtained when the
teacher realizes that any one of these exercises may be placed at
any time, according to the dominant interests or needs of the
children.
The question as to the time to be spent on a given project is also
one that can not be definitely answered. It also will depend upon
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
5
LO
the development of the children and upon the scope of the project
at hand. Should it be a doll house to be furnished, with dolls to be
made and dressed, the project could hardly be completed to the chil-
dren's satisfaction in less than a month. The separate projects or
phases of the work, such as the making of the floor coverings, furni-
ture, etc., would perhaps occupy but one or two periods. The same
would be true in regard to festival projects. The preparations for
a valentine party need not occupy more than a day or two, while the
preparations for Christmas would be the main interest for two or
three weeks. This brings up the question as to how a project re-
quiring floor space can be continued for so long a period without
interfering with the other phases of the daily program, especially
when the room is used by two sets of children. This question can
be answered only in a general way because of the differences in the
size and arrangement of rooms. Some projects can be worked out
on the floor with a group and afterwards rebuilt, with smaller ma-
terials, in a corner of the room or on a table. An incompleted
doll house could be so placed, and the furniture and dolls added as
children complete them. Many similar possibilities will suggest
themselves.
A STUDY OF NEW EDUCATIONAL IDEALS.
The suggestions here made are necessarily of the briefest kind, but
it is hoped they may stimulate those who receive them to further
study and experimentation. The organization of kindergarten pro-
cedure upon the project basis is in line with the principles of kinder-
garten education, and its intelligent use can not fail to improve the
quality of kindergarten practice. The project method is the out-
growth of the best thought of present-day educational leaders, based
upon the ideas of Rousseau, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and others. It has
been characterized as the concrete expression of modern educational
principles. A mastery of these requires study and experimentation.
Doctor Bonser says: "The hope of progress lies in experimentation,
by which any means offering reasonably possible improvement may
be tested and evaluated." One of the most significant aspects of the
project method is that it will not only improve the work of the
kindergarten, but that it will serve as the agency for unifying the
work of the kindergarten and the grades.
Section II.
*
A PROJECT CURRICULUM FOR THE KINDERGARTEN YEAR.
One essential to the successful carrying out of the project type of
eduction is the right selection of subject matter. Some are under
the impression that if the children are to be allowed to choose, the
teacher can have no voice in the selection of the topics but must
6
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
accept what the children offer. This is a mistake. In their free
expression the children will make many suggestions, but the teacher
must determine which of these topics are of a kind that can be
worked out in project form, and whether a given one has the edu-
cational value that would make it worth developing. It is therefore
important for her to know what characteristics a topic must have
in order to justify its selection. It will help her to know that the
following have been practically agreed upon as suitable for children
of kindergarten age.
CHARACTERISTICS OF GOOD SUBJECT MATTER.
1. The topic or subject matter must be one of which the children
already have some knowledge from observation and experiment and
about which they can learn more in the same way. If the teacher
selects one from the children's own efforts at expression, the topic
will be of this character, since they can express only what they know.
2. It must be of a kind that presents a problem or problems that
can be worked out in concrete form on the children's level and
through such media as children can use. The house, the store, the
garden, and the playground are of this character. In working out
such projects the children's knowledge is enlarged and organized,
and their power to think for themselves is called into constant
exercise.
3. It must have social value, i. e., it must help children to under-
stand their own lives in relation to those of others and to their
own environment; and have interest and value for the group as such.
The doll house in an illustration of the first, and a Thanksgiving
party of both.
4. It must afford opportunity for cooperative play of different
kinds. It is through the experience of playing and working to-
gether that children acquire right attitudes toward their associates
and form right habits of conduct.
ADEQUATE SUBJECT MATTER SUGGESTED.
The suggestions given in this letter are intended primarily for
young teachers and those who live in isolated places where they have
no expert supervision. To make the assistance as direct and practical
as possible a project curriculum is outlined-one which has been
successfully worked out by many kindergarten teachers. The topics
selected are those that help children to interpret the fundamental
facts of their own life and of the life about them, and are therefore
topics that should occupy a large place in any year's program. The
newness lies in the method of approach and the mode of carrying
out the thought of the topic in accordance with the principles of
the project method.
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
7
THE PROJECT METHOD OF APPROACH FOR KINDERGARTEN CHILDREN.
A brief glance at the topics listed below will show that they meet
the requirements already given. How each one may be approached
from the standpoint of children's free expression as suggested in
Section No. I may not be quite so evident. This can be shown by
indicating how the work on the first topic-the house-would be
begun. During the first few days of the children's attendance they
have doubtless been allowed free experimentation with sand, clay,
beads, blocks, etc.; and in their free work with blocks some of the
children will doubtless have made objects resembling chairs, tables,
or beds. The teacher sees in these results the suggestion for lead-
ing the children's thought toward the making of a house. She
therefore calls the attention of all the children to these results and
suggests that they all make furniture of different kinds the next day.
This will afford many problems for them to solve. The conversa-
tion will naturally lead to a discussion of the different rooms and
their uses. The following day the children may suggest their work-
ing out a room with its appropriate furniture, individually or in
small groups. This affords still other problems. When this stage
has been, reached the children will be ready to make a house in
which the whole group will participate. This may be a floor plan
of the house divided into rooms. The furniture may be made of
smaller blocks. To this a doll party may serve as the climax. Dur-
ing these several days of work upon this project the children's
thought will have been directed to the life and activities of the fami-
lies to which they belong. Later in the year the children will prob-
ably make a doll house of a more permanent character, for which
they may make a family of dolls. The work on this will call for a
higher degree of skill than children possess the first few weeks.
CARRYING THE INTEREST FORWARD.
The above description indicates one way in which a topic may
be approached and how the thought may be carried out until the
climax-the project as a whole-has been reached. If the project
can be transferred to a corner, the children's return to it day after
day will show that the interest is more than a passing one. After
the completion of the project the children should be given additional
opportunity for free experimentation. The value of this renewed
experimentation as the first stage in the project method is that it
gives the teacher a new opportunity to discover the interests of the
children as individuals and as a group, and their ability to carry out
their ideas without help. If a project has meant anything to the
children, the interest awakened will carry over into the next one.
The home kitchen with its food supply, for example, will suggest
8
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
the store from which the food comes, and in the children's free ex-
pression the store in some of its aspects will doubtless be repre-
sented. The teacher will select this and work from it to the store
project. Since the children are less familiar with the store than
with the house, the first step would be an excursion to a typical
grocery store. The building and furnishing of it would be carried
on in much the same way as the building and furnishing the house.
The stocking of the store with appropriate articles for sale-boxes
of cereals, and fruits and vegetables of several kinds—would present
many new problems, quite different from those presented in the
project of the house. The play climax in this would be the drama-
tizing of the processes of buying and selling.
A FALL GARDEN PROJECT.
The work on the store will naturally suggest the garden or farm
from which the fruits and vegetables come, and the interest in it
will be shown in the free experimentation that follows the work on
the store. If the children's immediate experience is with gardens,
and they know little if anything about a farm, the project should
be confined to the garden. If their environment has given them a
knowledge of the farm, and a visit to it is possible, the farm may be
worked out instead. The project is worked out on the first assump-
tion. Since even the garden would not be well known to some chil-
dren, a visit to one would be the first step. Since this is a fall proj-
ect, the things to be looked for should be the ripened fruits, such as
tomatoes; the beets and carrots ready to be pulled up; the pods of
peas and beans remaining on the dry vines; and stalks of corn.
Some of each of these should be gathered and taken to the kinder-
garten. The representation of these would be made through clay,
crayon, or paint; the representation of the garden itself could be
made through the sand table only. Since most sand tables are
small, it would hardly be possible for all the children to work out
these ideas of the garden individually before it was worked out by
the group as a whole. The visit to the vegetable garden should be
followed by visits to a flower garden or beds of flowers, and to the
park or roadsides where shrubbery containing bright berries may be
seen, and perhaps gathered for the purpose of beautifying the
kindergarten room. In connection with these visists or the repre-
sentation of gardens, the conversation between the teacher and the
children would naturally include the planting of seeds, the care of
the growing plants during the summer, and their blossoming and
fruiting in the fall. Since the children would note the need of tak-
ing the products of the garden to the stores and dwellings, the modes
of transporting them might be included in the topic or follow it in
a separate one.
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
9
DEVELOPMENT OF THE THANKSGIVING PROGRAM.
The work on these projects forms a part of the larger project
which reaches its climax on Thanksgiving, and the preparation for
and carrying out a program appropriate to the occasion is the
specific project to be worked out in the days immediately preceding
the Thanksgiving festival. The program may vary according to
conditions, but it should include, among other features, a Thanks-
giving song and prayer, appropriate games, and " a party" in the ac-
cepted sense of the term, however simple. It is in the decorating of
the room and of the table that the children are given an opportunity
for experimentation and expression. This is, in fact, a project in
itself, since it not only affords the occasion for the exercise of
initiative but furnishes the motives and the occasion for several
different types of activity. In decorating the room, nature material
should be used as far as possible. The children's enjoyment of the
party will come largely from their satisfaction in their united effort,
just as their happiness on Thanksgiving Day comes from the family
union and reunion. It would enrich the Thanksgiving experience
if an opportunity were provided for the children to make the day
a happy one for children less favored than themselves, such as those
of their own age in an orphan asylum. Making little baskets, filling
them with nuts or raisins, and sending these to the little orphans
would be one way in which this might be done.
THE CHRISTMAS FESTIVAL.
The Christmas exercises furnish another of the great climaxes
of the kindergarten year. The basis for the Christmas program
is a very different one from that of the Thanksgiving program, and
the festival has a different origin and significance. The preparations
constitute a project similar to the Thanksgiving project, however,
and, as the method for carrying these out is well established, no
additional comment is necessary.
APPLICATION OF THESE SUGGESTIONS TO THE REMAINING TOPICS.
The method of working out the above projects will suggest the pro-
cedure to be adopted in carrying out those scheduled for the re-
mainder of the year and their connection with other projects shown.
The making of a doll house and barn, for example, will grow out of
the children's desire to do something with the toys received at Christ-
mas. The stimulus for celebrating Valentine Day will be found in
the display of valentines found in the shop windows. In the Wash-
ington's Birthday program the emphasis should be placed upon things
which the children can see-Washington's picture and the flags dis-
played—instead of upon the story of his life, which is beyond their
10
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
comprehension. The experimental building work and the working
out of a community later will afford the opportunity for children to
gain as much knowledge of carpentry and other work as they need
at this period. Such nature topics as are taken up in spring should
be worked out on the same principle as those in the fall—that of
direct observation. The Easter festival should have the awakening
life in nature as its foundation.
PROJECTS OF MAJOR AND MINOR IMPORTANCE.
It will be noted that the topics named deal with the fundamental
human interests-those by means of which children are enabled to
interpret their own life in its relation to that of others. Several of
these major projects include subtopics that have not been specified.
There are many topics of minor importance or of local and passing
interest that may be included at the teacher's judgment. A visit to
the zoo, the coming of the circus, are illustrations of these. They
should not, however, take the place of the more fundamental ones
of the kind mentioned, nor interfere with the climaxes of the year's
work. It is through the working out of these major projects that the
project type of education can be illustrated and that its results.
will be judged. The kindergarten teachers of the country can do
the school no greater service than to organize their work upon the
project plan and thereby lay the right foundation for the work to
follow.
A PROJECT CURRICULUM FOR THE KINDERGARTEN YEAR.
The suggestions for each of these projects will grow out of the
children's experimental work with materials, conversation concerning
this between children and teachers, excursions taken, and the use of
pictures.
The nature work has two aspects, the economic and the æsthetic.
The fall work should include the gathering and playing with nature
material—leaves, berries, and seeds, and the use of these for deco-
rative purposes.
1. The house. The members of the family, their relation to each
other, and the activities of each.
2. The grocery store. Its equipment and contents. An excursion
to a typical one.
3. The market garden and farm. The products of the school or
kindergarten garden. An excursion to near-by home gardens to see
their fall contents. The farm, a very large garden. Sand-table
representation.
4. A Thanksgiving party of the harvest festival type. A Thanks-
giving treat planned for and sent to the young children in some
orphanage.
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
11
5. The Christmas festival. The tree and gifts. These might in-
clude Christmas cards or picture books of the children's making for
children in hospitals. The Christmas exercises.
6. A doll house with emphasis on rooms and furniture, or a barn,
garage, or winter playground in the sand table, according to the
children's choice. Excursion to barn or garage if either is selected.
7. A valentine party. Washington's Birthday exercises.
8. Experimental work in making other buildings than the house
and store. What these are for and how they differ from the others.
Signs of spring noted and the development of twigs placed in water
in the room observed. Seeds planted in pots or window box. The
Easter festival.
9. Building a community to contain the buildings the children
know the use of. This will afford an opportunity to sum up the
work of the year on the social side. Making an outdoor garden.
The May festival. These will serve for the summing up on the
nature side.
BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR SECTIONS I AND II.
UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION BULLETINS.
The Housing and Equipment of Kindergartens. Bulletin, 1921, No. 13.
The Kindergarten Curriculum. Bulletin, 1919, No. 16.
A Kindergarten First-Grade Curriculum. Bulletin, 1922, No. 15.
Kindergartens of the Present and Past. Julia Wade Abbot. Kindergarten
Education Circular, 1923, No. 11.
The two bulletins mentioned can be secured by sending an order for 10 cents
each to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington,
D. C. The circular can be secured free (one copy per person), by sending a
request to the Bureau of Education.
COURSES OF STUDY.
Course of Study for Public Schools of Kalamazoo, Mich. Book I, Early Ele-
mentary Department.
This is a well-worked-out course for the kindergarten and first-grade years.
Copies can be secured at a small price by writing to Supt. E. H. Drake.
Course of Study in Terms of Children's Activities. Helen M. Reynolds, Head
of Department of Primary Method, Seattle Public Schools.
Copies of this course can be secured at a small price by writing to Miss
Reynolds.
The Elementary Curriculum. Frederick G. Bonser. New York, Macmillan Co.
This shows how the curriculum is worked out on the problem-project basis.
GENERAL
International Kindergarten Union. Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Annual
Meeting, Detroit, Mich.
This contains several articles on the project methods.
the International Kindergarten Union received this free.
Associate members of
Others can secure it at
a small price by writing to the secretary, Miss May Murray, Springfield, Mass.
12
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
The Kindergarten and First Grade. Springfield, Mass., Milton Bradley Co.
This is a monthly periodical that contains many instances of projects worked out
in different localities.
Projects in the Primary Grades. Alice M. Krackowizer. Philadelphia, J. B.
Lippincott.
This discusses children's purposeful activities as worked out in the primary
grades. Several of these could be worked out in the kindergarten also.
Section III.
ESTIMATES AND RECORDS OF CHILDREN'S PROGRESS.
One of the chief problems in the use of children's free activities
in the kindergarten is that of estimating and so recording their work
that the records may serve as a basis for the work to follow. In the
earlier type of work in which all the children used similar material
in the same way it was relatively easy to do this. To estimate the
work fairly when some are working out individual problems and
others those common to a group with different material is quite a
different matter. The project type of work is a great advance upon
former types, however, and it is therefore essential that methods be
worked out by which the children's work can be adequately estimated
and recorded. Several efforts in this direction have already been
made and others are in process. This is in itself an evidence of
progress, since it shows a desire to make education more scientific.
LINES IN WHICH RECORDS ARE NEEDED.
If the teacher is to make records that will enable her to direct
children's development, it is essential that she should know the funda-
mental facts of that development. In addition to a knowledge of
children's development in general, she needs to gain a knowledge
of the characteristics and capabilities of the individual children who
constitute her group. "Getting acquainted with her children" is
recognized as the kindergarten teacher's first task. This implies the
getting of certain definite facts concerning each one. She needs to
know the extent to which each child can control his body in order
to help him to do so more effectively; the nature of his interests,
that she may guide them in the right direction; his attitude toward
other children, that she may develop his social qualities; and many
other significant facts. Before she can make a just estimate of chil-
dren's work, she needs a knowledge of the children themselves. If
she is to further their development and record their progress, she
must know where they are at the start.
Such knowledge is by no means easy to secure, since it must be
obtained from the children themselves. How? Not consciously,
through the medium of language, but unconsciously through the
agency of play. This the kindergarten teacher has learned by expe-
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
13
rience, and she plans her work from day to day the first few weeks
with the definite purpose of getting information concerning the chil-
dren's knowledge or ability in one line or another. The different
kind of exercises may all contribute to that end. She can determine
the degree of muscular coordination that the different children have
through the games and rhythms; their knowledge of nature by a
nature excursion; and something of their ability to express them-
selves in language by their attempts to retell a story told them. The
largest opportunity is offered, however, in the children's free play
with the different kinds of material-blocks, beads, crayons, clay, sand,
and paper. These she allows them to experiment with in turn, not-
ing their enjoyment of each and their ability to use each for play
purposes. She will note particularly which children merely experi-
ment, and which ones use the material for the purpose of representa-
tion. When they have become familiar with each of these kinds of
material she may allow them to choose the ones to use. As a result
the teacher accumulates a fund of information concerning each child
individually and of the group as a whole.
RECORDING INFORMATION FOR FUTURE USE.
It is this knowledge concerning each child that should be recorded
for reference throughout the year. How can this be done? Many
teachers keep informal records of the individual children. Some
keep a diary of the exercises from day to day. The two together con-
stitute a very practical record. For the individual record a note-
book may be used that contains a sufficient number of pages to allow
two opposite ones for each child. The first page should contain the
child's name and such headings as these: Physical condition; mental
characteristics, whether active or passive; disposition and social
characteristics; ability to use play material of different kinds; ability
to use language. Additional ones may be added, according to the
teacher's judgment. The information called for by these headings
should be filled in as it is secured, sufficient space being left between
the headings for added entries. Dating each entry will give it added
value. The second page may be used to record estimates of the
child's work from time to time. Having such a book stimulates the
teacher to continued observation, and by helping to keep the progress
and needs of the individual children before her the record will enable
her to make her work of more direct value to each child. Those who
have undertaken such records have seldom failed to carry them on
throughout the year.
The group record is quite different. It relates what occurred in
such exercises as those already mentioned-perhaps one in which
the children were given a new material, such as clay. It records the
children's reactions-that some merely experimented with the clay
14
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
at first, while others at once began to represent objects with it. It
records also that on seeing the representations of the brighter chil-
dren, the slower ones were stimulated to follow the example set
them. The record would doubtless contain comments on the ability
shown by the different children, and suggestions as to what the
next exercise with such material should be. Such a record is of value
in showing how children react upon each other and contribute to
one another's development. In making such a record the teacher
would make brief notes of the exercise as soon as possible after it
closes and write it up in diary form later. As the teacher would
not have time to record each phase of work, one type may be selected
to concentrate upon for a period, and then another. In this way
each phase would receive special attention in turn. If there are two
teachers, each one will take the responsibility for the work and the
records of her own group. In the exercises in which both groups
participate one might carry on the exercise and the other make the
record. It will be seen that the individual record and the group
record supplement each other and that together they may materially
improve the quality of the work.
ESTIMATING THE WORK OF THE PROJECT TYPE.
The suggestions thus far made are intended to apply mainly to
the work of the first few weeks, when the children's efforts are still
largely experimental. As time passes they gain the ability to use
materials as means to an end, and therefore to work out simple indi-
vidual projects. The teacher notes the evidences of such ability and
encourages children to work out their own ideas. One way of doing
this is to give those who have succeeded in doing so additional
material so that they may work out their ideas in more detail. This
will stimulate other children to similar effort. She will also note
instances of cooperative effort and encourage small groups of chil-
dren to work out projects together. By doing this they will gain
the ability to work in larger groups later. The teacher will be able
to help children to do this by keeping in mind a number of small
projects relating to the work in hand that can be worked out in
the same way. In all these work periods it is advisable for the
teacher to devote a few minutes before the close to discussing the
children's work with them and to indicate what might follow the
work already done. This is especially desirable if they are at work
on a group project not yet completed.
The completion of a project in which all the children have had a
share forms a climax to their thought and effort, and it is therefore
an appropriate time to take stock of what they have accomplished.
The ways in which the children's work can be improved may be
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
15
discussed with them, and if advisable some exercises for the improve-
ment of their technique may be given. In doing this the teacher
should take the children's level of accomplishment into consideration
and avoid discouraging them by undue criticism. In general, how-
ever, she can not fail to note that such work as that suggested is on a
higher plane than the earlier work and that new elements should
enter into the estimates given it. Instead of experimenting with
material, the children are now using it to express an idea or group
of ideas. In order to do this effectively they were obliged to use
their judgment in the choice of appropriate materials. Instead of
working alone, they worked together for a common end. A fair
estimate of their work must include these new elements. How can
such an estimate be made so that it will serve as a basis for further
progress? It might take the form of a story of the project from its
inception, in which the different children were given credit for their
part, as far as possible, or of an estimate of each child's work in view
of his earlier record. This would give the teacher an opportunity
to judge whether each child's progress was satisfactory or otherwise.
A summary of each child's status would make a good basis for the
work to follow, since it would make possible the taking up of new
units of work with a definite purpose. One of the advantages of
making such records is the effect that it has upon the teacher's plan
making. She must have ideals concerning the goals to be reached
at given periods, but the approach to these must be made on the level
of children's interests, their power of comprehension, and their
ability to express them in concrete form. New projects undertaken
should therefore be developments of former ones or so related to
these that the children's thought and effort will carry over easily to
the new ones. If the making and keeping of records of any kind
will help teachers to realize this fact, the effort will contribute
materially to the improvement of kindergarten teaching. This
applies to the other lines of kindergarten work as well as to the
handwork.
Of the several efforts to make records of children's progress, that
of the City and Country Day School, New York City, is of special
interest because of the fundamental questions it raises concerning
record making. The school is private and experimental, and is used
as a laboratory by the Bureau of Educational Experiments. One of
the purposes of this organization is to get scientific data concerning
children's development. The school has several groups corresponding
to the kindergarten and the grades. Since those in charge of the
experiment wished data from children below the age of 3 they
organized a nursery school, to which children from 1 to 3 are ad-
mitted. In the bulletin entitled "School Records: An Experiment,"
which the school has recently issued, the author states that the ex-
д
16
PROJECT METHOD IN KINDERGARTEN EDUCATION.
periment in making school records arose from the practical need felt
by all experimental schools-the need to know what subject matter,
equipment, and methods bring promising results. The teachers in
the school made the records as an aid to their teaching and as a
report of the children's progress. Records of a similar character
are made of the children in all the grades, but the records for those
of nursery-school age are described in a separate bulletin entitled
"A Nursery School Experiment." Although these children are below
the kindergarten age, the story of their progress contains many sug-
gestions that will have value for kindergarten teachers. One of the
points made in the discussion of record making is that "the data
showing what experiences the children get out of the environment
provided by the school give a practical basis for making changes in
the course of study, the material equipment, and in the teachers'
methods." The records worked out by the school in question are too
complex for public school purposes, but the discussion of the subject
as a whole is of real value. A better record of children's progress
than now exists is needed for public school use. It is hoped that the
suggestions contained in this letter may stimulate kindergarten
teachers to work out one of practical value for themselves.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.
A Nursery School Experiment. Harriet M. Johnson and Carmen S. Reuben.
New York Bureau of Educational Experiments, 144 West 13th St.
Prekindergarten Education. Kindergarten and First Grade, October, 1922.
Springfield, Mass., Milton Bradley Co.
Record of Group VI. Leila V. Stott. City and Country School, New York, 165
West 12th St.
Record of Work: Group III. Jessie Stanton. New York, Bureau of Educational
Experiments, 144 West 13th St.
The Relation of An Inventory of Habits to Character Development. Agnes
L. Rogers. Kindergarten and First Grade, October, 1922.
School Records: An Experiment. Mary S. Marot.
New York, Bureau of
U. S.
Educational Experiments, 144 West 13th St.
Some Experiments in Preschool Education. Nina C. Vandewalker.
Bureau of Education, Kindergarten Education Circular No. 10.
ADDITIONAL COPIES
OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM
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GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
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AT
5 CENTS PER COPY
PURCHASER AGREES NOT TO RESELL OR DISTRIBUTE THIS
COPY FOR PROFIT.—PUB. RES. 57, APPROVED MAY 11, 1922
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PREFIRST-GRADE
TRAINING
BY
WILLIAM THOMAS ROOT
PROFESSOR OF EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
REPRINT FROM SCHOOL LIFE, June, 1923
J.G
KINDERGARTEN CIRCULAR No. 13
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
BUREAU OF EDUCATION
WASHINGTON, D. C.
1923

ADDITIONAL COPIES
OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM
THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
WASHINGTON, D. C.
AT
5 CENTS PER COPY
PURCHASER AGREES NOT TO RESELL OR DISTRIBUTE THIS
COPY FOR PROFIT.—PUB. RES. 57, approved MAY 11, 1922
PREFIRST-GRADE TRAINING."
Shall I send my child to kindergarten? is one of the questions
most frequently asked by mothers. This is a hopeful sign and indi-
cates that we no longer feel that the earliest years of life are intellectu-
ally, emotionally, esthetically, socially, and hygienically of little import.
However, I fear that all too often education is a synonym for the
limited field of the purely intellectual, while the intellectual is a
synonym for the formation of academic habits of a rather clerical
nature of immense value, but magnified out of all proportion both
by parent and teacher even in this nineteen twenty-third year of our
Lord. Now, what I wish to show is the importance of prefirst-grade
training, and I shall attempt to outline the various phases of educa-
tion that must be considered of at least equal importance with the
"three R's."
Is it Beneficial or Harmful?
Let us begin at the most vulnerable point; let us ask, Does the
kindergarten fit or unfit the child for grade work? Is it a kinder-
garten or a hindergarten? Fortunately, a recent and very interesting
study by W. J. Peters (Journal Educational Research, February,
1923) entitled "The progress of the kindergarten pupils in the
elementary grades" has attempted to answer this question. Mr.
Peters has gone to a tremendous amount of trouble to trace through
the first five grades the school careers of 187 pupils who had
attended and 187 who had not attended kindergarten.
Mr. Peters now raises the question as to the time required for
each group to complete the first five grades. One hundred and
eighty-seven times five equal 935 years, the total time that would be
required by either group to prepare for the sixth grade, assuming no
failures and no grade skipping. By a strange coincidence, each
group completed the five grades in 923 years, or at a saving of 12
years, which interpreted goes to show that the kindergarten is at
least not a hindergarten.
This is not all, for it was found that the kindergarten group aver-
aged 3.4 months younger than the nonkindergarten group. Hence on
completing the fifth grade the kindergarten group was found to have
saved 187 times 3.4 months, or 53 years, of human life. If we
accept the average adult wage as $1,000 a year, then a kindergarten
teacher with a class of 24 has saved the State $6,400 in future wages
with each group she teaches. Mr. Peters concludes as follows:
¹ An address delivered before the Pittsburgh meeting of the International Kindergarten Union.
(1)
2
Kindergarten Children Progress Faster.
The investigation shows that children trained in the kindergarten can make the
same progress as older children not so trained, all other things being equal. It fol-
lows logically that a kindergarten group will proceed faster than a group of the same
age and intelligence who have not had kindergarten training. Therefore, the kin-
dergarten expedites school life. Intelligence being constant, kindergarten training
makes it possible to meet the first-grade situation at an early age. When we are
able to control the age factor the gain will show directly in educational progress in
the elementary grades.
"I
Science has thus justified the existence of the kindergarten as a
purely economic matter. However, one is reminded of a Chinaman
who was puzzled by the constant recurrent remark of Americans,
must save time." He finally asked, "What do you do with the
time after you save it?"
Now, in the future, if any one is so bold as to suggest that the
kindergarten is an educational "frill," sharply call him to task by
pointing out that a kindergarten saves the State $6,400 a year by
inducing a grade precocity of 3.4 months per child.
Pay for Themselves in Time Saved.
But man does not live by bread alone nor by the multiplication.
table solely so far as that goes. And while I am overjoyed to bring
the glad tidings that kindergartners are not hindergartners and that
they actually pay in solid cash for themselves in years of school life
saved, I want to justify their existence on grounds that seem to me
vastly more important.
Theory of the Kindergarten is Sound.
To begin with, on purely academic grounds the theory of kinder-
garten teaching is sound. We must first build up a large diversified
group of concepts before we easily pass to analysis. We must go from
the known to the unknown-so glibly said, so seldom followed. Con-
cepts of the commonest things are conspicuous by their absence in deal-
ing with the child entering school. The complaint is often made that
the concepts secured in the kindergarten are not pertinent in first
grade work! Perhaps so, the real issue is: Are these concepts of use and
do they add zest and give pleasure to the child at that time? If so, the
ideas are justified provided they do not actualy impair future learning.
And, thanks to Mr. Peters, we now know they do not. But I fear all
of us are addicted to the habit of demanding utility and preparing for
remote happiness. To me, a robin, a story, a dance that have given
joy now and here need no other excuse or justification for having filled
a child's life. It is bad, exceedingly bad, philosophy to spend all of
childhood preparing for adulthood, and all of adulthood preparing for
the hereafter. It is like the illusive fata morgana that tricked the
3
•
early emigrant. The present has a right to exist for its intrinsic
worth, its intrinsic capacity to give joy without apologies to the
future. Part of the difficulty with school folk is bad philosophy; a
failure to realize the justification of joy, pure joy, interest, pure
interest-here and now without reference to any future use.
A Mistake to Become Apologetic.
Kindergartners make a mistake when they become apologetic in
the face of criticism of being nonutilitarian. Too often the school
man has his sight adjusted for some future good, some remote regi-
men. And to many, if expenditure of school time and school
money can not be justified in terms of academic habits and utili-
tarian information, the time is wasted. I doubt if hours of joy,
hours spent arousing general interest in life and things about us, are
ever wasted, even in the purely utilitarian sense; for the driving
force of love and interest in all that is is more powerful than all else
in the world. Is this a part of your philosophy and belief? If so,
you may serenely face the attacks of the school regimentizer. I
think most of us can sympathize with the kindergarten child who
on being asked on entering the first grade how he liked it replied:
"The teacher takes all of my good ideas away and gives me her bad
ones." Fortunately, as indicated on this program over and over
the day of antithesis betweeen kindergarten and first grade is rapidly
passing.
I would, then, justify the kindergarten for the brimming cup of
simon-pure joy it brings to hundreds of thousands of children, and
for the enrichment of concepts it brings to the vital job of living child-
hood exuberantly and efficiently and in all of its fullness. I say, I
justify, regardless whether one iota of benefit be bequeathed to the
first grade or not, or to the child's future vocationalization.
The content of the little child's mind is an unknown and unexplored
realm to most parents and teachers. And whether rich concepts
help directly or not in the mechanics of reading, every refinement
of the apperceptive mass must, in the long run, increase the pleasure,
the understanding, and the interest the child will take in the con-
crete and the real.
Content of Children's Minds.
I never miss a chance to draw the attention of kindergartners and
primary teachers to the classic article of G. S. Hall on "The content
of children's minds on entering school." (Ped. Sem., Vol. I, p. 139.)
Each child was sounded as to his knowledge of some of the most
common things that surround him. The following selected list of
concepts is quite suggestive. Note that the high percentage of
ignorance so frequently concerns ideas about which the kindergart-
ner has built her daily plays and games.
52568°—23————2
4
Name of the object or concept and per cent of children in Boston ignorant of it.
Beehive
Crow
Bluebird.
Ant..
Robin
Sparrow.
Sheep
80
Cheek...
77
Forehead
72.5
Throat.
65.5
Stomach.
60.5
What season it is
18
15
13. 5
6
75.5
57.5 Conception of an island.
87.5
54
Conception of a beach.
55.5
Bee..
52
Conception of a triangle
92
·
Frog.
50
·
Conception of a square.
56
Worm
22
Conception of a circle.
35
Cow.
18.5
Seen a file
65
Growing wheat
92.5
Seen a plow..
64.5
Elm tree.
91.5
Seen a hoe……
61
Oak tree
87
Seen a bricklayer at work.
44.5
Planted a seed
63
Seen a shoemaker at work.......
25
Growing potatoes
61
That leather things come from ani-
Growing grapes.
53
mals...
93.5
Growing cherries
46
Origin of cotton things.
90
Growing apples.
21
What flour is made of..
89
Where are the ankles.
65.5 Shape of the world…….
70.3
Where is the waist...
52.5 Origin of woolen things..
69
Where are the hips
45
Origin of butter
50.5
Where are the knuckles.
36
Where are the elbows..
25
Origin of meat (from animals)
Source of milk.
48
20.5
The right and left hand.
21.5
Never been in the country..
35.5
Beehive
Ant
Squirrel
Sheep
Robin...
Growing potatoes.
Ribs..
Ankles.
Elbow..
What season it is.
Island.
Beach.
River.
Name of the object or concept.
Per cent
Per cent
of igno-
rance in
150 girls.
Per cent of igno-
of ignorance in
rance in 64 kin-
150 boys. dergarten
children.
81
75
59
69
69
67
55
88
58
19
59
38
*******
74
82
288412228***
61
60
26
50
43
44
29
47
40
54
34
92
68
52
38
32
50
78
49
44
CRIRE824522
12
41
55
32
13
Method of Scoring Was Generous.
Regarding the method of scoring the concepts, Hall says:
If the child says it has seen a cow, but when asked its size points to its own
finger-nail or hand and says, so big, as not infrequently occurs, the inference is that
it has at most only seen a picture of a cow, and thinks its size produced therein, and
accordingly he is set down as deficient on that question. If, however, he is correct
in size, but calls the color blue, does not know it as the source of milk, or that it has
horns or hoofs-several errors of the latter order were generally allowed.
This gives an idea of the generous method of scoring.
5
Concerning the superiority of kindergarten children he says:
Column 6 shows in a striking way the advantage of the kindergarten children,
without regard to nationality, over all others. Most of the latter tested were
from the charity kindergartens, so that superior intelligence of home surroundings
can hardly be assumed. * ** Of nearly 30 primary teachers questioned as to
the difference between children from the kindergarten and others, 4 saw no differ-
ence, and all the rest thought them better fitted for school work, instancing supe-
rior use of language, skill with the hand and slate, quickness, power of observation,
singing, number, love of work, neatness, politeness, or freedom from benumbing
school bashfulness. Many thought them at first more restless and talkative.
Hall then concludes:
I. That there is next to nothing of pedagogic value the knowledge of which it is
safe to assume at the outset of school life. II. The best preparation parents can give
their children for good school training is to make them aquainted with natural objects,
especially with the sights and sounds of the country. III. Every teacher on starting
with a new class or in a new locality to make sure that his efforts along some lines
are not utterly lost, should undertake to explore carefully, section by section, chil-
dren's minds with all the tact and ingenuity he can command and acquire, to deter-
mine exactly what is shown; and every normal-school pupil should undertake work
of the same kind as an essential part of his training. IV. The concepts which are
most common in the children of a given locality are the earliest to be acquired,
while the rare ones are later.
Enough said. The actual ignorance found doubly justifies the
kindergartner if for no other reason than that she used the prefirst-
grade period to build out the hundreds and hundreds of common
but none the less lacking or faulty concepts of the child.
Emotions of Childhood Leave Distinct Effect.
Considering next the emotional. A very important and a rela-
tively new field is here opened up. One may discount the Freudian
claims pretty generously and yet the fact remains that the emotions
of early childhood leave a distinct after effect in consciousness. The
emotion-reflex conditions and the emotionalization of habits are
matters of the greatest moment. Doing-joyously, confidently,
reliantly—is of the first importance from the standpoint of mental
hygiene. To avoid forming or to rid the mind of an inferiority com-
plex is a mental therapeutic measure as practical as surgery or
materia medica-just a little more illusive, that's all. To turn a
shrinking, morbid, self-centered, esthetically unseeing child into a
joyous unconsciously cooperative being is worth while; immeas-
urably to the little one concerned and indirectly, but none the
less actually, to that vague impersonal thing, the state. In brief,
the kindergarten justifies itself in many, many cases in which it
helps the child to find himself emotionally and socially.
Within recent years, the work in abnormal psychology and in
psychiatry have revealed the fact that a large number of the func-
6
tional disturbances of adolescence and adult life have their origin in
the fears, the suppressions, the social maladjustments or nonadjust-
ments of early childhood. The free, informal, sympathetic attention
every kindergartner gives to the emotional needs, to the socializa-
tion of each child, has an incalculable therapeutic value, I feel sure,
in the lives of thousands of children.
Helps to Make Social Contacts Successfully.
And now let us turn to the socialization of the child. Since the
Great War we have often wearied of the endless discussions on
Americanization and socialization. But isn't this wearying empha-
sis simply the proof of the importance of this intangible thing we
sometimes call cooperation? The kindergarten is a godsend in this
respect. Recently, I heard a very intelligent parent say that she
could supply all that the kindergarten gave much better than it
could except for the education in social adjustment. She was
right in regard to this last item; her child, an only one, precocious
and well provided with every intellectual and cultural stimulus, was
sadly unable to make the simplest social contacts successfully.
Cooperation, teamwork, unselfishness, all these are far better devel-
oped under the free directed play of the kindergarten than anywhere
else. The very informality of the kindergarten makes for superiority
along this line.
"Beauty is its own excuse for being" is trite to our ears but not
to our methods of thinking and living. Incidentally, but none the
less systematically, to direct the attention to the beautiful has always
been the quintessence of kindergartening. To love the beautiful is
life; to be indifferent to the beautiful is merely to exist. And hasn't
it been interesting to watch the lovely little beauty fests (daily
affairs in the kindergarten room) slowly invade the stern regimen of
the graded system?
Improves Social, Personal, and Hygienic Habits.
I have classed as hygienic and personal a miscellaneous group of
social habits. Clean hands, carefully hung-up coats, neatly sorted
toys and materials, care about drinking cups, hundreds of crystal-
lized best ways of doing things, all should be emphasized and thor-
oughly embodied in the prefirst-grade habit formations. The
informal nature of the kindergarten, along with the patient and
skillful use of group control, are psychologically sound in every
respect. To inculcate general habits of social, personal, and
hygienic order, informally and incidentally, while leaving to the
future the more refined and exacting habits of a muscular or mental
nature, is certainly good, viewed psychologically or hygienically.
7
►
Primary Schools Adopt Kindergarten Methods.
The informal character of the kindergarten work has been felt by
many to be a menace to the social regimentation and order. In
fact, this is the basis for the most frequent objection to kindergar-
ten teaching. The question as to whether direct, regimental teach-
ing, or informal, indirect suggestion is better has been decided,
undoubtedly, in favor of the latter. The scholarly work of Keating's
Suggestion in Education points out clearly that the more indirect,
the more effective is any attempt at moral instruction. Direct preach-
ments, formal routine presentation, and precise artificial rules of
conduct may be necessary for the handling of big classes of older
children where a very large amount of imformational material must
be imparted; but with little children, and all of us, whenever pos-
sible, the indirect suggestive, personal, individualized method of
learning, both morally and intellectually, is conceded to be preferable.
For many years I have been interested in the teaching of little chil-
dren. I have been pleased and often amused to see one after another
of the informal, free-play methods of the kindergarten find their way
into primary teaching. Recently, I visited a large number of the
more advanced types of experimental elementary schools. I saw
naturalized discipline, freedom, deference to individual needs, all of
which have an old as well as familiar sound to the kindergartner.
The informal methods of the kindergarten have, within the past few
years, been paid the highest compliment; they have been adopted
by the elementary grades at large. While informal methods do not
bring the easily measurable product that punctilious mass drills do;
it is generally recognized to-day that in the long run they more
than repay in preserving individuality, in developing resourcefulness,
and in making for happiness and love of knowledge.
To summarize:
1. The experimental evidence goes to show that prefirst-grade
education as carried on by kindergartners does not hinder the work
of the grades, but, on the contrary, kindergarten children complete
the fifth grade in 3.4 months less time than the nonkindergarten child.
2. The development of rich concepts of things and the business
of living are in themselves intrinsically essential without any refer-
ence to some remote pedagogical aim. It is well to divorce much
of this early concept getting from the mechanics of reading.
3. Marked emphasis should be placed in prefirst-grade education
on the æsthetic. This is justified philosophically and practically.
4. Placing the child in happy relationship with others, making
him self-reliant and social, must be accomplished early. The more
recent work in psychology and psychiatry shows the importance of
8
"
ب
this in terms of an adolescent and adult happiness, and the avoidance
of unwholesome mental states.
5. The early formation of hygienic and personal habits, so often
neglected in the home, is admirably initiated in this prefirst-grade
period, and can be inserted with unusual telling effect by the very
incidental nature of kindergarten work without artificial setting or
preachment.
6. The fickle attention and easy fatigue of the little children make
informal and individualized methods of teaching peculiarly valuable,
although the recent trend in education is to extend informal the
individualized methods to every learning situation regardless of age.
O