Guide to the Kindergarten and Intermediate Class; and Moral Culture of Infancy.

ut that which we have had in this country and in England) to take the children of poor laborers, and keep them out of the fire and the streets, while their mothers went to their necessary labor.

han to learn the profanity and obscenity of the streets, which was the alternative. But no mother who wished for anything which migh

might

forever

e highest class of an infant-school. In short, they did not state the problem of infan

prising and genial teacher has introduced one feature of Froebel's plan. She has actually given to each of her little children a box of playthings, wherewith to amuse itself according to its own sweet will, at all times when not unde

. He does not expect to succeed unless he learns all their wants, and the circumstances in which these wants will be supplied, and all their possibilities of beauty and use, and the means of giving them opportunity to be perfected. On the other hand, while he knows that they must not be forced against their individual natures, he does not leave them to grow wild, but prunes redundancies, removes destructive worms and bugs from their leaves and stems, and weeds f

rmine this characteristic, as the gardener of plants to say that a lily shall be a rose. But notwithstanding this limitation on one side, and the necessity for a concurrence of the Spirit on the other,-which is more indepen

we can and what we cannot do, that Froebel has put every educator into a most suggest

cultivate, it could hardly fail that he would learn to be wise in his vo

into the lig

e be your

el's First Gift, consisting of six soft balls of the three primary and the three secondary colors, which are sold in a box, with a little manual for mothers, in which the true principle and plan of tending babies, so as not to rasp their nerves, but to amuse without wearying them, is very happily suggested. There is no mother or nurse who would not be assisted by this little manual essentially. As it says in the beginning,-"Tending babies is an art, and ev

o been published by the same lady, and is perhaps a still greater boon to every nursery; for this is the age when many a child's tempe

every mother and nurse knows how hard it is to meet the demands of a child too young to be taught to read, but whose opening intelligence and irrepressible bodily activity are so hard to be met by an adult, however genial and active. Children generally take the tempe

nd become interested in each other. In the variety, affinities develop themselves very prettily, and the rough points of rampant individualities wear off. We have seen a highly-gifted child, who, at home, was-to use a vulgar, but expressive word-pesky and odious, with the exacting demands of a powerful, but untrained mind and heart, become "sweet as roses" spontaneously, amidst the rebound of a large, well-ordered, and carefully watched child-society. Anxious mothers have brought us children, with a thousand deprecations and explanations of their characters, as if they thought we were going to find them little monsters, which their motherly hearts were persuaded they were not, though they behaved like little sancho

her Law alone. It may be contrasted, in every particular, with the old-fashioned school, which is an absolute monarchy, where the c

er which shall deal with them as God deals with the mature, presenting the claims of sympathy and truth whenever they presumptuously or unconsciously fall into selfishness. We have the best conditions of moral culture in a company large enough for the exacting disposition of the solitary child to be balanced by th

appearances, and the better self will generally respond. In proportion as the child is yo

who ask not

-who, in lo

misgiving

enial sens

are they wh

even now do

spirit of

strength, accordi

receive this from the Kindergartner, who shall give them such help in embodying their ever-springing fancies as shall prevent "the weight of chance de

present rocks near it to be avoided, and ships sailing in the ocean; or perhaps it was a hen-coop, with chickens inside, and a fox prowling about outside, and a boy who was going to catch the fox and save the fowls. Then she told each child to make something, and when it was done hold up a hand. The first one she asked to explain, and then went round the class. If one began to speak before another had ended, she would hold up her finger and say,-"It is not your turn." In the course of the winter, she taught, over these blocks, a great deal about the habits of animals. She studied natural history in order to be perfectly accurate in her symbolic representation of the habitation of each animal, and their enemies were als

s own share in which they could assist him. He thought it the happiest mode of calling their attention to the invisible God, whose power must be waited upon, after the conditions for gr

h was herself, the voice of her inclination or of her conscience, for they were palpably two; and what a joyous thing it was when she was first convinced that one was the Spirit of God, whom unlucky teaching had previously embodied in a form of terror on a distant judgment-seat. Children are consecrated as soon as they get the spirit

utiful creations of the imagination. Not only such household-stories as "Sanford and Merton," Mrs. Farrar's "Robinson Crusoe," and Salzmann's "Elements of Morality," but symbolization like the heroes of Asgard, the legends of the M

he observations should be drawn out of the children, not made to them, except as corrections of their mistakes. Experiments with the prism, and in crystallization and transforma

dren are there all day. Each child has a garden, and there is one besides where they work in common. There are accommodations for keeping animals, and miniature tools to do mechanical labor of various kinds. In short, it is a child's world. But in this country, especially in New England, parents would

desirable, to lead the singing, and accompany the plays, gymnastics, frequent marchings, and dancing, when that is taught,-which it should be. But a

p Kindergarten by the way. It must be the main business of those who undertake it; for it is necessary that every individual child should be borne, as it were, on the heart of the gardeners, in order that it be inspired with order, truth, and goodness. To develop a child from within outwards, we must plunge ourselves into its peculiarity of imagination and feeling. No one person could possibly endure such absorption of life in labor unrelieved, and consequently two or thr