Kindergarten papers

Contents

FIRST PAPER. PAGE

FROEBEL AND HIS PRINCIPLES.

Biographical — Dawn of the Kindergarten Idea — Based upon Play and Treating

Introduction

This book has been written with a very definite purpose. The Editor of The Delineator, a popular magazine for the home, read very extensively throughout the entire country, received frequent inquiries regarding the Kindergarten, and proposed to meet the needs of his subscribers by publishing a series of articles which should contain a clear and simple statement of the underlying principles of the Kindergarten system, and which should give illustrations of the methods employed in carrying out those principles.

Mrs. Sara Miller Kirby, a graduate of Teachers' College, New York. City, was asked to undertake the work. How well she has performed her task is shown by numerous and cordial responses from every part of this country and of the British provinces.

That these papers may be more available for use, and so may the better serve the great constituency of mothers for whom they were prepared, they have been put into book form.

The demand for such a book is one of the notable signs of the times. A great movement is now going forward which, in general terms, is spoken of as The New Education. At the foundation of this New Education is the Kindergarten system, whose development will be an upward and onward movement of humanity. It is an inclusive movement ; the home, the church, the school and the university feel its energy, and the philanthropist and the reformer recognize the fact that in its demand for a true, all-sided education for all children, from earliest childhood onward, the Kindergarten has struck at the central difficulty of all our present social ills.

It is the home that chiefly makes the child. That mothers are so generally looking for more light regarding the best means of early child-culture is evidence that a new day has dawned, a day of spiritual uplifting and of the development of the higher possibilities of humanity.

This little book goes forth to do its share towards the promotion of this higher life of the people.

ANGELINE BROOKS.

Teachers' College^ New York City^

March lo, i8g6.