are to have in our schools subjects which need for their proper setting instrumental accompaniment of a high order we must face the problem of carrying on our faculties, specialists in that subject just as much as any other on the program. As a matter of fact, the world is just as rich in musical reference as in any other prescribed subjects and many a kindergartner could tell most refreshingly new stories if she but came out of her traditional story reportoire and studied the genesis of some of our great musical compositions. An expression of gratitude should be tendered a writer of the Kindergarten Review, who two years ago offered an instrumental program which program was both dignified and musical. In subsequent numbers of the Kindergarten-Primary Magazine, I shall attempt to illustrate and compare "types" of instrumental music used in our daily kindergartens. It shall be my effort to place some emphasis on the musical interpretationfor climatic, civic, social and artistic conditions have colored the music world quite as much as any other field of activity. For my first "type" I shall take the "March" suggesting several compositions which have merit and history contrasted with the popular "Two-step" so commonly adapted. ETHICAL LESSONS FROM FROEBEL'S MOTHER PLAYS. BERTHA JOHNSTON. In blithe, cooing freedom, kicking and tossing The baby his plump limbs is straightening and crossing, And Mother stops work, with her darling to playPerhaps the Great Teacher would teach her this way In her active child Through nurture mild Through purposeful, teasing play with her, Seize the baby's kicking feet Oil to press from flowers sweet, Oil from seeds and oils from wells What the kind the odor tells. Oil gives mother clear bright light, Life, O thoughtful, fostering Mother, is the center of your feelings, perceptions, thoughts; life is the nucleus to which all NOTE-A new translation with supplementary remarks. your activities, your occupations, your conduct have reference. This is why your feelings, activities, thought and conduct. are so deeply harmonious; why each and every expression of life on the part of your dear child stimulates each to a closer union. Nothing therefore, gives you more joy than the appearance and the contemplation of both the quiet and the active manifestations of life in your child, if proportioned to his strength and in accordance with the laws of nature and of life. And this being recognized, unless you are withheld by prejudice, habit or wrong. conceptions, you feel yourself immediately. called upon to foster, to nurture the stirring life of your child; to strengthen, to develop, to exercise, to cultivate it, so that you may bring your child as soon as possible to a knowledge of self. Your child lies before you on a clean. cushion, enjoying an invigorating air-bath after his strengthening bath in the clear water. In the enjoyment of the perfect health of his entire body, lying before you. he strikes out with hands and kicking feet. You feel that he seeks something against which he may measure his strength in order to enjoy the sense of increasing power. You read in the child's activities both his desire and his his need and mother-love hastens to respond. Your hands or your breast, against which he alternately braces his legs, against which he kicks or treads becomes the test, and also the augmenter of his strength. You obey the laws that control the exercise of his physical being. But you would foster not only the external life of the body, but also the inner life, the feelings, the sentiments, the life of the soul. Not only should he realize his power by measuring it with yours, but should feel at the same time the love, the spirit, with which you do all this, and so to deed and word, you unite melody. As his awakening and growing faculties are, as it were, the oil to nourish the flame of your love, this you should let your child feel; and later recognize it consciously. The night-lamp, which stood near you during the long hours when you watched over your baby in past time, affords the occasion and the symbol thereof. The employment of force evolved according to law and applied proportionately to the needs of the case, pressed from the oil-bearing herbsfrom rape-seed, from flax, from poppy or others, by whatever name they are called or however applied in different localitiespressed out the oil for the night-lamp of the watcher. So the child should feel, later, that from the harmonious unfolding, the judicious application of, and the use of all his powers, proceeds that which nurtures your mother love. The picture of the oil-mill, to the left, near which, in a secure place, a poppy and a flaxseed have found room to root themselves, will be a means, right at hand, to point this out, in relation to oil and poppies, as his understanding unfolds, until you find opportunity to visit a real mill. This is supposed to have occurred. The boy and the girl each represents in his own way what he has seen. The mother has taken her flock of children to For upon asking "Where are you going, my good friend?" the passing woman, carrying a basket, and now, already part way up the mountain, replied, "Up yonder, to the rich miller's to see if I can get some oil for what I take to him, for my baby is so sick that I must watch over him all night long. I need bread, too, for I can now earn nothing, and yet the poor child must eat." This answer brings back to the mind of the mother from the days gone by, the little play with the limbs, and looking at her children and reflecting on the subject, she asks "Will the children's future life repay with gratitude the mother's love?" SUPPLEMENTARY REMARKS. Blessed are they who are undertaking something greater than they can accomplish. The self-satisfied, the complacent, are not happy; they are peo everywhere is being done under Crothers. pressure. the neighboring mountain-valley, that they ple without purpose, without ideas. Great work mav feel, may have an intuition of the loving, everywhere active forces of nature. even if not now intelligently conscious thereof. Above, in the mountain stream, the boy has sought a place for his toy mill which the water merrily turns. His younger brother sits in wonder near by, shading his eyes from the blinding sun, that it may not hinder him from admiring his brother's work. The eldest sister seeks a shorter way to achieve her ends. She wades in the clear brook with her strong little feet trying to knead the fine sand into a plastic dough. Surrounded by her dear ones sits the mother, reflecting-how is it that from the same nurture, the same environment, each child-life shapes itself so differently. Mirrored in their childish play she sees the future life of the three children, each now fascinated by the water and its powers. The eldest, she anticipates, will bend life's forces to his ends, through his intelligence, as he learns to use the means to those ends. The maiden will gain her own aims directly, through her own life and deeds, holding them fast in her heart, and devoted to them with characteristic energy; the younger boy will attain his ends as he learns the nature of force and the laws of its phenomena. As each of the playing children is living in the present a life of the spirit that is rich and full, so the mother is living, not only in the present and the future but also in the past. It may seem superfluous to give another. translation of Froebel's "Mutter Und Kose Lieder" with two versions already in the field, especially that of Miss Blow with its exquisitely poetical renderings of the mottoes by Mrs. Eliot, but thus far the grade teacher and the Sunday school teacher have not found their way in any great numbers to the treasures hidden in the great mother-child book and this version, while keeping close to Froebel's thought will be supplemented by observations and suggestions which it is hoped may lead many others besides kindergartners to frequent recourse to the book both in the original German and in other translations. The "Mutter Und Kose Lieder" has this in common with other classics; it has a message for every era and for each of the Seven Ages of Man. Let the teacher study the pictures, the mottoes, songs and commentaries today and discover all that she can in them that will stimulate and help her in her work with the children; and then restudy them next year if not sooner. We will give, however, a few practical suggestions for extending the thought of Froebel that will render the book available for use with children older than those of kindergarten age and which will also have in mind changes in the economic world since Froebel's time that make certain explanations desirable. In each selection Froebel has in mind the physical, the men tal and the spiritual nurture of the child and we will group our suggestions under these three headings, reminding the teacher, however, that this is done merely to enable her to realize more deeply the rich possibilities in the book and that she is not to imagine that body, mind and spirit are separate and independent of each other; they are mutually dependent and inseparable. In the song for the child we have included a thought not found in Froebel's little play; he speaks of the use of oil for illumination only, symbol of the mother's love. But many children, in this era of gas and electricity know little of this use in the home, but they see oil used to lubricate sewing-machine, bicycle, motor-car and, as even so used, it has a fine symbolism we have added this thought. The poppy, rape. and flaxseed oil that Froebel had in mind. is pressed from the seeds of plants. This process is not so obvious in obtaining the oil now usually used for illumination kerosene, but it is obtained from the earth by hydraulic pressure and so the baby play still holds good. As the mother recites or sings the song in bending the little arms and legs in play, she can pretend to oil the hinges of this wonderful machine which presses the oil from flowers and seeds to make perfumery and light and heat for baby. PHYSICAL NURTURE. Froebel calls attention indirectly, not only to the value of the bathing with water, but to the air-bath. In mothers' meetings urge the necessity of giving the wee one as often as possible the freedom of the air and sunlight in a room of the right temperature. In the schoolroom have the children wash out their lungs frequently with air, by deep, slow breathing, filling the bellows that blow the fires for machinery run by steam. Let children stand in aisle and go through various movements, exercising different parts of the body as machinery that makes the oil. Tread alternately in a regular manner with each leg; extend arms and move in even rythm like pistons. (A pencil may be held vertically in each hand to represent piston, the arm being the moving bar.) Play carry a lighted lamp across the room to mother; can we carry it steadily so that it will not explode; stand in aisle and let each child be a lighthouse with intermittent light-move the head sharply to right and left. right and left. With the little child play that baby's head is a lamp and when mother turns up the light (tweaks the nose) the eyes fly open. Have a sense game by getting different perfumes and oils and seeing if child can tell what they are from the odors; the oil is pressed from poppy, and various blossoms to make the so-called essential oils used in making attar of rose, violet water and other sweet smelling odors. Can the child tell gasoline from kerosene by its odor? (This over-laps a sense game that will be given later). The ratchet wheels of a machine may be illustrated thus, to form a more active game engaging a number of children: form a circle of children one standing behind another, with outside arms extended: form another such circle with an equal number of children. Let them stand near enough to each other so that as one circle revolves each child may in passing, for a moment grasp the hand of a child in the other circle. Another game may be made of the wellknown grand right-and-left of the square dance; let the children form a circle, then two facing each other grasp hands a moment and then move forward clasping alternately the right hand of each child that approaches and the left hand of the next. If a child halts the movement stop all and seek for a place that needs oil and go through ceremony of oiling. MENTAL NURTURE. Prepare the children to appreciate the pictures by first appreciating them yourself. To this end we translate from the German preface of Freidrich Seidel to the third edition of 1883. "The drawings were the work of Friedrich Unger, formerly a pupil and later a drawing teacher in the Froebel Educational Institute at Keilhau; and then custodian of the German Museum at Nuremberg. He caught perfectly the spirit of Froebel in his figures and scenes and only very seldom did Froebel in the Commentaries have to take exception to anything in the drawings. Noble, chaste, pure, throughout, the drawing is far removed from the merely fashionable from distortions, or what we call claptrap. The taste shown in looking backward and clothing the figures in the costumes of the poetical, beautiful period of the Middle Ages will forever preserve the Unger pictures from outliving their usefulness. The strict avoidance of everything like caricature places these pictures, from the pedagogical standpoint, far above many of the modern pictures and the funny and at first glance quite harmless appearing caricatures in many "Muenchener Bilderbogen," in "Max und Moritz" and other books are alike in the extremely dangerous poison they contain which makes the modern youth as complained of everywhere so pert, rebellious and frivolous." In introducing the pictures tell the children that they were drawn by one who loved litle children and that the costumes the depths of the earth. Let the children feel the immense power necessary to press the oil from the various seeds and speak of the various kinds of power as that furnished by water, steam, electricity. Also the power residing in one's own body and force of will. Oil is also used to make machinery run smoothly. For the delicate machinery of watches olive oil was formis used. Oil is also used for food as in the erly employed; now oil from the porpoise case of olive-oil and that extracted from nuts. Oil thus used becomes fuel for the represent those worn at a romantic period in German history; and that in Froebel's day, for awhile, there was a revival of interest in that particular era and that the body and the use of oil for fuel may be boys of his school wore their hair long and the style of garment belonging to that time. They had one teacher, Friedrich Lange who helped the boys in a delightful way to relive it. considered. NURTURE OF THE HEART. Oil the wheels, Oil the hinge, Oil all the levers too, Then each part will smoothly work Kindly speak, Kindly act, Be true in work and play Help Life's wheels to smoothly move Let them observe the picture of the mother and the child, the lamp, which leads to a talk about lamps, oil and kindred topics. Until very recently the only lamps known were those resembling the one here pictured, shaped like a boat, with a hole at one end through which the wick was drawn, being fed by the oil in body of Froebel touches upon several points suglamp. How many conveniences we have gested by the picture which may serve to today, unknown to our forefathers. Do we develop the child's heart and spirit. The make good use of the extra hours thus ob- child is to feel the joy that comes of tained for night work and play? Looking measuring its powers with those of others. at the mill-picture speak of the different The tasks of the schoolroom should be kinds of oil; the essential oils pressed from planned so that the child must needs put flowers for perfumes, the oil for illumina- forth effort commensurate with his powers. ting. It may interest the children to speak to overcome the difficulties presented; if of the oil used at various times by the too easy or too hard he does not get the United States government for use in light- development desirable. Let the child feel houses. The illuminants in order of use it requires force to press from the seeds were, balls of pitch and tar, tallow candles, the oil that is so useful to man and that fish oil, sperm oil, colza (wild cabbage, also his powers rightly applied will serve to known as rapeseed), lard, petroleum. One One press from circumstances what he requires, displaced another as it proved more econom- but that to do this he must take good care ical. How many brains have investigated of his machinery; i. e. his body. It must and worked to discover new methods of have the right kind of fuel, and be kept. illumination? Let them feel that the na- well-oiled. What is the oil that helps make tion's light houses are a kind of extension. the wheels, the machinery of society, run of the mother's love shown in the night- smoothly? Yes, courtesy, consideration, lamp. truthfulness, helpfulness, cheerfulness, obedience to parents. Talk over with the children the things against which they may measure their strength-hard lessons, faults of temper, tardiness, procrastination, etc. Perhaps one of the most important suggestions is that found in the picture of the old woman climbing the hill to obtain food and oil for her child while the children play in the foreground, by the reflect The poppy and flaxseed or linseed oil mentioned by Froebel in his song are not used for illumination; opium is derived from the former. Linseed oil is much used in the arts, for its drying qualities in mixing with paints, etc. Olive oil has been used for illuminating as is rapeseed. The oil best. known to many children will be kerosene, pressed upward by hydraulic pressure from ing mother. Let the children feel the de- Department of Practical Helps, Les light of the older boy in his mill and the admiration of the younger brother; tell them that the latter is shading his eyes from the sun, don't ask what they think he is doing. With this as a starting point a valuable little conversation may be held upon the example set by an older brother to a younger. What things do we want our brothers and sister to admire in us? What constitutes true manliness and womanliness? The main point for the teacher, however, is this: It is difficult often for a parent to train a child to gratitude towards herself. It seems like putting things upon a personal or selfish basis. But the teacher and the Sunday school teacher may very well speak of the love and devotion shown by the parent as symbolized by the night-lamp. Let the child feel that his growing powers, rightly used, nourish best the parent's love and that he should pay this care by love and little services. There are too many examples nowadays of children growing up without any sense of obligation to parents and the problem may well come up for mothers' meetings, how best to develop this. Does doing things for the child, and devoting oneself to it train to gratitude-must not the parent train the child to do for her; and to do for others; to offer his seat to a tired woman in a car; to go on little errands, to get mother's slippers when she comes in tired and wet; to be considerate to grandmother. The child who is thoughtful for others will usually be thoughtful for mother's comfort. On the other hand, is it judicious to continually harp upon all that one is doing for the child? He did not ask to come into the world, and should not be overwhelmed with a sense of what he owes to others. Froebel in this Commentary impresses the need of proportion in all that is done. If one door should be shut God will open another; if the peas do not yield well the beans may; if one hen leaves her eggs another will bring out all her brood. There's a bright side to all things, and a good God everywhere. Somewhere or other in the worst flood of trouble there always is a dry spot for contentment to get its foot on, and if there were not, it would learn to swim.— C. H. Spurgeon. son Suggestions, Stories, etc., for Kindergartners and Primary Teachers THE RELATION OF THE KINDERGARTEN TO THE GRADES. LANGUAGE, READING AND WRITING JENNY B. MERRILL, Director of Kindergartens, Manhattan, The Bronx and Richmond While visiting a school in The Bronx during Christmas week, the principal called my attention to a pleasing exercise which he had observed in his kindergarten in reading! Yes, Reading in the kindergarten? reading, but only an imaginary letter to Santa Claus. The children had written the letter, too. Writing in the kindergarten? Yes, but only the well-known nursery scribble which has delighted many a fond parent even in a three-year-old child. This slight bridge between imaginary reading and writing is of intrinsic value. It establishes a connection between. speech and written form, and it starts a natural interest in both reading and writing. So pleased was the principal with the spontaneous oral composition of the Santa Claus letters that he invited his special teacher of composition to visit the kindergarten to see where composition begins. He wisely suggested to the kindergarten the possibility of finding a few other suitable occasions for play letter-writing and reading as an appropriate connecting link with primary work. The value of his suggestion will be lost if such exercises are made at all formal, or even very frequent, but the valentine season will offer another natural opportunity. The children love to make valentines, fold an envelope, mount a stamp (canceled or or of plain paper), directing it in scribblewr ing to whomsoever they choose. Children at home often write quite lengthy scribble letters and read their thoughts into them as they write. The action of writing, the moving hand, attracts |