kate on sharp bones of animals, which they bound about their
feet, we also wished, at least, to try that plan, rather than
to wear skates bought in shops." (Andrew Lang.)

"Complete toys hinder the activity of children, encourage
laziness and thoughtlessness, and do them more harm than can
be told. The active tendency in them turns to the distortion
of what is complete, and so becomes destructive."

"Any fusing together of lessons, work, and play, is possible
only when the objects with which the child plays allow room
for independent mental and bodily activity, i. e., when they
are not themselves complete in the child's hand. Had man
found everything in the world fixed and prepared for use; had
all means of culture, of satisfaction for the spiritual and
material wants of his nature, been ready to his hand, there
would have been no development, no civilization of the human
race."

Pedantry and dogmatism must be eliminated from all the dictations; the
life must not be shut out of the lessons in order that we may hear a
pin drop, nor should they be allowed to degenerate into a tedious
formalism and mechanical puppet-show, in which we pull the strings and
the poor little dummies move with one accord.

Yet most emphatically a certain order and harmony must prevail, the
forms must follow each other in natural sequence, the blocks must,
invariably, be taken carefully from the box, so as to present a whole
at the first glance, and at the close of the lesson should always be
neatly put together again into the original form and returned to the
box as a whole.[42]

[42] "In order to furnish to the child at once clearly and
definitely the _impression of the whole_, of _the
self-contained_, the plaything before it is given to the
child for his own free use must be opened as follows.... It
will thus appear before the observing child as a cube closely
united, yet easily separated and again restored."--Froebel's
_Pedagogics_, pages 123, 124.

And now one last word of warning about doing too much for the children
in these exercises, and even guiding too much, carrying system and
method too far in dictation. We must remember that an excess of
systematizing crushes instead of developing originality, and that it
is all too easy even in the kindergarten to turn children into
machines incapable of acting when the guiding hand is removed.

NOTE