given the regular
pasteboard or wooden triangles for study. If presented for the first
time in this latter form, they can never mean as much to him as if he
had found them out for himself.

Dictations.

The dictations should invariably be given so that opposites and their
intermediates may be readily seen. The different triangles may be
studied each in the same way, introducing them one at a time in the
order named, afterwards allowing as free a combination as will produce
symmetrical figures. It is best always to study one of a new kind,
then two, then gradually give larger numbers.

Great possibilities undoubtedly lie in this gift, but it is well to
remember that with young children it must not be made the vehicle of
too abstract instruction. In order to make the dictations simple, the
child must be perfectly familiar with the terms of direction, up,
down, right, left, centre; with the simple names of the planes
(squares, half-squares, equal-sided, blunt and sharp-angled triangles,
etc.); and he must learn to know the longest edge of each triangle,
that he may be able to place it according to direction.

The children should be encouraged to invent, to give the dictation
exercises to one another, and to copy the simpler forms of the lesson
on blackboard or paper. Some duplicate copies in colored papers may be
made from their inventions, and the walls of the schoolroom ornamented
with them. It will be a pleasure to the little ones themselves, and
demonstrate to others how wonderful a gift this is and how charmingly
the children use it.

No exercise should be given without previous study, and in the first
year's teaching it is wiser to draw or make the figures before giving
the dictations. The materials, too, should be prepared beforehand, in
such a form that they can be given out readily and quietly by the
children at the opening of the exercise. To require a class of a dozen
or more pupils to wait while the kindergartner assorts and counts the
various colors and shapes of tablets to be used is positively to
invite loss of interest on the children's part, and to produce in the
teacher a hurry and worry and nervous tension which will infallibly
ruin the play.

Life Forms.

The Life forms are no longer absolute representations, but only more
or less suggestive images of certain objects, and thus show still more
clearly the orderly movement from concrete to abstract.

Hitherto in Life forms the child has pro