adaptability make it a useful medium for the expression of the child's
vague ideas. With the ball we give first impressions of _Unity_,
_Form_, _Color_, _Material_, _Mobility_, _Motion_, _Direction_, and
_Position_. The ball songs and plays are used as the first exercises
in language, singing, and rhythm.

5. As the kindergarten gifts are designed to serve as an alphabet of
form, by whose use the child may learn to read all material objects,
it follows that they must form an organically connected sequence,
moving in logical order from an object which contains all qualities,
but directly emphasizes none, to objects more specialized in nature,
and therefore more definitely suggestive as to use.

"Each successive gift in the series must not only be implicit in, but
demanded by, its predecessor;" so Froebel selects the ball, with its
simplicity but great adaptability, for the starting-point of his
series.

6. Connected contrasts of Motion, Direction, and Position are shown in
the first gift. By the use of pigments, the so-called secondary
colors, purple, orange, and green, may be produced from the opposite
hues, red and blue, red and yellow, and blue and yellow.

"The mind is aroused to attention and led to comparison by contrasts;
on the groundwork of comparison, it is enabled to do the work of
classification, of clear abstraction, of the formation of definite
ideas by the connection of these contrasts."[3]

[3] "Suppose, e. g., that the child, by dint of repeated and
varied playing with the blue ball of the first gift, has
succeeded in getting a tolerably clear notion of the blue
ball. If then you bring the yellow ball to his notice, his
mind will be led to examine more closely and to compare the
two playthings, resembling each other so fully in every
respect, yet differing so widely in color. The other balls of
the gift are introduced in judicious succession, offering new
yet milder contrasts: these reconcile, combine, the contrasts
first offered; they are aided in this by the colors of
surrounding objects. The child begins to feel that these
color impressions, however widely they differ, have a similar
source; he is connecting the contrasts, and as he succeeds in
this, he succeeds, too, in separating, abstracting, the
_ball_ from its _color_." (W. N. Hailmann.)

* * * * *

The Ball a Universal Plaything.

"The prese