olumes on that Republic of Childhood, the
kindergarten, of which this handbook, dealing with the gifts, forms
the initial number, might well be called Chips from a Kindergarten
Workshop. They are the outcome of talks and conferences on Froebel's
educational principles with successive groups of earnest young women
here, there, and everywhere, for fifteen years, and represent as much
practical work at the bench as a carpenter could show in a similar
length of time. They are the result of mutual give and take, of
question and answer, of effort and experience, of the friction of
minds against one another, of ideas struck out in the heat of
argument, and of varied experience with many hundred little children
of all nationalities and conditions. They are not theories, written in
the seclusion of the study; and if perchance they have the defects, so
should they have the virtues, too, of work corrected and revised at
every step by the "child in the midst." If it is objected that many
things in them have been heard before, we can but say with Montaigne:
"Truth and reason are common to every one, and are no more his who
spake them first than his who spake them after."

The various talks have been cut down here, enlarged there, condensed
in one place, amplified in another, from year to year, as knowledge
and experience have grown; many of the ideas which they advocated in
the beginning have been eliminated, as being completely reversed by
the passage of time, and much new matter has been added as the
kindergarten principle has developed. They are as much a growth as a
coral reef, though the authors have little hope that they will be as
enduring.

The kindergarten of 1895 is not the kindergarten of 1880, for the
science of education has made great strides in these past fifteen
years. Many things which were held to be vital principles when we
began our talks with kindergarten students, we now find were but
lifeless methods after all. It is not that time has reversed the
fundamental principles on which the kindergarten rests,--these are as
true as truth and as changeless; but the interpretation of them has
greatly changed and broadened with the passage of years, and many of
the instrumentalities of education which Froebel devised are destined
to further transformation in the future. For this reason, the last
book on the kindergarten is sometimes the best book, since it
naturally embodies the latest thought and discovery on the subj