utting out and
mixing all the cards of the three series on two or three adjoining
tables. The child then takes a wooden geometrical form and places it,
as quickly as possible, on the corresponding cards which he has
recognized at a glance among all the rest.

Four or five children play this game together, and as soon as one of
them has found, for example, the filled-in figure corresponding to the
wooden piece, and has placed the piece carefully and precisely upon
it, another child takes away the piece in order to place it on the
same form in outline. The game is somewhat suggestive of chess.

Many children, without any suggestion from any one, touch with the
finger the outline of the figures in the three series of cards, doing
it with seriousness of purpose, interest and perseverance.

We teach the children to name all the forms of the plane insets.

At first I had intended to limit my teaching to the most important
names, such as square, rectangle, circle. But the children wanted to
know all the names, taking pleasure in learning even the most
difficult, such as trapezium, and decagon. They also show great
pleasure in listening to the exact pronunciation of new words and in
their repetition. Early childhood is, in fact, the age in which
language is formed, and in which the sounds of a foreign language can
be perfectly learned.

When the child has had long practise with the plane insets, he begins
to make "discoveries" in his environment, recognizing forms, colors,
and qualities already known to him--a result which, in general,
follows after all the sensory exercises. Then it is that a great
enthusiasm is aroused in him, and the world becomes for him a source
of pleasure. A little boy, walking one day alone on the roof terrace,
repeated to himself with a thoughtful expression on his face, "The sky
is blue! the sky is blue!" Once a cardinal, an admirer of the children
of the school in Via Guisti, wished himself to bring them some
biscuits and to enjoy the sight of a little greediness among the
children. When he had finished his distribution, instead of seeing the
children put the food hastily into their mouths, to his great surprise
he heard them call out, "A triangle! a circle! a rectangle!" In fact,
these biscuits were made in geometrical shapes.

In one of the people's dwellings at Milan, a mother, preparing the
dinner in the kitchen, took from a packet a slice of bread and butter.
Her little four-year-old boy