As is done in connection with all Free Kindergartens, Parents’ Evenings were instituted from the first, and the mothers were helped to understand their children by simple talks.

Sesame House for Home Life Training had been opened six months before this Mission Kindergarten.  It was founded by the Sesame Club, and at its head was Miss Schepel, who for twenty years had been at the head of the Pestalozzi Froebel House.  The idea of Home Life Training attracted students who were not obliged by stern necessity to earn their daily bread.  Though the methods were not quite in line with progressive thought, the atmosphere created by Miss Schepel, warmly seconded by Miss Buckton,[13] was one of enthusiasm in the service of children.  The second Nursery School in London had its origin in this enthusiasm.  Miss Maufe left Sesame House early in 1903, and started a free Child Garden in West London.  Four years later she moved to Westminster to a block of workmen’s dwellings erected on the site of the old Millbank Prison.  This “child garden” has a special interest from the fact that it was carried on actually in a block of workmen’s dwellings like The Children’s Houses of a later date.  The effort was voluntary and the rooms were small, but, if the experiment had been supported by the authorities, it would have been easy to take down dividing walls to get sufficient space.  Miss Maufe gave herself and her income for about twelve years, but difficulties created by the war, the impossibility of finding efficient help and consequent drain upon her own strength have forced her to close her little school, to the grief of the mothers in 48 Ruskin Buildings.  Another Sesame House student, Miss L. Hardy, in her charming Diary of a Free Kindergarten, takes us from London to Edinburgh, but the first Free Kindergarten in Edinburgh began in 1903 and had a different origin.  Miss Howden was an Infants’ Mistress in one of the slums, and knew well the needs of little children in that wide street, once decked with lordly mansions, which leads from the Castle to Holyrood Palace.  Some of the fine houses are left, but the inhabitants are of the poorest, and Miss Howden left her savings to start a Free Kindergarten in the Canongate.  The sum was not large, but it was seed sown in faith, and its harvest has been abundant, for Edinburgh with its population of under 400,000 has five Free Kindergartens, in all of which the children are washed and fed and given restful sleep, as well as taught and trained with intelligence and love.  London with its population of 6,000,000 had but eight up to the time of the outbreak of the war.

[Footnote 13:  Author of the beautiful mystery play of Eager Heart.]