“The child is attracted by the bright round smooth pebble, by the gaily fluttering bit of paper, by the smooth bit of board, by the rectangular block, by the brilliant quaint leaf.  Look at the child that can scarcely keep himself erect, that can walk only with the greatest care—­he sees a twig, a bit of straw; painfully he secures it, and like the bird carries it to his nest.  See him again, laboriously stooping and slowly going forward on the ground, under the eaves of the roof (the deep eaves of the Thuringian peasant house).  The force of the rain has washed out of the sand smooth bright pebbles, and the ever-observing child gathers them as building stones as it were, as material for future building.  And is he wrong?  Is he not in truth collecting material for his future life building?”

The “box of counters, and the red-veined stone,” the brilliant quaint leaf, the twig, the bit of straw, all the child’s treasures—­these are the stimuli which, according to the biologist educator, must be supplied if the activities appropriate to each stage are to be called forth.  Every one knows for how long a period a child can occupy himself examining, comparing and experimenting.

“Like things,” says Froebel, “must be ranged together, unlike things separated....  The child loves all things that enter his small horizon and extend his little world.  To him the least thing is a new discovery, but it must not come dead into the little world, nor lie dead therein, lest it obscure the small horizon and crush the little world.  Therefore the child would know why he loves this thing, he would know all its properties.  For this reason he examines the object on all sides; for this reason he tears and breaks it; for this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it.  We reprove the child for naughtiness and foolishness; and yet he is wiser than we who reprove him.”

This experimenting is one side of a child’s play, and the things with which he thus experiments are his toys, or, as Froebel puts it, “play material.”  Much of this is and ought to be self found, and where the child can find his own toys he asks for little more.  The seaside supplies him with sand and water, stones, shells, rock pools, seaweed, and he asks us for nothing but a spade, which digs deeper than his naked hands, and a pail to carry water, which hands alone cannot convey.

The vista of the sand is the child’s free land; where the grown-ups seem half afraid; even nurse forgets to sniff and to call “come here” as she sits very near to the far up cliff and you venture alone with your spade....

Even indoors, a child could probably find for himself all the material for investigation, all the stimuli he requires, if it were not that his investigations interfere with adult purposes.  Even in very primitive times the child probably experimented upon the revolving qualities of his mother’s spindle till she found it more convenient to let him have one for himself, and it became a toy or top.