“The theory of Ideals played almost as important a part in the early philosophy of Peter as it did in the philosophy of Plato.  But Peter did not call them Ideals, he called them ‘toys.’  Toys were the simplified essences of things, pure, perfect and manageable.  Real things were troublesome, uncontrollable, over-complicated and largely irrelevant.  A Real Train, for example, was a poor, big, clumsy, limited thing that was obliged to go to Redhill, or Croydon, or London, that was full of unnecessary strangers, usually sitting firmly in the window seats, that you could do nothing with at all.  A Toy Train was your very own; it took you wherever you wanted, to Fairyland, or Russia, or anywhere, at whatever pace you chose."[15]

[Footnote 15:  Joan and Peter, p. 77.]

Froebel asks what presents are most prized by the child and by mankind in general, and answers, “Those which afford him a means of developing his mind, of giving it freest activity, of expressing it clearly.”  For her ideas as to educative material Dr. Montessori went, not to normal life, not even to children, but to what may he called curative appliances, to the material invented by Seguin to develop the dormant powers of defective children.  She herself came to the study of education from the medical side, the curative.  Froebel, with his belief in human instinct, naturally went to what he called the mother’s room, which we should call the nursery, and to the garden where the child finds his “bright round smooth pebble” and his “brilliant quaint leaf.”  No one would seek to under-value the importance of sense discrimination, but it can be exercised without formalism, and it need not be mere discrimination.  It is in connection with the Taste and Smell games that Froebel tells the mother that “the higher is rooted in the lower, morality in instinct, the spiritual in the material.”  The baby enjoys the scent, thanks the kind spirit that put it there, and must let mother smell it too, so from the beginning there is a touch of aesthetic pleasure and a recognition of “what the dear God is saying outside.”  As to how sense discrimination may be exercised without formality, there is a charming picture in The Camp School: 

“And then that sense of Smell, which got so little exercise and attention that it went to sleep altogether, so that millions get no warning and no joy through it.  We met the need for its education in the Baby Camp by having a Herb Garden.  Back from the shelters and open ground, in a shady place, we have planted fennel, mint, lavender, sage, marjoram, thyme, rosemary, herb gerrard and rue.  And over and above these pungently smelling things there are little fields of mignonette.  We have balm, indeed, everywhere in our garden.  The toddlers go round the beds of herbs, pinching the leaves with their tiny fingers and then putting their fingers to their noses.  There are two little couples going the rounds just now.  One is a pair of new comers, very much astonished, the other couple old inhabitants, delighted to show the wonders of the place!  Coming back with odorous hands, they perhaps want to tell us about the journey.  Their eyes are bright, their mouths open.”