All sorts of odds and ends come in useful, and especially for the poorer children these should be provided.  Any one who remembers the pleasure derived from coloured envelope bands, from transparent paper from crackers, and from certain advertisements, will save these for children to whose homes such treasures never come.  A box containing scraps of soft cloth, possibly a bit of velvet, some bits of smooth and shining coloured silk give the pleasure of sense discrimination without the formality of the Montessori graded boxes, and are easier to replace.  Some substitute for “mother’s button box,” a box of shells or coloured seeds, a box of feathers, all these things will be played with, which means observation and discrimination, comparison and contrast, and in addition, where colour is involved, there is aesthetic pleasure, and this also enters into the touching of smooth or soft surfaces.  Softness is a joy to children, as is shown in the woolly lambs, etc., provided for babies.  A little one of my acquaintance had a bit of blanket which comforted many woes, and when once I offered her a feather boa as a substitute she sobbed out:  “It isn’t so soft as the blanket!”

In one of Miss McMillan’s early books she wrote:  “Very early the child begins more or less consciously to exercise the basal sense—­the sense of touch.  On waking from sleep he puts his tiny hands to grasp something, or turns his head on the firm soft pillow.  He touches rather than looks, at first (for his hands and fingers perform a great many movements long before he learns to turn his eyeballs in various directions or follow the passage even of a light), and through touching many things he begins his education.  If he is the nursling of wealthy parents, it is possible that his first exercises are rather restricted.  He touches silk, ivory, muslin and fine linen.  That is all, and that is not much.  But the child of the cottager is often better off, for his mother gives him a great variety of objects to keep him quiet.  The ridiculous command, ‘Do not touch,’ cannot be imposed on him while he is screaming in his cradle or protesting in his dinner chair; and so all manner of things—­reels, rings, boxes, tins, that is to say a variety of surfaces—­is offered to him, to his great delight and advantage.  And lest he should not get the full benefit of such privilege he carries everything to his mouth, where the sense of touch is very keen."[17]

[Footnote 17:  Early Childhood:  Swan Sonnenschein, published 1900.]

Among the treasures kept for special occasions there may be pipes for soap-bubbles, a prism of some kind with which to make rainbows, a tiny mirror to make “light-birds” on the wall and ceiling, and a magnet with the time-honoured ducks and fish, if these are still to be bought, along with other articles, delicately made or coloured, which require care.