[Footnote 18:  Or that delightful “Play Town” in The Play Way.]

We thirst for experiences, even for those which are unpleasant; we wonder “how it feels” to be up in an aeroplane or down in a submarine.  We are far indeed from desiring air-raids, but if such things must be, there is a curious satisfaction in being “in it.”  And though the experiences they desire may be matters of everyday occurrence to us, children probably feel the craving even more keenly.  “You may write what you like,” said a teacher, and a somewhat inarticulate child wrote, “I was out last night, it was late.”  “Why, Jack,” said another, “you’ve painted your cow green; did you ever see a green cow?” “No,” said Jack, “but I’d like to.”

In early Kindergarten days this imitative and dramatic tendency was chiefly met in games, and the children were by turns butterflies and bees, bakers and carpenters, clocks and windmills.  The programme was suggested by Froebel’s Mother Songs, in which he deals with the child’s nearest environment.  Too often, indeed, the realities to which Froebel referred were not realities to English children, but that was recognised as a defect, and the ideas themselves were suitable.  Chickens, pigeons and farmyard animals; the homely pussy cat or canary bird; the workers to whom the child is indebted, farmer, baker, miner, builder or carpenter; the sun, the rain, the rainbow and the “light-bird”—­such ideas were chosen as suitable centres, and stories and songs, games and handwork clustered round.

What was the reason for this binding of things together?  Why did Froebel constantly plead for “unity” even for the tiny child, and tell us to link together his baby finger-games or his first weak efforts at building with his blocks chairs, tables, beds, walls and ladders?

Looking back over the years, it seems as if this idea of joining together has been trying to assert itself under various forms, each of which has reigned for its day, has been carried to extremes and been discarded, only to come up again in a somewhat different form.  It has always seemed to aim at extending and ordering the mind content of children.  For the Froebelian it was expressed in such words as “unity,” “connectedness” and “continuity,” while the Herbartians called it “correlation.”  Under these terms much work has been, and is still being, carried out, some very good and some very foolish.  Ideas catch on, however, because of the truth that is in them, not because of the error which is likely to be mixed with it, and even the weakest effort after connection embodies an important truth.  When we smile over absurd stories of forced “correlation,” we seldom stop to think of what went on before the Kindergarten existed, for instance the still more absurd and totally disconnected lists of object lessons.  One actual list for children of four years old ran:  Soda, Elephant, Tea, Pig, Wax, Cow, Sugar, Spider, Potatoes, Sheep, Salt, Mouse, Bread, Camel.