ARTHUR CLOUGH.

There has always been making in the Kindergarten, since to Froebel the impulse to create was a characteristic of self-conscious humanity.  Stopford Brooke points out that Browning’s Caliban, though almost brute, shows himself human, in that, besides thinking out his natural religion, he also dramatises and creates, “falls to make something.”

  ’Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport. 
  Tasteth, himself, no finer good i’ the world
  Than trying what to do with wit and strength—­

What does a child gain from his ceaseless attempts at making?  Froebel’s answer was that intellectually, through making he gains ideas, which, received in words, remain mere words.  “To learn through life and action is more developing than to learn through words:  expression in plastic material, united with thought and speech, is far more developing than mere repetition of words.”  Morally, it is through impressing himself on his surroundings, that the child reaches the human attributes of self-consciousness and self-control.  One of the most important passages Froebel ever wrote is this: 

“The deepest craving of the child’s life is to see itself mirrored in some external object.  Through such reflection, he learns to know his own activity, its essence, direction and aim, and learns to determine his activity in accordance with outer things.  Such mirroring of the inner life is essential, for through it the child comes to self-consciousness, and learns to order, determine and master himself.”

It is from the point of view of expression alone that Froebel regards Art, and drawing, he takes to be “the first revelation of the creative power within the child.”  The very earliest drawing to which he refers is what he calls “sketching the object on itself,” that is, the tracing round the outlines of things, whereby the child learns form by co-ordinating sight and motor perceptions, a stage on which Dr. Montessori has also laid much stress.  Besides noting how children draw “round scissors and boxes, leaves and twigs, their own hands, and even shadows,” he sees that from experimentation with any pointed stick or scrap of red stone or chalk, may come what Mr. E. Cooke called a language of line, and now “the horse of lines, the man of lines” will give much pleasure.  After this it is true that “whatever a child knows he will put into his drawing,” and the teacher’s business is to see that he has abundant perceptions and images to express.

Another kind of drawing which children seem to find for themselves is what they call making patterns.  Out of this came the old-fashioned chequer drawing, now condemned as injurious to eyesight and of little value.

When children see anything rich in colour the general cry is “Let’s paint it,” which is their way of taking in the beauty.  We should not, says Froebel, give them paints and brushes inconsiderately, to throw about, but give them the help they need, and he describes quite a sensible lesson given to boys “whose own painting did not seem to paint them long.”