The whole institution was called the Pestalozzi-Froebel House.  The Prussian edict, which abolished the Kindergarten almost before it had started, was now rescinded, and our own Princess Royal[4] gave warm support to this new institution.  The description here quoted was actually written in 1887, when the institution had been in existence for fourteen years: 

[Footnote 4:  The Crown Princess of Prussia, afterwards the Empress Frederick.]

“The purpose of the National Kindergarten is to provide the necessary and natural help which poor mothers require, who have to leave their children to themselves.

“The establishment contains:—­

“(1) The Kindergarten proper, a National Kindergarten with four classes for children from 2-1/2 to 6 years old.

“(2) The Transition Class, only held in the morning for children about 6 or 6-1/2 years old.

“(3) The Preparatory School, for children from 6 to 7 or 7-1/2 years old.

“(4) The School of Handwork, for children from 6 to 10 or older.

“Dinners are provided for those children whose parents work all day away from home at a trifling charge of a halfpenny and a penny.  Also, for a trifle, poor children may receive assistance of various kinds in illness, or may have milk or baths through the kindness of the kindred ‘Association for the Promotion of Health in the Household.’

“In the institution we are describing there is a complete and well-furnished kitchen, a bathroom, a courtyard with sand for digging, with pebbles and pine-cones, moss, shells and straw, etc., a garden, and a series of rooms and halls suitably furnished and arranged for games, occupations, handwork and instruction.

“The occupations pursued in the Kindergarten are the following:  free play of a child by itself; free play of several children by themselves; associated play under the guidance of a teacher; gymnastic exercises; several sorts of handwork suited to little children; going for walks; learning music, both instrumental (on the method of Madame Wiseneder[5]) and vocal; learning and repetition of poetry; story-telling; looking at really good pictures; aiding in domestic occupations; gardening; and the usual systematic ordered occupations of Froebel.  Madame Schrader is steadfastly opposed to that conception of the Kindergarten which insists upon mathematically shaped materials for the Froebelian occupations.  Her own words are:  ’The children find in our institution every encouragement to develop their capabilities and powers by use; not by their selfish use to their own personal advantage, but by their use in the loving service of others.  The longing to help people and to accomplish little pieces of work proportioned to their feeble powers is constant in children; and lies alongside of their need for that free and unrestrained play which is the business of their life.”

[Footnote 5:  From certain old photographs, I suppose this to have been what we now call a Kindergarten Band.]