They emphasize the gospel of doing, for Froebel believes in positives in teaching, not negatives; in stimulants, not deterrents.  How inexpressibly tiresome is the everlasting “Don’t!” in some households.  Don’t get in the fire, don’t play in the water, don’t tease the kitty, don’t trouble the doggy, don’t bother the lady, don’t interrupt, don’t contradict, don’t fidget with your brother, and don’t worry me now; while perhaps in this whole tirade, not a word has been said of something to do.

Let sleeping faults lie as long as possible while we quietly oust them, little by little, by developing the good qualities.  Surely the less we use deterrents the better, since they are often the child’s first introduction to what is undesirable or wrong.  I am quite sure they have something of that effect on grown people.  The telling us not to do, and that we cannot, must not, do a certain thing surrounds it with a momentary fascination.  If your enemy suggests that there is a pot of Paris green on the piazza, but you must not take a spoonful and dissolve it in a cup of honey and give it to your maiden aunt who has made her will in your favor, your innocent mind hovers for an instant over the murderous idea.

Froebel’s play-materials come to the child when he has entered upon the war-path of getting “something to do.”  If legitimate means fail, then “let the portcullis fall;” the child must be busy.

The fly on the window-pane will be crushed, the kettle tied to the dog’s tail, the curtains cut into snips, the baby’s hair shingled,—­ anything that his untiring hands may not pause an instant,—­anything that his chubby legs may take his restless body over a circuit of a hundred miles or so before he is immured in his crib for the night.

The child of four or five years is still interested in objects, in the concrete.  He wants to see and to hear, to examine and to work with his hands.  How absurd then for us to make him fold his arms and keep his active fingers still; or strive to stupefy him with such an opiate as the alphabet.  If we can possess our souls and primers in patience for a while, and feed his senses; if we will let him take in living facts and await the result; that result will be that when he has learned to perceive, compare, and construct, he will desire to learn words, for they tell him what others have seen, thought, and done.  This reading and writing, what is it, after all, but the signs for things and thoughts?  Logically we must first know things, then thoughts, then their records.  The law of human progress is from physical activity to mental power, from a Hercules to a Shakespeare, and it is as true for each unit of humanity as it is for the race.

Everything in Froebel’s playthings trains the child to quick, accurate observation.  They help children to a fuller vision, they lead them to see.  Did you ever think how many people there are who “having eyes, see not”?