[Sidenote:  Educational Value of Play]

All these authorities are quoted here in order to show that the practical recognition of play which obtains among the advanced educators to-day is not a piece of sentimentalism, as stern critics sometimes declare, but the united opinion of some of the wisest minds of this and former ages.  As Froebel says, “Play and speech constitute the element in which the child lives.  At this stage (the first three years of childhood) he imparts to everything the virtues of sight, feeling, and speech.  He feels the unity between himself and the whole external world.”  And Froebel conceives it to be of the profoundest importance that this sense of unity should not be disturbed.  He finds that play is the most spiritual activity of man at this age, “and at the same time typical of human life as a whole—­of the inner, hidden, natural life of man and all things; it gives, therefore, joy, freedom, contentment, inner and outer rest, peace with the world:  it holds the sources of all that is good.  The child that plays thoroughly until physical fatigue forbids will surely be a thorough, determined man, capable of self-sacrifice for the promotion and welfare of himself and others.”

But all play does not deserve this high praise.  It fits only the play under right conditions.  Fortunately these are such that every mother can command them.  There are three essentials:  (1) Freedom, (2) Sympathy, (3) Right materials.

[Sidenote:  Freedom]

(1) Freedom is the first essential, and here the child of poverty often has the advantage of the child of wealth.  There are few things in the poverty-stricken home too good for him to play with; in its narrow quarters, he becomes, perforce, a part of all domestic activity.  He learns the uses of household utensils, and his play merges by imperceptible degrees into true, healthful work.

In the home of wealth, however, there is no such freedom, no such richness of opportunity.  The child of wealth has plenty of toys, but few real things to play with.  He is shut out of the common activity of the family, and shut in to the imitation activity of his nursery.  He never gets his small hands on realities, but in his elegant clothes is confined to the narrow conventional round that is falsely supposed to be good for him.

Froebel insists upon the importance of the child’s dress being loose, serviceable, and inconspicuous, so that he may play as much as possible without consciousness of the restrictions of dress.  The playing child should also have, as we have noticed in the first section, the freedom of the outside world.  This does not mean merely that he should go out in his baby-buggy, or take a ride in the park, but that he should be able to play out-of-doors, to creep on the ground, to be a little open-air savage, and play with nature as he finds it.

[Sidenote:  Sympathy]