As for dancing, Richter exclaims:  “I know not whether I should most deprecate children’s balls or most praise children’s dances.  For the harmony connected with it (dancing) imparts to the affections and the mind that material order which reveals the highest, and regulates the beat of the pulse, the step, and even the thought.  Music is the meter of this poetic movement, and is an invisible dance, as dancing is a silent music.  Finally, this also ranks among the advantages of his eye and heel pleasure; that children with children, by no harder canon than the musical, light as sound, may be joined in a rosebud feast without thorns or strife.”  The dances may be of the simplest kind, such as “Ring Around a Rosy,” “Here We Go, To and Fro,” “Old Dan Tucker” and the “Virginia Reel.”  The old-fashioned singing plays, such as “London Bridge,” “Where Oats, Peas, Beans, and Barley Grow,” and “Pop Goes the Weasel” have their place and value.  Several collections of them have been made and published, but usually quite enough material may be found for these plays in the memories of the people of any neighborhood.

[Sidenote:  Toys]

All these plays, it will be noticed, call for very simple and inexpensive apparatus, in most cases for no apparatus at all.  Nevertheless there is a place for toys.  All children ought to have a few, both because of the innocent pleasure they afford and because they need to have certain possessions which are inalienably their own.  A simple and inexpensive list of suitable toys adapted to various ages is given at the end of this section.  Most of them are exactly the toys that parents usually buy.  But it will be noticed that none of them are very elaborate or expensive, and that the patrol wagon is not among them.  This is because the patrol wagon directly leads to plays that are not only uneducational but positively harmful in their tendencies.  The children of a whole neighborhood were once led into the habit of committing various imitation crimes for the sake of being arrested and carried off in miniature patrol wagon.  It any such expensive and elaborate toys are bought, it may well be the plain express wagon or the hook and ladder and fire engine.  The first of these leads to plays of industry, the second to those of heroism.

  LIST OF TOYS SUITABLE FOR VARIOUS AGES.

Ball, rubber ring, soft animals and rag dolls .........  Before 1 year
Blocks and Bells ............................................. 1 year
Small chair and table ....................................1 1/2 years
Noah’s Ark .................................................. 2 years
Picture books ............................................... 2 years
Materials and instruments .............................. 2 to 3 years
Carts, stick-horses, and reins ..................... 2 1/2 to 3 years
Boats, ships, engines, tin or wooden animals, dolls,
dishes, broom, spade, sand-pile, bucket, etc ................ 3 years
Hoop, games and story books ................................. 5 years

OCCUPATIONS