[Sidenote:  Home Kindergarten]

There are a number of books designed to teach mothers how to carry the Kindergarten occupations over into the home; but while such books may be helpful in a few cases, in most cases better occupations present themselves in the course of the day’s work.  The Kindergarten occupations themselves follow increasingly the order of domestic routine.  For example, many children in the Kindergarten make mittens out of eiderdown flannel in the Fall, when their own mothers are knitting their mittens, and make little hoods either for themselves or for their dolls.  At other periods they put up little glasses of preserves or jelly, and study the industry of the bees and the way they put up their tiny jars of jelly.  Their attention is called also to the preparations that the squirrels and other animals make for winter, and to that of the trees and flowers.  In other words, the occupations in the Kindergarten are designed to bring the children into conscious sympathy with the life of nature and of the home.

[Sidenote:  Kindergarten Methods]

That mother who keeps this purpose in mind and applies it to the occupations that come up naturally in the course of a day’s work, will thereby bring the Kindergarten spirit into her own home much more truly than if she invests in a number of perforated sewing cards and colored strips of paper for weaving.  Not that there is any harm in these bits of apparatus, provided that the sewing cards are large and so perforated as not to task the eyes and young fingers of the sewer.  But unless for some special purpose, such as the making of a Christmas or birthday gift, these devices are unnecessary and better left to the school, which has less richness of material at hand than has the home.

[Sidenote:  Helping Mother]

In allowing the children to enter a workers into the full life of the home several good things are accomplished. (1) The eager interest of the developing mind is utilized to brighten those duties which are likely to remain permanent duties.  Not does this observation apply only to girls.  Domestic obligations are supposed to rest chiefly upon them, but the truth is that boys need to feel these obligations as keenly as the girls, if they are to grow into considerate and helpful husbands and fathers.  The usual division of labor into forms falsely called masculine and feminine is, therefore, much to be deplored.  Moreover, at an early age children are seldom sex-conscious, and any precocity in this direction is especially evil in its results; yet many mothers from the beginning make such a division between what they require of their boys and of their girls as to force this consciousness upon them.  All kinds of work, then, should be allowed in the beginning, however it may differentiate later on, and little boys as well as little girls should be taught to take an interest in sewing, dish-washing, sweeping, dusting, and cooking—­in all the forms of domestic activity.