KINDERGARTEN 



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KINDERGARTEN 



development. It is with the needs of children 

 of a specific age in mind that the kindergarten 

 training teacher discusses the work to be done 

 with children with her students. In conse- 

 quence, the work is direct and practical, and 

 the students' application of it in their practice 

 teaching vital also. The value of this method 

 of work is being recognized by normal schools, 

 and the work of the primary course is being 

 reshaped upon that basis. 



In taking the child's progressive development 

 as the foundation of its work, the kindergarten 

 training school has taken a basis that gives it 

 still another value. . One of the purposes of 

 such a study is realized when that knowledge is 

 made the groundwork for successful work in the 

 kindergarten. A higher purpose is realized 

 when such a study is selected as a means to 

 the development of womanly character in the 

 students in training. The study of the child's 

 development is a study of unusual interest to 

 young women and touches springs of action in 

 them that the usual academic subjects fail to 

 touch. It is because young women have felt 

 that such study had a value for their own 

 lives that 30,000 have graduated from kinder- 

 garten training schools, and that many are now 

 taking kindergarten courses in preference to 

 college courses. 



Value of Kindergarten Training for Mothers. 

 It is because the kindergarten training school 

 makes the child's development the basis of its 

 work that it has still another value perhaps 

 the greatest of all. This is its value for home- 

 making. The kindergartner's success in deal- 

 ing with children is, in fact, the strongest argu- 

 ment for the training of mothers. That suc- 

 cess is often commented on by mothers who 

 see their own children, unmanageable at home, 

 take on the evidence of models when they 

 enter kindergarten. The success in question 

 is the result of the kindergartner's knowl- 

 edge of children's characteristics at the kinder- 

 garten age, and of what to do with them in 

 view of these characteristics. If mothers were 

 to make the study of children that kindergart- 

 ners make, and to make a study also of the 

 agencies for their development their play ma- 

 terial and the songs and stories adapted to 



their stage of development they would be 

 much better fitted than some now are to 

 guide the children's development and to make 

 the home the happy place that it should be for 

 the mother as well as for the children, if both 

 are to be at their best. 



The women who espoused the kindergarten 

 course in the early days felt that their work 

 for the children was incomplete unless the 

 mothers had also been initiated into the new 

 educational ideals. They believed that all 

 mothers needed the new vision, not for the 

 happiness of the children alone, but for the 

 inspiration it would give to their own lives. 

 That the Froebelian conception of life con- 

 tributes to a mother's happiness as well as to 

 her efficiency is the testimony of thousands of 

 kindergarten-trained mothers. 



Women's Cooperation Still Needed. The 

 fact that the kindergarten and kindergarten 

 training are recognized by the highest educa- 

 tional authorities as working along right lines 

 and contributing to the solution of educational 

 problems must be apparent from this brief 

 sketch. The cooperation of women is still 

 needed, however, if the kindergarten is to ful- 

 fil its whole purpose. The labors of the women 

 of the early years in its behalf will stand, but 

 their work was but a beginning that others 

 must carry to completion. The kindergartens 

 enrol over half a million children, but there 

 are more than three and a half million still 

 without the privileges it has to offer. Two 

 million of these live in rural districts where 

 none but home kindergartens are possible. If 

 these children are to know the meaning of 

 the word, they can only know it through their 

 mothers' efforts to master its principles and 

 apply these in their own homes. The remain- 

 ing million and a half or more live in cities 

 or towns large enough to have adopted kinder- 

 gartens but that have not yet done so. Do not 

 the mothers in these communities owe it to 

 their own children and those of their neigh- 

 bors to acquaint themselves with a movement 

 contributing so much to educational progress 

 and to work for its advancement? N.C.V. 



Consult Vandewalker's The Kindergarten in 

 American Education. 



Principles of Kindergarten Procedure and Their Application 



The mother who wishes to acquaint herself 



with the principles of kindergarten procedure 



will find many books io interest her. Since 



these principles have their origin in the con- 



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ception of education as a process of develop- 

 ment, she will gain much of the insight needed 

 by making the child's development the basis of 

 her study. The result of such a study, thought- 



