KINDERGARTEN 



3255 



KING 



they serve to organize the children's efforts. 

 and make each day's work contribute toward 

 an end they are carrying out. It is the having 

 such an end that makes their work vital. 



It is because children's play and work must 

 have a relation to their own purposes, if it is to 

 contribute to their teal development, that the 

 making and furnishing of a doll house is made 

 much of in present-day kindergartens. Its 

 value there is limited, however, because each 

 child's part in the whole is so small. Because 

 the child at home can have the main share in 

 its making, a doll house made from a hat box 

 or soap box should form a part of every child's 

 play equipment. When the mat that he 

 weaves is to be used as a rug, or the card- 

 board is to become the furniture, these objects 

 and his work with them assume an interest 

 which they did not have before. The boy who 

 has built a barn and sheds in which to shelter 

 his toy animals acquires an interest in these 

 that will carry him forward to new things. 



The Value of Home Play Depends Upon Par- 

 ents' Attitude. The parents' attitude toward 

 such play as this suggested will in a large 

 measure determine its value for the children. 

 If they regard it as a means to the child's 

 development they will take pains to see that it 

 is of the kind to develop resourcefulness and 

 the habits of orderliness and consideration for 

 the rights of others. They must be willing to 

 let children form and carry out their own play 

 projects, and refrain from overwhelming them 

 with suggestions. One of the most important 

 lessons for children to learn, however, is co- 

 operation with others, on the basis of mutual 

 rights. They must not, therefore, be allowed 

 to usurp authority. Parents often fail to re- 

 spect children's rights, but children .as often 

 fail to recognize that parents have rights also. 

 The right to suitable play material and a place 

 in which to use it is a right that should be 

 conceded to children; but they should be 

 taught from the beginning that the parents' 

 rights may prevent the children's exercise of 

 their own sometimes. 



Parents should resist the temptations to buy 

 expensive toys, since these defeat the purpose 

 of education through activity, which is the 

 development of resourcefulness and the enjoy- 

 ment of simple, wholesome things. The holi- 

 days that give the children the greatest pleas- 

 ure are those to which they contribute the 

 most. A Christmas tree that contains decora- 

 tions and gifts of the children's own making to 

 the friends of their own choosing, will afford 



greater happiness than one that dazzles them 

 with its glitter and overwhelms them with toys 

 of which they can make no use. 



It is in this spirit and to these ends that 

 parents should direct their children's play. The 

 play with material forms but one of several 

 agencies that contribute to their unfolding. Of 

 the games that children enjoy so much in 

 kindergarten, only the sense games, hiding 

 games and guessing games can be used in the 

 home, since the essence of the others lies in 

 the companionship of other children. In the 

 absence of such companionship, the parents 

 must contribute more of their own. By par- 

 ticipating in their children's unfolding, the 

 parents will themselves be the gainers, since 

 the enriching of their children's lives will result 

 in the enriching of their own. N.C.V. 



Consult Smith's The Home-Made Kindergarten ; 

 Palen and Henderson's What and How; Burn- 

 ham's Rhymes for Little Hands; Poulsson's 

 Father and Baby Plays ; Lindsay's Mother Stories 

 and A Story Garden for Children. 



Related Subjects. The following articles in 

 these volumes contain material which will be 

 helpful in connection with the above discussion of 

 the kindergarten: 

 Baby Habit 



Child Montessori Method 



Child Study Nature Study 



Dolls, Paper Play 



Education School Gardens 



Froebel, Friedrich Schools 



Games and Plays Story-Telling 



Gardening Toys 



KINEMATICS, kinemat'iks, the branch of 

 mechanics that deals with pure motion apart 

 from all causes. To the idea of space and 

 the movement of a point in space, employed 

 in geometry, kinematics adds the idea of time; 

 that is, displacement at a definite speed in a 

 definite direction. The mass of the moving 

 body and the forces that set it moving do not 

 enter into consideration. See FALLING BODIES; 

 DYNAMICS. 



KINETOGRAPH, kine'tohgraf, and KINE- 

 TOSCOPE, kine'tohskohp, the names origi- 

 nally given by their inventor, Thomas A. 

 Edison, to the respective machines for taking 

 and for exhibiting moving pictures. In Amer- 

 ica they are now commonly called the camera 

 and the projector. See MOVING PICTURE. 



KING, a reigning sovereign who holds his 

 position by life tenure and hereditary succes- 

 sion. There are degrees of dignity in titles 

 of rulers, a king being in importance below an 

 emperor; the latter is at the head of a mon- 

 archy composed of a strong federation of 



