(April 21st)
_The founder of the kindergarten and the lover of little children._
To-day we will learn about Friedrich Froebel who loved little
children so much that more than a hundred years ago he started a
kindergarten.
Froebel was a very poor little boy and when he was very small he
had no playmates but the flowers in the old garden of his home. He
loved these flowers very dearly and called them his children. He
would tell them “Good morning,” and then “Good Night.” It seemed
that the flowers were playing with each other, and sometimes
talking to one another.
The little pink and white border flowers would say:
“I wonder where little Friedrich is this morning?” Then the old red
rose would say: “Never mind! he never forgets us. He will be here
soon.”
The doves in the garden would flutter round his head and light on
his shoulders. Even the mother-bird would let him hold her little
birds in his hand. When Friedrich came into the garden he always
brought something for the birds to eat. They would cry out:
“Here comes Friedrich with our breakfast!” and fly over to meet him.
Friedrich had no mother to teach him, but he had a big strong
brother who was very good to him. This big brother would take
little Friedrich out in the meadows, and tell him stories about the
bugs and the bees and the flowers. Then about the fairies and the
giants and the underground people. Friedrich loved these stories
very much and never forgot them.
When he grew bigger and went to school it was very hard to sit on
a bench all day and look at a book--especially where there were no
pictures in it at all, and the school master was very stern.
“Dear me!” thought Froebel. “This is a very stupid way to learn.
I wish I could see some pictures, and hear some stories and do
something with my hands, and sometimes play a little--I am so tired
of this old bench!”
Froebel never forgot how tired he was and how stupid the book was.
When he became a man he thought about his garden and he thought
about his school, and he said:
“I will make me a child garden, and the children shall grow in it
like the flowers and the doves at home.”
So he made a school like that and called it Kindergarten, which
is the German way of saying “Child Garden,” just as we say flower
garden, or vegetable garden. Then the little children in Germany
were just as happy as we are to-day, for now they could see
pictures and play games, and hear stories and make things with
their hands. They could grow as the flowers and the birds grow.