Guide to the Kindergarten, and Intermediate Class

This study, since its first publication, has more and more confirmed the conviction derived from reading Froebel’s “Essay on the Education of the Human Race” viz., that no greater benefit could be conferred, than the far and wide spread of Kindergartens, as an underpinning, so to say, of our noble public-school system, giving adequate moral foundation, thoroughness, and practicality to the national education. This book is no ordinary manual or a guide as most of them are written for the convenience of already trained teachers; and thus the necessarily omit the characteristic peculiarity of the method, because written words cannot do justice to the fine steps by which the child is led to gradually carry its total spontaneity forward, on every plane of its little life – artistic, moral, and intellectual. This best-selling Guide deals with the Kindergarten culture as the adult mind entering into the child’s world, and appreciating nature’s intention as displayed in every impulse of spontaneous life; and so directing it that the joy of success may be ensured at every step, and artistic things be actually produced, which gives the self-reliance and conscious intelligence that ought to discriminate human power from blind force.