To prepare for our work together on Tuesday, everyone should read this short ( 4 short pages) excerpt from Sharon Kallis (2014), Common Threads , and everyone should watch:
Fröbel video: The Kindergarten 2017 trailer (5 min)
Fröbel's Gifts (from the book Inventing Kindergarten -- Brosterman). Please read the one(s) Tathali assigned to your leaf group!
Then, take a look at:
Friedrich Froebel's Chief Writings on Education. Rendered into English by S.S.F. Fletcher and J. Welton London: Edward Arnold, 1912.
There are 21 sections to this writing from Froebel -- each group should choose 3 (or 4) they are interested in and each person read one of them.
Fröbel video: The Kindergarten 2017 trailer (5 min)
Fröbel's Gifts (from the book Inventing Kindergarten -- Brosterman). Please read the one(s) Tathali assigned to your leaf group!
Then, take a look at:
Friedrich Froebel's Chief Writings on Education. Rendered into English by S.S.F. Fletcher and J. Welton London: Edward Arnold, 1912.
There are 21 sections to this writing from Froebel -- each group should choose 3 (or 4) they are interested in and each person read one of them.
Froebel’s gifts #13, 14, and 18 (cutting, weaving, and folding) are not necessarily as important as the understanding that Froebel had about children when introducing these 3 gifts. The article mentioned how Froebel understood “The young need to move and create, love to be challenged, and are capable of learning and doing almost anything their parents and teachers will take the time to teach” (pg. 78). I think this is a vital understanding that all early childhood educators need to recognize when working with young children. We need to continue to challenge them within our classrooms while providing them with the support they need to succeed with new and challenging tasks. This year I had a wonderful group of young girls who loved to do crafts and art projects and therefore I continued to bring in new projects and crafts for them to learn. Some of these crafts were quite intricate, yet with support and encouragement they were all able to complete the task and many felt so confident that they were able to teach others who were interested. Young children are capable of almost anything if we provide the support and encouragement to help them succeed whether that be tasks such as cutting, weaving, and folding as Froebel mentions or any of the many other tasks they may encounter in their life.
ReplyDeleteAly, interesting to read about the idea that children will enjoy learning anything their adults are willing to teach them. Your example of the girls in your classroom creating intricate art pieces bridged my reading of Froebel's 3rd and 4th gifts (building blocks - first 8 cubes, then 8 flatter planks). After reading your comment I was brought back to a time when my students were learning about castles and a few of the children used blocks (although they were in ample supply and of different sizes unlike gifts 3 + 4) to create a very intricate castle using all of their prior knowledge on the topic. The children were able to build crenulations, watch towers, and slits for windows. It was fascinating to see them take simple blocks and apply all of their expertise through play. I have been toying with the idea of buying KEVA blocks for my classroom to foster some more "nonspecific, open-ended, and symbolic" play, perhaps Froebel's 4th gift, quite possibly KEVA's origin, is the push I needed.
ReplyDeleteOur group read about Froebel's first gift-Balls. They were made of wool in the primary and secondary colours. Through the manipulation of the balls, children are able to use their imagination, and the balls are limitless in what they can become. They also teach the child about science, their environment, colour, movement and much more.
ReplyDeleteI had two major connections/uh huh moments when reading this section. The first was that children don't need much to be entertained and educated. These materials were simple and streamlined...but thoughtful and purposeful. The other thing this made me think about was Montessori infant mobiles. I have started making them for my friends' newborns. The article mentions that the first interaction with balls would be around 6-8 weeks after birth. I know that Montessori was influenced by many educationalists of her time, and those that came before her. It was an interesting thing for me to read as I am working on a ball mobile this week!
While I read your responses, Aly and Andrea, I was reflecting on how Froebel's initial gifts compare to his later gifts. The first gifts were simple - chosen for the differences in their shapes, lines, surfaces and potential movements. The earlier gifts fit with what Froebel explained as initiating free, self-determined activities (p.231, Friedrich Froebel's Chief Writings on Education). The later gifts seem to develop different skills or were designed for a purpose. The 12th gift is sewing. Sewing, historically a woman’s interest, was introduced as a gift in Kindergarten as it was dominated by females when this gift was introduced (p.76, Froebel’s Gifts). I wonder if even though there were creativity and design elements in sewing, the act of sewing itself was designed to prepare females for their futures. Lacing cards are found in Kindergarten classrooms today and I think of them now as being tasks to develop fine motor skills rather than as a means of creative expression. I suppose that prepares modern children for their futures too.
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ReplyDeleteFroebel's gifts The 8th, 9th, 15th, 16th and 17th, include sticks, rings, slates, jointed slats, and interlacing. According to the article these were quoted to be “the simplest gifts, and the sticks were also amongst the most valuable. They were equally suited for nature, knowledge, and beauty forms and in more advanced classes, for children’s first exercises in letter and word making as well” (p. 64). After reading about the gifts and these sticks being so valuable as it was used for students in more advanced classes, it reminded me of a child I had in my classroom last year. I had an Occupational Therapist come into my classroom to work with a student with autism and she used thick wooden sticks to practice making letters. She used the thick sticks to work on fine motor skills and for the child to be hands on in his learning of recognizing letters. I have also used sticks in my classroom as a loose part to help represent something else such as a letter.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your description and personal connection, Talia!
DeleteWhen you mentioned using sticks to create words and letters, I was reminded of the wood lines and curves from the Handwriting without Tears Program.
In the Kindergarten Trailer, one of the speakers said, "The basis of learning is an understanding of the world around you" (about 5min 40sec). This quote resonated with me in my work in Nigeria, where oftentimes learning is NOT based in the world around the children - at least not in the children's immediate environment. There is a great TED Talk entitled "How Africa can use its traditional knowledge to make progress" (https://www.ted.com/talks/chika_ezeanya_esiobu_how_africa_can_use_its_traditional_knowledge_to_make_progress) where the speaker talks about how A is for Apple was not meaningful to her since apples were a foreign and expensive fruit. Because the concept of apple was not in the world around her, which provided a very shaky foundation for her learning. Connecting this to Froebel's gifts, I wonder how the gifts might be different if Froebel was born and raised in Africa.
ReplyDeleteFroebel's tenth gift, drawing, was taught as a system of lines and shapes, meant for "preliterate" children "to break down the complexities of nature into its constituents forms" (70). This drawing system was intended as a first step towards combining lines to make recognizable letters. I find it quite representative of Froebel's time that this grid system depended so heavily on the assumption that every child (person) visualizes and understands the world in a linear, compartmentalized manner; it ignores the possibility of 'big picture' thinkers, for example. Nonetheless, this basic concept/approach is still relevant today. We can draw connections to similar learning opportunities in Kindergarten classes - playing with and creating 'part to whole' shapes and objects (using loose parts to make letter shapes, building blocks, tangrams, making lines in the dirt with sticks, etc) as a means to developing spatial awareness and scaffolding early literacy skills.
ReplyDeleteFroebel's eleventh gift, pricking, "bridges the gap between drawing and sewing." Pricking involves taking a needle or punch and poking holes into a piece of paper to create an image when held to the light. Reading about this gift got the wheels turning in my head for projects I could do with my students. One idea I had is to get the students to prick constellations, which we could then use for "stargazing" inside the classroom. I am curious if anyone has done a pricking project or has even introduced pricking to their students?
ReplyDelete-Nikki Leeming
Froebel's 20th gift; modeling clay was the last gift.It was seen as the link, to complete the circle of gifts, with this new medium the children could now build their own gift 1 and 2 as well as whatever else they could imagine. With this clay the children could learn and practice all the new skills that the gifts had provided them with. The modeling clay holds endless possibilities, it can be whatever you can imagine it to be and if want to change it to something else you can easily manipulate it with your hands. After reading about the modeling clay it made me think of "Heavy work" and the use of the big muscles the children might use to push and pull, working the solid clay. This heavy work helps them have a physical release as well as pressure on their joints. This made me think of all the ways the clay is supporting their development on many different levels.
ReplyDeleteFroebel’s 19th gift, “peas work” or softened balls of wax that could be used as connectors for sticks, toothpicks, etc. to make 3 dimensional shapes is described as a “summation of all of those [gifts] preceding” as it uses the concepts of line and point to introduce 3D shapes. In modern days I’ve seen teachers use marshmallows or jujube candies as an alternate to peas (fun teacher tip: get the ones without gelatin if you want to allow your children to eat these without worrying about leaving your vegetarian kids out!). Froebel also suggests balls of wax, or one could use plastecine, playdough or clay. The article points out the connection between “peas work” learning and the massive success of the child’s toy “Tinkertoy” which also uses sticks and joiners to develop constructions. The article notes that Froebel’s idea of “occupations of childhood should run through that of the general development of human civilization” can definitely be seen in this gift.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things I appreciate about this gift is its ability to engage a variety of learners. One student recounts his experience, as a child with poor vision, using peas work to create a structure that his fellow students hadn’t considered. This gift also focusses on hands-on experiential learning, which, in my opinion, is the most rich for students in ECE.
Jodi Allesia
Froebel’s Fifth Gift
ReplyDeleteThis gift is rather complex in theory, and introduces diagonal line and triangular form to blocks; division into thirds, ninths, and twenty-sevenths. It consists of a three-inch cube, that’s been divided equally, twice in each dimension, producing twenty-seven one inch cubes. Three of these are divided into halves by one diagonal cut, and three others into quarters by two diagonal cuts crossing each other, making thirty-nine pieces in total.
This gift reminds me of block play that can be set up by an educator, in the form of a small house made up of various pieces of cubes and prisms, but not with the intention of it being a sociodramatic activity, but rather, to allow the children to explore the deconstruction and reconstruction of structures. Many teachers will have had this experience of setting up an activity of this kind, watching their students “break” a structure that has been set up, only to have their students build unique versions of a home or other architectural structures, with the same parts. Often the educator will be alongside the students during this open-ended activity, scaffolding the students realizations that it was the same parts that made up the original structure (by teacher), that were broken into different parts (by students), that were utilized to create an entirely different structure (also by students). The teacher can point out, “where did my roof go?!” And the children might point to their alternative use of such diagonal block as a gateway into their version of a structure.
“Various arrangements and combinations of the constituent parts illustrates the change of one form into another, evolution of many out of one and the return again of the many into one, or in other words, diversity, multiplicity and unity.” (P. 211, Friedrich Froebel's Chief Writings on Education. by S.S.F. Fletcher and J. Welton)
I had two connections to the reading on Frobel's 7th Gift: Parquetry. This gift is significant because it signified the movement from 3D to 2D, and concrete to abstract. I was struck by the resemblance the manipulatives in this gift have to present day pattern blocks that seem to be a staple in most classrooms. This activity has always been a popular choice with my Kindergarten students. This year, I taught a Grade 1/2 combination classroom and found that pattern blocks continued to be a favourite activity with this age group as well. I love to see where the students' creativity takes them, and what "pictures" they can create using the shapes.
ReplyDeleteTwo differences that stand out to me initially are:
- The types of shapes included: Frobel's 7th gift contains squares and several types of triangles, with circles and semi circles being added at a later date; and pattern blocks include hexagons, trapezoids etc.
- The way colour is used in the sets: in Froebel's gift each specific shape comes in a variety of colours/finishes within the set, while all squares in pattern blocks sets are orange, for example.
I wonder which one of these manipulatives was created first, and what the reasons are behind these discrepancies?
The second connection I had was to the word "parquetry". Right away I was reminded of parquet flooring. When reading further, the article states that the flat geometric forms of the 7th gift were "most widely available in natural-finished maple, beech, walnut and mahogany" (Brosterman, 1997, p.59). This quote prompted a quick google of "parquetry", which led to definitions describing it as a mosaic or inlaid blocks or various woods arranged in geometric patterns in flooring, as well as some beautiful pictures!