Category: Play

Play gifts

The value of play gifts designed by Friedrich Froebel is their simplicity.

The logic of their unit form and interaction enables free and creative activity as the self expression of each child.

Their logical structure provides constantly emerging forms for each child to discover new conditions, relationships and relations.

speilgaben

Parents and educators can watch how each child can develop their own creative powers by free activity.

The intellectual roots of the play gifts are in Friedrich Froebel’s life as a student and teacher. His scientific studies and experience at the Mineralogical Museum in Berlin (1812-1816) and the subsequent work in Keilhau / Thür. (1817-1831) provided the basis for shaped his ideas about how each child could be free and develop creative powers through activity.

Source: Spielgaben

Friedrich Froebel

My educational method offers to its pupils from the beginning the opportunity to collect their own experiences from things themselves, to look with their own eyes and learn by their own experiments to know things and the relations of things to each other, and also the real life of the world of humanity; this last however, within the limits necessary for morality and not divested of the nimbus of the beautiful and the ideal.

In such a manner a greater inward as well as outward independence will be gained, which teaches one how to stand on one’s own feet . . . The too much and too early knowledge with which youth is crammed prevents men from reaching a true and real independence, which is only the fruit of the vigorous efforts of one’s own powers, especially by acting and doing.

Friedrich Froebel quoted by W H G Armytage in 1952

via Friedrich Froebel invented Kindergarten.

Students brighten holidays

Youth receive exciting new discoveries, reminding us all of the simpler joys and excitement of the early years of life. Elders share important lessons and events from the past.

Cards and letters made by students were recently presented to Miss Wetterhahn at Crisan’s Romanian Bakery, an Albany café in Stella’s Center Square neighborhood in Albany.

As much as 80 years separate the recipient of these student messages and the RCS young people who created them.

Ella Wetterhahn, also known at Stella, lives in Albany and is a 93-year-old veteran who served as an Army Nurse in the European Theater during WWII. She has been the subject of two Albany Times Union articles over the years, one in which she was interviewed about her experiences in World War II in which she served her country with conviction and bravery.

Inter generational activities enrich the soul but also expand awareness, elevate the metacognitive quality of empathy, and provide learning experiences back and forth across generations.

via RCS students make letters and notes for 93-year-old World War II nurse living in Albany – Ravena-Coeymans-Selkirk CSD, Ravena, NY.

The First Kindergarten

The story of the founding of Kindergarten by Friedrich Froebel and the tireless work of his friend and advocate, Baroness von Marenholtz-Buelow.

Opening the doors of cultural luminaries and European nobility to Froebel’s ideas, the noblewoman from the ancient von Buelow family is often dubbed "the mother of Kindergarten" just as Froebel is referred to as "the father of Kindergarten."

In this picture book for children, the author joins through literature the lives and contributions of two of the world’s greatest proponents of children’s education, which are still relevant today.

via The First Kindergarten – J (Johannes) Froebel-Parker : AuthorHouse.

Play Gifts

    Why Did Friedrich Froebel Sell Blocks?

    It all stems from the way he understood children. He believed that to accompany a child on the long, exciting, educational and at times complicated path to maturity is the most important task that anyone can undertake.

    He believed that this is the foundation upon which we can build a better life and a better future, at both a personal and collective level, with a society that is free, totally conscious, informed, demanding and respectful of everything that surrounds us.

    Blocks and play are vital during the formative years and throughout  life. Playing with blocks can help us all to achieve these objectives.

    InvNr F1086b

    Natural growth

    The way beech trees grow is something truly special. They multiply by “rejuvenation” which means that the trees propagate by themselves. No artificial irrigation or planting is required. Beechwood forests are a completely natural and sustainable source of raw material.

    Beechwood is known as a deep rooting plant. For this reason, beechwood has been known as the Mother of the Forest since the beginning of time. A typical beechwood forest is home to about 7,000 species of animals and is an important provider of raw materials. With around 250 well known fields of application, beechwood is the most versatile type of wood around.

    In 1850 S F Fischer began making the play gifts designed by Friedrich Froebel in the Erzgebirge mountains.