At Clapham, our Explorers I and II classes have an intentional approach towards play. It all starts with the Charlotte Mason maxim, “Children are born persons.” A Christian herself, Mason’s maxim was ultimately rooted in Genesis 1:27.
Genesis 1:27So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
In her first volume on Home Education, Mason discusses German educational theorist Friedrich Froebel, who invented kindergarten. In some respects, Froebel and Mason held very similar views regarding the inherent dignity of the child and their natural aptitude and interest in learning. Both viewed children as whole persons; both loved the natural world. Mason was strongly influenced by her environment in the Lake District and developed the practice of nature study, which is part of Clapham’s curriculum beginning in EI (Explorers I, or PreK). As for Froebel, it’s hard to underestimate how much he was influenced by his childhood spent in the Thuringian Forest.
Charlotte Mason and Friedrich Froebel shared another important conviction: that goodness, truth, and beauty had objective standards. For each of them, their Christian convictions anchored these standards to the perfections of God. And for each of them, these standards were linked to the design inherent in the natural world.
Froebel had reason to attend to the intricacies of design. In addition to studying pedagogy under the tutelage of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, he was a professional crystallographer.
As he moved into pedagogy and continued to solidify his notion of kindergarten, Froebel developed a series of “gifts” that gently introduce children to concepts and realities that occur in nature. These gifts are playthings with purpose. Through intentional, guided engagement with these objects, children would experience certain ideas for themselves: perfection and unity among them. The gifts introduce notions related to geometry and design, but also to so much more.
The first gift was a series of wool balls in primary and secondary colors. Tethered to a string, these balls introduce colors, movement (such as swinging and rolling), weight, gravity, and the notion of contrast.
The second gift was two or three wooden objects: a sphere, a cube, and a wooden cylinder. When in motion, the sphere remains visually the same; when suspended from a string and spun, the cube visually represents different shapes. There are of course a number of ways to play with a sphere, a cube, and a cylinder. Set on a table, the sphere will move or roll, the cube will remain at rest, and the cylinder may do either, depending on its position.
For Froebel, these simple realities pointed to much bigger ideas that illustrated principles of beauty, life, and knowledge. As students moved from one gift to the next, they shifted from abstract engagement to building with blocks themselves. Today, it’s hard to imagine kindergarten without building blocks, but before Froebel, these types of educational toys never existed in a school context. And thanks to him, a new generation of designers, artists, and architects emerged, all of whom participated in Froebelian kindergarten: Paul Klee, Vasily Kandinsky, and Walter Gropius (of the Bauhaus movement) all were directly influenced by Froebel’s design tutelage in kindergartens.
In classical education and aesthetics, we celebrate similar patterns of design, life, and beauty. Froebel’s gifts help young children begin to identify patterns and realities that are repeated in nature.
Classical architecture is notorious for imitating natural patterns. The famous golden ratio, for instance, (approximately 1.618) mimics the Fibonacci sequence found in nature, from sunflower seeds to a nautilus. The calculation a ÷ b = (a + b) ÷ a can be discovered in classic Greek architecture, such as the Parthenon, and in Gothic architecture, such as Notre Dame of Laon (below).
Christian classical educators believe we are drawn to the patterns of nature because God designed the universe with profound intentionality. These things are beautiful because they are objectively so. From the Fibonacci sequence to the golden ratio, fractal branching, and the Voronoi pattern, His beauty and perfection are evident everywhere we look outside.
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright credited much of his aesthetic and design choices to playing with Froebel’s gifts in childhood:
Frank Lloyd Wright"I went... equipped, in fact armed, with the Froebel kindergarten education I received as a child from my mother. Early training which happened to be perfectly suited to the T-square and triangle technique now to become a characteristic, natural to the machine age. Mother's intense interest in the Froebel system was awakened at the Philadelphia Centennial, 1876. In the Friedrich Froebel Kindergarten exhibit there, mother found the 'Gifts.' And 'gifts' there were. Along with the gifts was a system, as a basis for design and the elementary geometry behind all natural birth of 'Form'.... Taken East at the age of three to my father's pastorate near Boston, for several years I sat at the little kindergarten table-top ruled by lines about four inches apart each way making four-inch squares; and among other things, played upon these 'unit lines' with the square (cube), the circle (sphere) and the triangle (tetrahedron or tripod) - these were smooth maple wood blocks. Scarlet cardboard triangle(60o-30o) two inches on the short side, and one side white, were smooth triangular sections with which to come by pattern--design--by my own imagination. Eventually I was to construct designs in other mediums. But the smooth cardboard triangles and maple wood blocks were most important. All are in my fingers to this day."
Through providing Froebel’s gifts to our earliest learners in Explorers, we are putting concrete examples of the goodness, truth, and beauty that exist in God’s created world in their hands. Through guided play, they are laying the groundwork for a congenial relationship with design, math, and aesthetics from an early age. It’s play, for sure, but with a significant purpose in mind.
If you are interested in learning more about our Explorers I (preK) and Explorers II (Kindergarten) programs, we invite you to schedule a tour. Inquire here.