APPENDIX II Comparison of Plays noted by Froebel with the Enumeration given by Groos

Much that is given in Groos’ more elaborate classification can also be found in Froebel’s suggestions, particularly where younger children are concerned. For plays coming under the heading of Playful Activity of the Sensory Apparatus, Froebel has a parallel for every kind except that of Temperature, and for this Groos has not himself found anything that can fairly be called play.

For Sensations of Contact there is the Kicking Play, and Taste and Smell are also represented in the Mother Play book. For Hearing play we have the wooden ball, “a plaything for the child liable to produce noise by its movement,” as well as the Tic-tac and Finger Piano plays, and for receptive play, the mother is told to speak, rhythmically if possible, or to sing with every play. For Sensations of Brightness we have “Mother you want to foster this delight in all things that are sparkling clear and bright” of the “Fish in the Brook,” as well as “The Lightbird,” which Froebel has “found over and over again in all grades of the culture that makes up social life in village and in town.”

Sensations of colour are well provided for. In “The Two Windows” we have: “See the beautiful coloured circles and rays, just like rainbow and dew-drops, see how beautifully the colours play through each other.” Colour is a feature in Gift I, in beadwork, in the tablets, in paper folding, cutting and plaiting, and besides these there are crayons and paints, and frequent reference is made to the child’s pleasure in the colour of flowers.

Froebel also makes much play depend on perception of form: “Attention to the form and figure of the object can also be utilized for the child in play,” or, again, “Early in life the child delights in round and varied pebbles, he seeks and collects them, he takes pleasure in the straight edged and right angled.” He has found “The Target” play very widely spread, “plainly because it contains, as I see it, the first trace of an endeavour to make a child notice position and form.”

For perception of movement, to which Froebel would have added perception of change of position, there are many plays with the ball as well as “Tic-tac,” “The Child and the Pigeons,” “The Lightbird,” “The Fish in the Brook,” etc.

Groos’ next class is Play with the Motor Apparatus and under this comes first Playful movement of the Bodily Organs. Here we have Froebel saying: “The first toys and occupations of the child come from himself: he plays with his own limbs.”—L., p. 108. “The child at this stage begins to play with his limbs—his hands, his fingers, his lips, his tongue, his feet, as well as with the expression of his eyes and face.”—E., p. 48.

Under playful locomotion, Groos actually quotes Froebel’s description of the child learning to walk, and we have also marching, running, and racing games; “the large majority,” says Froebel, “I have created simply by watching the children at play.… Thus I have prepared a limping-game because I see my boys always limping and hopping.”

Next comes Playful Movement of Foreign Bodies, and under this heading Groos gives “Hustling things about, pushing, pulling, shaking, seizing and pushing away, dabbling in water, handling sand and clay, kite-flying, and capture of insects.” Of these Froebel mentions pushing of carriages, kite-flying, hobby-horse riding; he makes much of play with water, sand and clay, and he speaks of the catching of insects, etc., desiring that it should be wisely checked by directing the activity into other channels.

As to Destructive or Analytic Movement Play, Froebel notes that: “The child wishes to know all the properties of the thing, for this reason he examines it on all sides; for this reason he tears and breaks it; for this reason he puts it in his mouth and bites it.”—E., p. 73. “The cruel treatment of insects and other animals originates in the little boy’s desire to obtain an insight into the life of the animal.”—E., p. 164.

Of Constructive or Synthetic Movement Play, so much has been said already, that it is not necessary to dwell on it. Froebel, in fact, gives a far more inclusive account of this than Groos himself, not omitting his “simplest form,” viz. moulding new forms with sand, etc., nor the collecting and arranging in rows which to Groos and to Froebel is a more primitive form of construction. Of Exercise of Endurance, too, we have spoken, in quoting passages where Froebel shows the boyish desire to measure and to increase strength. Throwing and Catching Plays have their place in the “Apprentice and Master Workman” game.

The important third class, the Playful Use of the Higher Mental Powers, includes according to Groos a good deal that he has dealt with under other heads, e.g. Memory Play includes (a) Recognition and (b) Reflective Memory. Under the former comes that pleasure in recognition of form which has already been dealt with, the pleasure given by pictures, often, says Groos, greater than is given by the reality. Froebel, too, says that if the father makes a sketch, “this man of lines, this horse of lines, will give the child more joy than an actual man, an actual horse will do.”—E., p. 77. Froebel, too, notes the pleasure it will give a child to name flowers through recognition of a form: “Spurred like a rider, circled like a snail, umbrellas, wheels, he’ll find the names.”—M., p. 181. There is also the recognition of animal and other noises, as in Froebel’s Yard Gate. Rote learning as a play Froebel hardly mentions.

As to the two groups which Groos brings under the heading of Imagination, viz. “Illusion either playful or serious,” and “the voluntary or involuntary transformation of our mental content,” these receive full recognition. Froebel notes how the stick becomes a horse or the knotted handkerchief the baby, as well as the play of listening to and inventing stories.

Under the head of Attention comes such games as Hide and Seek, because of the alternate stress and relaxation, and Froebel noted before Darwin did the pleasure of the baby in Bo-peep. Groos also brings curiosity under this heading, and we have seen that Froebel deals fully with such play as the outcome of the instinct of investigation, or the instinct for self-teaching.

Froebel would certainly not draw the line where Groos does, when he says “the true characteristics of play are in inverse ratio to the intensity of the desire for knowledge,” and if this rule were strictly adhered to, a good deal of what Groos does call play might have to come out.

The plays which fall under the head of Reason have two bearings, says Groos, first causality, and second inherence. There are various references to the “joy of being a cause” from the child “whose capacity for speech is as yet undeveloped,” but who draws away the support and as the cube falls “turns to his mother in joyous triumph,” up to the pride of Keilhau boys, who “might not have accomplished their fortresses without the sapper,” but “who believed that if cast on a desert island, each could build a hut of his own.” Froebel also brings in intellectual games such as draughts, and he notes how children will invent their own words and their own alphabets in play. Of the making and solving of riddles I think Froebel never speaks.

As to what Groos says of Experimentation with the feelings, the parallels in Froebel are surprise plays such as Hide and Seek, adventure and hunting games where there may be play with fear, and the legends and stories.

Under the Impulse of the Second or Socionomic order, come the Fighting Plays, Love Play, Imitative Play, and Social Play. Of Love Play, Froebel has none, but the hunting and fighting were allowed abundant scope at Keilhau. Of Imitative Play there is much that can be cited from the playful imitation of simple movements and sounds in the Mother Songs and the Kindergarten Games, to the “classic dramas” of the Keilhau boys. Plastic and constructive play, too, goes from the simplest sand play, through the Kindergarten handwork, not only up to the fortress making, but also to the “boxes with locks and hinges, so neatly finished, veneered, and polished that many a trained cabinet-maker’s apprentice could have done no better,” which were made at Keilhau.

Of the Social Plays Groos says with feeling that, however advisable, it is wellnigh impossible to make a distinct class. He starts, however, with the “need of bodily association or the herding instinct.” He brings in the child’s eager desire to be with his fellows, and the importance in adult life of festivals, religious or otherwise. He mentions the child’s voluntary submission to a leader, and speaks of play as instrumental in teaching children submission to law. We have noticed Froebel speaking of the “combined games, which will train the child, by his very nature eager for companionship, in the habit of association with comrades, in good fellowship and all that this implies.” He also wants the child to take alternately some special part in the game and to be merely one of the crowd: “Each child should have a chance to lead, for it is especially developing to a child to recognize himself as independent as well as a member of the whole.” Among the older boys, the Bergwachts for instance were carefully organized under separate leaders and the captain of the first band was director of the whole. Froebel, too, made much of festivals at Keilhau, and this has always been a recognized feature of the Kindergarten.

Enjoyment of the comic never, I think, makes its appearance at all. Froebel had many gifts, but the saving sense of humour does not appear to have been among them.