Who began the thought behind Kindergarten??

Fredrich Froebel created the concept of Kindergarten.  I chose to do Froebel because lately there has been a lot of kindergarten talk in my family due to my nephew moving on to kindergarten and my son will go in a couple of years.  We were looking at different schools and thought I should research Frobel to find out his philosophy and what his concept was when he began talking about kindergarten. 

Froebel's building blocks also known as his third and fourth gifts.

Froebel was born April 21,1782 and passed away June 21, 1852. He was born in Germany and studied under Pestalozzi. Froebel discovered that brain development for children is most important between the age of birth and three years old.  Froebel did not fully develop the multiple intelligence theory but he was the philosopher that first realized children all learn different. Some of the examples he saw were some learn best by sorting blocks, talking with peers, or through different sensory experiences.  Froebel first called kindergarten "Play and Activity Institute" in 1837 and then changed the name to kindergarten in 1840.  The value of kindergarten is to bring out children's power of observations, judgment, and invention.  Froebel's invention of kindergarten really opened many doors for children.  They could begin school early and learn through play.  By going to a school for their age it could get them ready to switch over from kindergarten to elementary school.
Froebel says that when children play it is not just idle behavior it is the child learning and discovering how things work.  I like how Froebel thought of children planning as a learning process too because children do learn while they play they learn how to use new things.  I bought my son a tool bench this Christmas and while he played with it he learned by himself how to use each tool.

    

                                                                                                         One cool thing I found was that there is a paper star named after Froebel.  It is a three dimensional star, and it resembles what Frobel was trying to encourage for children to learn in kindergarten.. He wanted to encourage students to learn how to fold paper in kindergarten as a means to lean more about mathematics. The picture to the right is a picture of a building set Froebel came up with. the building blocks were his third and fourth gifts.  All together Froebel came up with four gifts for children that were designed to be educational and be able to be used in child's individual free play. Gift set one was a set of six individual, yarn balls. The point of gift set one is to work with form, colors, and movement. Gift set  two was to help with presentation, life (orange, bottle, wheel), knowledge and beauty.  This set contained cubes, cylinders, and spheres.  Gift three and four are different block sets, set three is the divided cube, and set four is rectangular prims and are pictured above.  Gift set five are triangular prisms.  Gift set six are another set of building blocks.  Gift set seven is a set of tablets, Gift set eight are sticks and rings, Gift set nine are small objects that vary in color, and lastly gift set 10 are framework sets. These sets are all for children to learn more by themselves. They get more mature as the children grow older in school.



I really like Froebel's  work and the gifts he made. He came up with a great kindergarten system.  I feel that student's do learn while playing just like Froebel realized.  The gift sets he made are great.  Each one has something different to it to teach the student's.



http://www.froebelgifts.com/method.htm
http://www.slowfamilyonline.com/tag/frederick-froebel/
http://www.froebelweb.org/
http://www.froebelgifts.com/gift10.htm