A piece of glass abraded by the beach,
And six or seven shells.

If early education, consist in fostering natural activities, there can
be no doubt that Froebel hit upon the activity most prominent of all in
the case of young children, viz. the impulse to investigate. For his
crest, the little child should share in the "motto given to the mongoose
family, in Kipling's _Rikki-Tikki_, 'Run and find out.'"

Most writers on the education of young children have emphasised the
importance of what is most inadequately called sense training, and it is
here that Dr. Montessori takes her stand with her "didactic apparatus."
Froebel's ideas seem wider; he realises that the sword with which the
child opens his oyster is a two-edged sword, that he uses not only his
sense organs as tools for investigation, but his whole body. His pathway
to knowledge, and to power over himself and his surroundings, is action,
and action of all kinds is as necessary to him as the use of his senses.

"The child's first utterance is force," says Froebel, and his first
discovery is the resistance of matter, when he "pushes with his feet
against what resists them." His first experiments are with his body,
"his first toys are his own limbs," and his first play is the use of
"body, senses and limbs" for the sake of use, not for result. One use
of his body is the imitation of any moving object, and Froebel tells the
mother:

If your child's to understand
Action in the world without,
You must let his tiny hand
Imitative move about.