JOY IN MAKING


I, too, will something make, and joy in the making.

ROBERT BRIDGES.

Built by that only Law, that Use be suggester of Beauty.

ARTHUR CLOUGH.

There has always been _making_ in the Kindergarten, since to Froebel the
impulse to create was a characteristic of self-conscious humanity.
Stopford Brooke points out that Browning's Caliban, though almost brute,
shows himself human, in that, besides thinking out his natural religion,
he also dramatises and creates, "falls to make something."

'Tis solace making baubles, ay, and sport.
Tasteth, himself, no finer good i' the world
Than trying what to do with wit and strength--

What does a child gain from his ceaseless attempts at making? Froebel's
answer was that intellectually, through making he gains ideas, which,
received in words, remain mere words. "To learn through life and action
is more developing than to learn through words: expression in plastic
material, united with thought and speech, is far more developing than
mere repetition of words." Morally, it is through impressing himself on
his surroundings, that the child reaches the human attributes of
self-consciousness and self-control. One of the most important passages
Froebel ever wrote is this: