excepted; it should be able to distinguish pink from pale red and
crimson from scarlet. [Footnote: There could be a set of colour bands
in the book that the English Language Society might publish.] Many
children through the neglect of those about them do not distinguish
these colours until a very much later age. I think also--in spite of
the fact that many adults go vague and ignorant on these points--that a
child of five may have been taught to distinguish between a square, a
circle, an oval, a triangle and an oblong, and to use these words. It
is easier to keep hold of ideas with words than without them, and none
of these words should be impossible by five. The child should also know
familiarly by means of toys, wood blocks and so on, many elementary
solid forms. It is matter of regret that in common language we have no
easy, convenient words for many of these forms, and instead of being
learnt easily and naturally in play, they are left undistinguished, and
have to be studied later under circumstances of forbidding
technicality. It would be quite easy to teach the child in an
incidental way to distinguish cube, cylinder, cone, sphere (or ball),
prolate spheroid (which might be called "egg"), oblate spheroid (which
might be called "squatty ball"), the pyramid, and various
parallelepipeds, as, for example, the square slab, the oblong slab, the
brick, and post. He could have these things added to his box of bricks
by degrees, he would build with them and combine them and play with
them over and over again, and absorb an intimate knowledge of their
properties, just at the age when such knowledge is almost instinctively
sought and is most pleasant and easy in its acquisition. These things
need not be specially forced upon him. In no way should he be led to
emphasize them or give a priggish importance to his knowledge of them.
They will come into his toys and play mingled with a thousand other
interests, the fortifying powder of clear general ideas, amidst the jam
of play.