The _Mother Play and Nursery Songs_ were intended to exercise the infant’s senses, limbs, and muscles, and, through the loving union between mother and child, draw both into intelligent and agreeable relations with the common objects of life about them. The fifty ‘play songs’ are each connected with some simple nursery game, like ‘pat-a-cake,’ ‘hide-and-seek,’ or the imitation of some trade (Fig. 43), and are intended to correspond to a special physical, mental, or moral need of the child. The selection and order of the songs were determined with reference to the child’s development, which ranges from almost reflex and instinctive movements up to an ability to represent his perceptions with drawings, accompanied by considerable growth of the moral sense. Each song contains three parts: (1) a motto for the guidance of the mother; (2) a verse with the accompanying music, to sing to the child; and (3) a picture illustrating the verse. [Sidenote: ‘Gifts,’--] [Sidenote: first,] [Sidenote: second,] [Sidenote: third,] [Sidenote: and the other three,] [Sidenote: and ‘occupations.’] The ‘gifts’ and ‘occupations’ were both intended to stimulate motor expression, but the ‘gifts’ combine and rearrange certain definite material without changing the form, while the ‘occupations’ reshape, modify, and transform their material. The emphasis in kindergarten practice has come to be transferred from the ‘gifts’ to the ‘occupations,’ which have been largely increased in range and number. Of the ‘gifts,’ the first consists of a box of six woolen balls of different colors. They are to be rolled about in play, and thus develop ideas of color, material, form, motion, direction, and muscular sensibility. A sphere, cube, and cylinder of hard wood compose the second ‘gift.’ Here, therefore, are found a known factor in the sphere and an unknown one in the cube. A comparison is made of the stability of the cube with the movability of the sphere, and the two are harmonized in the cylinder, which possesses the characteristics of each. The third ‘gift’ is a large wooden cube divided into eight equal cubes, thus teaching the relations of the parts to the whole and to one another, and making possible original constructions, such as armchairs, benches, thrones, doorways, monuments, or steps. The three following ‘gifts’ divide the cube in various ways so as to produce solid bodies of different types and sizes, and excite an interest in number, relation, and form. From them the children are encouraged to construct geometrical figures and ‘forms of beauty’ or artistic designs. Beside the six regular ‘gifts,’ he also added ‘tablets,’ ‘sticks,’ and ‘rings,’ sometimes known as ‘gifts seven to nine.’ This material introduces surfaces, lines, and points in contrast with the preceding solids, and brings out the relations of area, outline, and circumference to volume. The ‘occupations’ comprise a long list of constructions with paper, sand, clay, wood, and other materials.