Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.) THE DOROTHY CRAIN SERIES Ciphers For the Little Folks A Method of Teaching The Greatest Work of Sir Francis Bacon Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Alban Designed to Stimulate Interest in Reading, Writing and Number Work, by Cultivating the Use of an Observant Eye With an Appendix on the Origin, History and Designing of the Alphabet _By_ Helen Louise Ricketts RIVERBANK LABORATORIES EDUCATIONAL DEPARTMENT DOROTHY CRAIN, _Director of Kindergarten_ GENEVA, ILLINOIS Copyright, 1916 GEORGE FABYAN INTRODUCTION These lessons are presented as suggestions with the idea that the teacher or parent will adapt, lengthen, shorten, or remake, as the needs of the little folk demand. Their value will depend on the way in which they are brought before the children. The aim is not to impose on children adult knowledge and accomplishments, but to afford them experiences that on their own account appeal to them, and at the same time have educational value and significance. Children should have a great deal of handwork; they do their best thinking when they are planning something to do with their hands. Their attention is much more easily focused upon something they are doing with their hands than upon something which they hear or read. Building with the blocks, paper folding and cutting, painting and drawing, and what is known as constructive work, are all means of self-expression. An explanatory paragraph will accompany each lesson. In order that the workings of the Biliteral Cipher, from which these lessons were derived, may be more readily understood, a short explanation will follow for the guidance of the teacher or parent, to whom it is left to choose the best methods of explaining the Cipher to the children, step by step. The Biliteral Cipher devised by Francis Bacon and explained in detail in his Advancement of Learning (see Spedding's English edition of Bacon's Works, Vol. IV, pages 444-447) is based upon the mathematical fact that the transposition of two objects (blocks, letters, etc.) will yield 32 dissimilar combinations, of which only 24 would be necessary to represent all the letters in our alphabet (_i_ and _j_, _u_ and _v_ being used interchangeably in the 16th Century). Lesson I of this series shows the 24 combinations used by Bacon, and constitutes the "Code" or "Key." By reference to Lesson I it will be seen that variations in the grouping of _a_'s and _b_'s, five at a time, are made to represent each letter of the alphabet, except that _i_ and _j_ and _u_ and _v_ are regarded as interchangeable. In all the succeeding lessons, objects are chosen to represent _a_ or _b_, and the order or succession of their grouping, when compared with the code (Lesson I), will determine the letter they represent.