A most interesting little book called _What is a Kindergarten?_[22] was
published some years ago in America. It is written by a landscape
gardener, and contains most valuable suggestions as to how best to use
for a Kindergarten or Nursery School plots of ground which may be
secured for that purpose. Naturally the writer has much to say on the
laying out and stocking the available space to the best advantage,
choosing the most suitable positions for the house, where the teacher
must live, he says, to supply the atmosphere of a home; for animal
hutches, for sand-heaps and seesaws; for the necessary shelter, for the
children's gardens, and for the lawn, for even on his smallest plan, a
"twenty-five-foot lot," we find "room for a spot of green." Later he
explains that for this green one must use what will grow, and if grass
will not perhaps clover will. The way in which the trees and plants are
chosen is most suggestive. Beauty and suitability are always considered,
but he remembers his own youth, and also considers the special joys of
childhood. For it is not Nature lessons that come into his calculations
but "the mere association of plants and children." So the birch tree is
chosen, partly for its grace and beauty, but also because of its bark,
for one can scribble on its papery surface; the hazel, because children
delight in the catkins with their showers of golden dust, and the nut
"hidden in its cap of frills and tucks." And he adds: "How much more
alluring than the naked fruit from the grocer's sack are these nuts,
especially when dots for eyes and mouth are added, and a whole little
face is tucked within this natural bonnet."
[Footnote 22: G. Hansen, pub. Elder, Morgan & Shepherd, San Francisco,
1891.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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