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The leading English language online resource about Friedrich Froebel, creator of Kindergarten and designer of Froebel Gifts

Friedrich Froebel created Kindergarten

The name Kindergarten signifies both a garden for children, a location where they can observe and interact with nature, and also a garden of children, where they themselves can grow and develop in freedom from arbitrary political and social imperatives.

In 1837, having developed and tested a radically new educational method and philosophy based on structured, activity based learning, Froebel moved to Bad Blankenburg and established his Play and Activity Institute which he renamed in 1840 Kindergarten.

" The kindergarten was essentially tri-partite:

• toys for sedentary creative play (these Froebel called gifts and occupations)
• games and dances for healthy activity
• observing and nurturing plants in a garden for stimulating awareness of the natural world

It was a search for metaphysical unity, in which the potential growth to wholeness of the individual child within the natural world would fulfil an harmonious ideal within the mind of God. " Peter Weston in The Froebel Educational Institute: the Origins and History of the College

" there is substantial value in the exercises of the Kindergarten, which pleasurably bring out the active powers of the children - their powers of observation, judgement, and invention - and make them at once apt in doing as well as learning " Professor Payne 1874

Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child's soul.

" To Froebel belongs the credit for finding the true nature of play and regulating it to lead naturally into work.

The same spontaneity and joy, the same freedom and serenity that characterise the plays of childhood are realised in all human actiity.

The gifts and occupations are the living connection which makes both play and work expressions of the same creative activity. " W N Hailmann

New Thuringian Froebel Association

The fourth Froebel Symposium will take place in Keilhau on 4 November 2004. Educational practitioners and scientists will work together in different problem solving work groups aiming at solutions that encompass the improvement of educational work in a Froebel institution. The association would be pleased to welcome you in Keilhau.

Details in German are available online

International Froebel Society

Froebel From Play to Work: Taking Froebel Forward

Second Biennial Conference of the International Froebel Society will be held in Dublin, 29 June to 1 July 2006.

The newly constituted International Froebel Society seeks to bring together the widest numbers of academics, practitioners interested in the educational work and philosophy of Friedrich Froebel.

• President, Dr Peter Weston
• Vice-President, Prof Helmut Heiland

Froebel in the Twenty First Century: challenges and uncertainties

This conference held in July 2004

Friedrich Froebel : His Life, Times and Significance This book by Peter Weston for the general reader is an illustrated life that places him in the turbulent political and intellectual context of his times. It also identifies those aspects of his educational practice that are of enduring value in the contemporary world.
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A Child's Work: Freedom and Guidance in Froebel's Educational Theory and Practice presents a full account of guided play as the most important learning tool for young children.
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Inventing Kindergarten uses extraordinary visual materials to reconstruct this successful system, to teach young children about art, design, mathematics and nature
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