FRIEDRICH FROEBEL

ENVIRONMENT • Friedrich Froebel was born on April 21, 1782, in

Oberweissbach, a small village in Thuringia, Germany.

• Froebel's mother died when he was nine months old. When Friedrich was four years old, his father remarried. Feeling neglected by his stepmother and father, Froebel experienced a profoundly unhappy childhood.

• The year 1805 marked a turning point in Froebel's life. He went to Frankfurt intending to become an architect but instead ended up teaching in a preparatory school. The effect of this teaching experience on Froebel was such that he decided to make education his life's work.

• In 1808 he went to Yverdon, Switzerland, where he tutored boys attending Johann Pestalozzi's institute. Feeling somewhat lacking in his own educational background, he left Yverdon in 1811 and studied at the universities of Gttingen and Berlin until 1816.

• In 1816 Froebel opened the Universal German Educational Institute at Keilham, a school based on his own educational theories.

• Its curriculum was comprehensive in nature, covering all aspects of the student's growth and development—both physical and mental. 

FROEBEL'S KINDERGARTEN PHILOSOPHY.

In the Education of Man (1826), Froebel articulated the following idealist themes:

1. All existence originates in and with God.

2. Humans possess an inherent spiritual essence that is the vitalizing life force that causes development.

3. All beings and ideas are interconnected parts of a grand, ordered, and systematic universe. 

• The kindergarten is a special educational environment in which this self-active development occurs.

• The kindergarten's gifts, occupations, and social and cultural activities, especially play, promote this self-actualization.

• Froebel was convinced that the kindergarten's primary focus should be on play–the process by which he believed children expressed their innermost thoughts, needs, and desires.

• For Froebel, play facilitated children's process of cultural recapitulation, imitation of adult vocational activities, and socialization. 

• According to Froebel's theory of cultural recapitulation, each individual human being repeated the general cultural epoch in his or her own development.

• Using play, songs, stories, and activities, the kindergarten was designed as an educational environment in which children, through their own self-activity, could develop in the right direction.

• Froebel's reputation as an early childhood educator increased and kindergartens were established throughout the German states. By the end of the nineteenth century, kindergartens had been established throughout Europe and North America.

• The kindergarten provided a milieu that encouraged children to interact with other children under the guidance of a loving teacher.

THE KINDERGARTEN CURRICULUM

Froebel developed a series of gifts and occupations for use in kindergartens. Representing what Froebel identified as fundamental forms, the gifts had both their actual physical appearance and also a hidden symbolic meaning.

FROEBEL'S GIFTS WERE THE FOLLOWING ITEMS:

• Six soft, colored balls.

• A wooden sphere, cube, and cylinder.

• A large cube divided into eight smaller cubes.• A large cube divided into eight oblong blocks.• A large cube divided into twenty-one whole, six half,

and twelve quarter cubes.• A large cube divided into eighteen whole oblongs: three

divided lengthwise; three divided breadthwise.

• Quadrangular and triangular tablets used for arranging figures.

• Sticks for outlining figures· Whole and half wire rings for outlining figures.

• Various materials for drawing, perforating, embroidering, paper cutting, weaving or braiding, paper folding, modeling, and interlacing.

• In the early twenty-first century, kindergarten teachers continue to emphasize Froebel's ideas of developing the social side of a child's nature and a sense of readiness for learning.

• The important outcome for the kindergarten child is readiness for the intellectual learning that will come later in his educational career.

Today’s applicationBefore Froebel, Kindergarten didn't exist, now it's a obligation due to its importance in the children's educational process.

Nowadays many institutions are working with the progressive ideas developed by Froebel, because they appreciate children as free, active, feeling and thinking human beings.

Thanks to Froebel´s ideas, now the teachers are aware about the importance of game in the children's learning process.

“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.”

Friedrich Froebel.

"The play of children is not recreation; it means earnest work. Play is the purest intellectual production of the human being, in this stage … for the whole man is visible in them, in his finest capacities, in his innermost being." ~ Friedrich Froebel

READ MORE:

• http://biography.yourdictionary.com/friedrich-wilhelm-august-froebel

• http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/articles/friedrich-froebel

• http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1999/Froebel-Friedrich-1782-1852.html

Bibliography