Class, L B 1 1 3 7 Boo k .J 'g Gopiglitlyi? CQEURIGHT DEPOSZC T?) s r u n «/ EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES BY GEORGE ELLSWORTH JOHNSON Superintendent of Playgrounds, Recreation Parks, and Vacation Schools, Pittsburg, Pa. Man plays only where he is a human being in the fullest sense of the word, and he has reached full humanity only when he plays. This proposition will acquire great and deep significance when we shall learn to refer it to the doubly serious ideas of duty and destiny. It will then su.stain the entire super.structure of aesthetic art and of the yet more difficult art of life. — Schiller GINN «& COMPANY BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON ^: J.- AUG 7 30^ X ■ / a. Entered at Stationers' Hall Copyright, 1907, by GEORGE ELLSWORTH JOHNSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 77.7 Kht iSltbenacum l^ttii GINN & COMPANY . PRO- PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A .1 u^- TO PRESIDENT G. STANLEY HALL CLARK UNIVERSITY PREFACE The study of which this book is a revision was begun at Clark University and published in the Pedagogical Seminary in 1894. Since then the writer has been in very intimate and almost constant touch with cMldren, His interest in child play, awakened j^ears ago and kept active by observation and personal contact with children in clubs, play schools, school playgrounds, and the home cu'cle, has been encouraged by numberless requests from teachers for the little study pub- lished ten years ago. Largely m response to these requests this revision has been undertaken. It is earnestly hoped that the book may help promote a wider and higher appreciation of play and of its value in education, and add somewhat to the sum of cliild happiness in the world. The discussion of the meaning of play, of the relation of play and work, and of the history and application of play to education is by no means fidl. It can scarcely do more than give the point of view. The discussion of the periods of childhood is a bare summary, but is sufficient, it is hoped, to make clear their relation to the Course of Plays and Games. Of the course itself it may be admitted that it is perhaps too condensed. The whole study is valuable, if at all, mainly for its suggestiveness. The games that are described in the course have been selected from a thousand or more. The reader should not lose sight of the fact that the variations of children's plays viii EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES are well-nigh infinite, yet the essential features are few. The games described cover quite fully the whole field many times, and are, it is believed, wholly adequate in number. The games selected are the older ones, as a rule, and an effort has been made to retain the older names. Most new games will be found upon examination to be modifications of old ones. The descriptions of games are brief, but they are full enough to give sufficient directions for playing. The essential features of the games have been kept prominent, and they are the groundwork upon which the ingenuity of the teacher can build to suit her peculiar needs. The greatest omissions are in those portions of the course that suggest the informal plays for the different periods, as the constructive, nature, collecting, imitative, dramatic, and musical plays, puzzles, riddles, and the like. These might well require several volumes to present them fully, yet it is hoped that even here the course will prove very suggestive. Attention should be called to the fact that, while some minor differences will naturally appear in the plays of boys and girls all through the course, practically no differentiation is intended in the games of boys and girls before the fourth period, and then in the rougher games only. While many of the games common to boys are generally not played by girls, the reason lies rather in custom than in any real differentia- tion of the sexes up to the close of this period, at about twelve years. Girls will instinctively avoid some games, but the attitude of the parent and teacher should be to extend the field of plays and games for girls throughout all the periods. A word remains to be said in regard to the aim of the Course of Plays and Games. No one will make the error of supposing that the course is intended as a substitute for PREFACE ix courses of study, nor will any one be likely to suppose that the course should be strictly followed. It is designed to help the parent and teacher to utilize play in the nurture and training of children, by suggesting types of activity espe- cially adapted to the needs of the child at the different periods, and to the kinds of knowledge being acquired at the time. Games and plays should rarely be dictated ; they should often be suggested, sometimes taught, by the parent and teacher (for children welcome a leader in their games), but it is on the environment largely that we should place the stress of our efforts. It is true that some of the plays and games suggested will, after all, be only " devices " when correlated with school work, yet the activities suggested belong for the most part to the spontaneous plays of children, and may be taken advantage of without destroying the essential elements of genuine play. When we know more about evolution, when we know more about children, and particularly individual children, we may so arrange courses of study that earnest, interested zeal will abide with the child through all the years of liis learning. Not that hard work will be elimi- nated. Play involves the hardest of work, a greater output of energy than drudgery, just as service does more work than slavery ; but the drudgery will he swallowed up in the interest, in the earnestness of the zealous soul, for drudgery is in the mind and heart much more than in the amount and kind of work to be done. It would be hardly possible here to make fuU acknowledg- ment of the indebtedness I sincerely feel to the many who have in some way aided in the preparation of this book, to teachers, vacation-school assistants, parents, photographers, X EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES and others. I owe much to writers on child study, and espe- cially to writers upon play, — to Guts Muths, who antici- pated much that I have tried to do ; to Froebel, the creator of the widespread interest in cliild play ; to Groos, who has given us a new point of view ; to Guhck, who has noted the significance of play at each successive period of child- hood ; to Lee, who has given a clear vision of the need of play in the social betterment of city children ; to Hall, who with comprehensive insight sees the relation and significance of all ; and to not a few others also. To President Hall I am under great obligation, and to Dr. William H. Burnham, who, not only in the initial study but also during all the years since, has been a source of unfailmg help and inspiration. To Dr. C. F. Hodge and to Dr. Louis N. Wilson I owe nuich in the way of material aid and suggestion. To all these I express gratitude, knowing that without their interest and help the book could not have been written. CONTENTS Page Introduction by G. Stanley Hall xiii PART I The Theory, History, and Place of Play in PjDUCATION Chapter I. The Meaning of Play 3 II. Play in Education 26 III. The Period.'^ of Childhood and their Relation to a Course OF Plays and Games (ip^ PART II A Suggestive Course of Plays and Games Period One (Ages 0-3) 83 Period Two (Ages 4-6) 86 Period Three (Ages 7-9) 94 Period Four (Ages 10-12) 155 Period Five (Ages 13-15) 205 BIBLIOGRAPHY 223 INDEX 229 INTRODUCTION We have here at last a curriculum of plays and games, graded by age from infancy to middle teens, and also ana- lyzed so as to show the chief mental and physical activities involved in and developed by each of them. Not only age and sex but season as well is taken into account. It is essentially a new book with a field of its own. Within the past decade the literature on plays and games has grown to formidable proportions. Anthropologists have collected and described hundreds of them as found in China, Japan, and India, in Europe and America, in towns and cities, and among savage races. The history of mauy of them has been traced back to dim antiquity, and some have been shown to be sur- vivals of forms of ancient rites, initiation ceremonies, types of industry long superseded, etc. From Herbert Spencer to Groos the theory of play — its origm, meaning, and edu- cational value — has been a theme of steadily increasing interest, and there are various theories by no means as yet harmonized. It was reserved, however, for Superintendent Johnson to make the results of these studies practical for teachers and parents. Some ten years ago he spent a year in gathering nearly a thousand of the most important and widely diffused plays and games, of which he then eliminated more than half to fiud those that were most representative and important. These he carefully analyzed in order to show what muscular activities, limbs, parts of the body, what xiv EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES psychic qualities (svich as reason, memory, attention, skill, accuracy, honor, emulation), and what kind and degree of knowledge of mathematics, language, geography, history, etc., each developed ; graded and marked them, as it were, upon these scales, and thus determined at what age and stage of development each was capable of its maximal edu- cational value. Since tliis work began he has shown great tact and originality as a school superintendent, in using portions of this choice repertory of plays and games to sup- plement and also to stimulate school studies by organizing playgrounds, clubs, rooms, hours, courses ; and here we have the results of both his study and experience combined and practically correlated with the studies and grades of school work. It goes without saying that such a manual should be read by all intelligent teachers and parents, and that to open- minded educational leaders it suggests important modifica- tions of school work, which when made will tend to greater economy of mental effort, and, by turning on the great motive power of the play instinct, give increased efficiency to instruc- tion and to learning, and will make headway against fatigue, perhaps the greatest of all obstacles in the child's pathway. G. STANLEY HALL Clark Universitv Worcester, Massachusetts EDUCATION^ BY PLAYS AND GAMES Part I THE THEORY, HISTORY, AND PLACE OF PLAY IN EDUCATION CHAPTEE I THE MEANING OF PLAY The evolutionary point of view. Patter, the great geog- rapher, somewhere hkens the earth to a seed. When the world was launched into space, a mighty, flaming atom of the universe, it contained within it the germ of all life now upon it. Of the physical life upon the earth we know this is literally true. Verily out of the dust of the earth was man created. The idea of the gradual unfolding of life upon and out of the earth in an ever-ascending scale is one of infinite sug- gestion and inspiration. Tliis idea is plainly suggested in the Bible, where the account of the creation describes the 3 EDITCATIOX BY PLAYS AND GAMES evolution of the life upon the earth, — first the waste and the void, then the earth co^'ered with water, then the dry land appearing, then the beginning of plant life, then animal life in the waters, then the monsters of the deep and birds and creeping things of the land, then the beasts of the field, and finally man. Tliis is an outline in general of the claims of scientists regarding the develop- ment of life upon the earth. It is the story of evolution, the story written everywhere in the rocks, the soil, and the life of the earth, the story of man created out of the dust of the earth, yet fashioned into the image of God, the divine breath of life m his nostrils, be- coming a living soul. Now biologists tell us that every new human life recapitulates in a gen- eral way the whole scale, from the lowest forms up to the human cliild born into the world ; that each individual life begins in a unit cell which divides, then multiplies, the organism advancing in an ever- ascending scale to man. Instinct and education. Up to a certain point nature pro- vides for the full development of the offspring independently Imitation Photograph by Mrs. E. E. Trumbull THE MEANING OF PLAY of any care or training on the part of the parent. Many msects spring into existence' fully equipped for the struggle for life. Their education, if we might so speak of education, is hereditary and is transmitted in the form of instincts. A little higher in the scale of animal life development is not complete at birth, and there is a period during wMcli not only boddy growth but also organic and structural development continue while the offspring is protected and fed, if not trained, by the parent, as in the case of birds. Here also education is largely a matter of in- heritance, and such habits and knowledge as are ac- quired follow largely the dictates of certain instincts. Advancing a little higher in the scale of animal life, we find still greater help- lessness at birth and a still longer period of bodily and structural change before maturity and ability to cope with the world alone are reached. During this period of immaturity the young instinctively exercise in playful ways the growmg powers by the use of which their ancestors have survived in the struggle for life, as in the case of the fox or the cat. Here education is largely the result of instinctive reaction to environment and of plajful practice of the powers Experimenting 6 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AXD GAMES by which the animal is to maintain life in its maturity. One readily observes this in the play of kittens. Advancing to the human infant, we find even greater helplessness at birth and a still longer period of immaturity. Here, as in the case of the lower animals, we find instincts prompting to activities alhed to those by means of which our ancestors survived. This activity is known as play, and, up to a certain point in the development of civilization, has been the chief factor in conserving and training the powers necessary in maturity. Not until this century, says Chamberlain, did the mean- ing of the helplessness of the human infant become apparent ; it has taken long to appreciate , the full significance of the prolongation of human infancy. It takes the cat one year to reach maturity, only one twelfth of its lifetime ; it takes the dog two years, one tenth of its lifetime ; it takes the horse four years and a half, one seventh of its lifetime; it takes man twenty-five or thirty years, fully one third of his life- time. Just as the longer gestation period was necessary for man to pass through the stages of development, because of its wider range, than was the case with the lower animals, so the longer period of development after birth was necessary for the completion of postnatal evolution and of education for life; Biology and self-education. Up to a certain point, then, the young have within themselves the impulse for self- education, but tliis education is fundamental and not acces- sory, — it tends to aid perfect biological development during postnatal evolution rather than to prepare for higher social relations. Hence arose the recognition of a need of conscious instruction of the young. Now from the time that man first began consciously to instruct liis offspring there have been THE MEANING OF PLAY these two factors in the development of the individual child, — heredity and conscious education. Nature always strives to conserve the needed powers of the child and bring to full- ness every promise of strength ; but nature's gifts have been greatly improved and the advance of the race greatly aided by the addition of conscious training. Nature, or heredity, and conscious education join hands in bringing man to his best and fullest de- velopment. Development depends first upon nature, or heredity, but it reaches its l)est and fullest possi- bility comcident with and partly because of conscious education. Child culture then has two offices : first, to conserve the biological succession under the best physiological conditions, thereby conserving desir- able hereditary traits and powers and effecting the best possible organic development ; second, to devote those powers to the acquiring of such knowledge and such habits as will best further the man's social usefulness and indi- vidual happiness. Emphasis has invariably been laid upon the second, in our conscious education of the child, with im- punity under certain conditions of environment, disastrously under others, as in the crowded districts of our larger towns and cities. Imitation — Reading to Bab\' Photograph by Mrs. E. E. Trumbull 8 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES Civilization frequently tends to thwart nature's efforts to do her part in the full development of the cliild, and often we, in our efforts at conscious training, have aggravated the diffi- culties civilization had already placed in nature's way, and unwittingly defeated the very end we had in view. We have lost sight of the biological side of education in our earnest- ness for the sociological. In planning our school systems we have snubbed nature. My plea for a wider recognition of play in education is this, that the more successfully the child passes through the biological stages of development, the more complete will he be as a man. Play is our best great ally in bringing up our children. Play bears the same relation to the biological development of the child that education bears to hereditary gifts, and it would be as absurd to despise a child's natural and inherited gifts and attribute all to education as to ignore the relation of play activities to child development. An explanation of play. We must seek for the explana- tion of play in the study of evolution. The general principles of evolution are now universally accepted, and each year finds some new emphasis laid upon the value of the doc- trine of evolution in determining educational principles, each emphasizing the value of play in education. Just what play Imitation — Cookixg THE MEANING OF PLAY 9 is we shall know when we know just what evolution is. We make the study of evolution the basis for the study of the child, and again we make child study the basis for a study of evolution. Play is interpreted in the light of the known facts of evolution, both the evolution of man and that of Keeping House Photograph by Mrs. E. E. Trumbull institutions, and again the study of the evolution of man and his institutions are made a basis for the interpretation of play. Even the student of children and child play is amazed at the amount that has been written during the last few years upon the subject of play l)y writers in anthropology, biology, folklore, education, child study, evolution, and social reform. 10 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES This tends to show how evohition, child study, and play are inextricably interwoven in the minds of students of educa- tion of to-day, and this alone would justify the attempt to make more familiar a subject still so unfamiliar to people generally and yet so vitally associated with educational work. Without attempting at this point to review the history of play in education or the theories that have been advanced in explanation of this phenomenon of childhood, although such would lend dignity and authority to the discussion in hand, let us outline l)riefly the main estabhshed points of evolution directly and practical )ly applicable to education and generally recognized by students of education. It is generally accepted that the child, in his development, epitomizes the development of the race ; that there are more or less clearly defined epochs, or stages of growth, in the physical, mental, and moral development of the child ; that development progresses from that which is oldest in the development of the race to that which is newest, from the control of the trunk, for example, to the control of the arms and legs, and thence to the control of the finer coordinated movements of hands and fingers ; from the fundamental mental operations, as of perception and memory, to associa- tion and reasoning ; from cleanlmess of person, observance of truth, and obedience, to altruistic motives and devotion. It has lieen found that when young children are compared with adults there is a greater difference in the control of fine or precise movements than in the control of the trunk and larger movements of limbs. At the age of five or six a child is able to walk with ease and grace, but his precision of movement of hands and fingers, for example, is only about three fifths of that of a boy of sixteen. TMs difference in THE MEANING OF PLAY 11 control of fundamental and accessory movements is strik- ingly illustrated in feeble-minded children, the control of the finer movements corresponding to a higher degree of intelli- gence being very deficient. Comparisons made between the lower animals and man show the same increase of disparity in the power of man over that of the lower animals as we pass from the fundamental to the accessory. The muscular arrangements of the monkey's hand and that of man, for Expressmen example, are very similar and offer no adequate hint of the disparity in the movements of which they are capable. Smce muscular movement is the expression of nervous activity, we should expect that a study of the development of the nervous system would show a corresponding order of development. Dr. Hughlings-Jackson, the Enghsh patholo- gist, made application of the evolutionary theory in the treat- ment of mental diseases, conceiving three levels or centers to the nervous system, the lowest level controlling the reflex and involuntary movements, the middle level the higher 12 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES more complex movements, and the highest level being the cent^ of universal and complete coordinations. The three- level theory is now the accepted basis of diagnosis in the treatment of epilepsy. Dr. Frederick Burk, in his very able study of the develop- ment of the nervous system, draws with apparent justness the following conclusions. The order of development of the independent parts of the phj's- ical and nervous system is, as a general principle (subject doubtless to minor exceptions), from that which is oldest in the racial history towards that which is most recent. In an extremely loose sense, — clearly recognizing the principle that the organism develops by parts, each of which has a different time of beginning its development, a different rate of ripening, and a different period of reaching maturity, — nevertheless, we may regard the period of infancy as one of predominating nascencies of the oldest fundamental activities largely in control of the lowest level of the nervous system ; the period of childhood, from two years to puberty, as the period of predominating nascencies of special senses and their associations one with the other ; the period of adolescence as the period of the predominating nascencies of the higher form of associations, i.e. those which have been develojjed in the history of the human race. Others have further gathered up the material of child study and set forth clearly and detiuitely the main periods of childhood, noting their' significance and vahie in relation to education, and many others still have contributed in some particular to the knowledge of the physical characteristics, growth, play, imagination, imitation, emotions, drawings, ideals, purposes, fears, ambitions, and interests in many lines, of children, all of which have their bearing upon the discus- sion of the problem. THE MEANING OF P 13 Play and instinct. The relation of play to instinct is fundamental and takes a large place in the discussions of play, and while I do not mean to stop to present at any length the relation of instinct to play, it is important to notice one or two points of great interest in this connection. With the unfolding development of the child, accompanying the "nascencies," arise the characteristic native tendencies and interests. The experiences of the nervous and muscular sys- tems of man in the long period of action and reac- tion of evolutionary devel- opment have made natural, if not irresistible, certain modes of conduct under certain conditions. These impulses to definite reac- tion to given stimuli reecho the historic activities of the race, and may be called in- stinctive. Some are intimately associated with organic func- tions which constitute our physical life, others with the activities which have made for the preservation and enrich- ment of life. It is the manifestation of these impulses which gives rise to the phenomenon of play in children. Play might then be defined as the expression of awakening instincts. To understand its full significance in child development it is necessary first to understand the significance of instinct. James, in his chapter on Instinct, has incidentally thrown light upon the office of play in education. Many instincts, ■ « ^"^ :^\:^t ■:■ ?^^Bk-'- >^ m ^H^^^^xL^^H Bfagl „*." _ -.-^-iSi^- Imitation' — Serving Tea Photograph hy B. W. Gupi^y 14 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES he says, are transient. If, during the period of activity of any instinct, the environment is favorable for its manifestation, a habit is formed wliich survives after the instinct has faded away ; but if the environment is unfavorable for the mani- festation of that instinct, the instinct will soon fade and no habit will be formed, however favorable the environment may afterwards be. A chicken which has not heard the call of its mother during the first eight or ten days of life will never give heed to the call. Young ducks kept from the water for a certain period lose their instinct for swimming. Young squirrels confined in cages, failmg to find soil in which to bury their uneaten nuts, soon cease all efforts to bury them. Leaving the lower animals aside and turning to human instincts, we see the law of transiency corroborated on the widest scale by the alteration of different interests and passions as human life goes on. ... In all pedagogy the great thing is to strike while the iron is hot, and to seize the wave of the pupil's interest in each successive subject before its ebb has come, so that knowledge may be got and a habit of skill acquired, — a headway of interest, in short, secured, on which afterwards the individual nuiy float. There is a happy time for fixing skill in drawing, for making boys collectors in natural history and presently dissectors and botanists ; then for initiating them into the harmonies of mechanics and of the wonders of physical and chemical law.i " The natural conclusion to draw from this transiency of mstincts," says James, " is that most instincts are implanted for the sake of giving rise to habits, and that, this purpose once accomplished, the instincts themselves, as such, have no raison cVetre, in the physical economy and consequently fade away." S) The play impulses of children then, we may affirm, have one all-important office of givmg rise to habits and permanent 1 James, Psychology, Vol. II, p. 400. THE MEANING OF PLAY 15 interests. There is a time when boys love and must learn to play ball, swim, and skate, for example, or be deficient in such sports and the particular training they give all their lives ; so there is a time when the habit of activity, that is, the liahit of ivork and of enjoyment of work may be formed, and its opportunity lies in forming the right connection between P ^^m **'?^« 1 9 ^Hb^BH^EsK^K ^^ »)►'«►• ' '^ '^Vil "> •^Sm^^^^SS ^^^^^ti^^^f ^K ^^ Hi , tt . . *" '* 1 ii'iUSa ■ .€ ^ IiiN ^Pfe*.^ Ip4l •^' i L^ 1 Li^ V ' ? ^^. 1 ^ »s E ^a| ^v 'it'W^i%'Sk in ."^s'lsi i !^| fli The Stoke Photograph by John Boyd play and work at the right time. The opportunity of play is the opportunity of work. Again, the trend of all these studies is to show that there is a j)ractically definite growth and development of the child, physically, mentally, socially, morally, along lines more or less parallel with the development of the race, and that one familiar with these facts of child development can gauge with considerable assurance of accuracy the mterests, aptitudes, 16 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES and needs of children of a given age. In other words, there is a law of child development which has to a degree been determined. Now since children unfold or develop in a gen- eral way according to a definite and universal law, we find Eskimos Photograph by Dr. O. F. Hodge occurring all along the line certain characteristic reactions to stimuli and environment, and these characteristic reactions — pleasurable reactions, which may be with general accuracy foretold — are the plays of children. Some make them reecho the historic activities of the race, harking back through the countless generations of human evolution ; others make them look forward, preparing the child for future serious activities of life. Of some of these theories of play brief mention will be made later. Let it suffice here to say that whatever view we adopt, so far as the practical teacher and parent are con- cerned, all views tend to emphasize the importance of play and continually to enlarge its field. We may rest assured of THE MEANING OF PLAY 17 its vital relation to the evolutionary process, and, as Chamber- lain has well put it, " play is concerned with everything ; emotions, feelings, acts, thoughts, imaginings, speech, — all begin their career in its subtle shaping influence." And in this discussion of play which is to follow along a very practical line, I hope, let us think of play as the child's conforming to the law of his nature. All along the line the child's pleasurable response to his environment is his play. Play and work. What has been said seems to indicate that play is very inclusive of the activities of child life and rather outside the ordinary limitation which makes play barren of any object or end outside the activity itself, a view A TuoLLEY Ride Photograph by John Boyd with which I cannot agree. Play may acliieve an end which is not only in the mind of the parent or teacher but in that of the child as well ; and this fact has a most significant bear- ing upon the transition from play to work in education. I 18 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES hope to show that work and play (that is, play in the generic sense, however it may be in the popular use of the term) often shade off so imperceptibly in the case of the cliild that they cannot be distinguished. It is a mark of genius to love one's work, to enjoy it in the doing, but it might be a matter uf common occurrence. All play involves work, and children sometimes love to work, even to work for a definite result, as they love to play. This is a matter of observation time and again. I hold that it is one of the chief ends of educa- tion to develop a habit of joyousness in work. The fear thatf/ love of play will interfere with love of work is the most groundless of fears. The more a child loves play the more likely will he be to love work. The sneers that are made at the " sugar coating " of school work are made by those who do not understand what play is, or else are made at the efforts of those teachers who have violated play in ignorant attempts to utilize it. I have no plea for sugar-coated tasks, if Lhey really l)e sugar coated, but to sweeten work with a real joy m the doing is the high art of the genius in teaching.^ 1 I have known boys frequently to ask permission to take their play- time to work in their gardens, to clean w^ barns, to sweep walks, take care of chickens, run errands, mow the lawn, hoe strawberry plants, and what not. A boy of fourteen or fifteen used his playtime every evening, at his own request, to hoe strawberiy plants, until he had hoed the whole of a veiy large bed with rows aggregating a mile and a quarter in length. We may mention also such plays of boys as fishing, hunting, setting traps and snares, nutting, building huts, rafts, catamarans, pigeon houses, training for match games of football, and a thousand other occupations which involve much labor — even drudgery — and definite objects to be accomplished. In a school for truants all kinds of household and out- door work were included in the liked occupations of boys. " In all my experience of fourteen years in a truant school," says Mr. F. L. Johnson, " I have never known a really lazy boy. Every healthy boy likes some form of work that we have here." THE MEANING OF PLAY • 19 I would not for an instant give the impression that I minimize the sense of duty in work. But is not love of duty a higher tiling than even sense of duty ? Eather I desire to exalt work, — the serious endeavor of children, — to increase the amount done, not lessen it. Heartless labor, the " fooling " of children, result from faulty coordination. The activity demanded by the developmg body and bram has, in such cases, not been provided. The child soul knows its own, and when the child finds it nothing could be more earnest, more serious, than his efforts in appropriating it. The contrast should not be between work and play but rather between play and " fooling " on the one hand, and between play and distasteful labor on the other. In The World's Worh for July, 1904, President Eliot writes upon " Content in Work." He says : Y The winning- of satisfaction and content in daily work is the most fundamental of all objects for an industrial democracy. Unless this satisfaction and content can be habitually won on an immense scale, the hopes and ideals of democracy cannot be realized. Therefore joy in work should be the all-pervading subject of the industrial discussion ; for it is at once motive, guide, and goal7/It is only in the less skillful employments of mankind, which ai^e also the com- monest, that any question arises concerning the possibility of satis- faction and content in daily work. rAW the nobler employments give much pleasiu'e. Every professional man, every business man, and, indeed, every person in whose occupation there is free competitive play for intelligence and judgment, takes pleasvire, or joy, or satis- faction in his daily work ; and his interest in his work does not depend principally on the amount of pay he receives for it. He gets from it a large satisfaction independent of, and in addition to, its pecuniary returns. The real question, then, is whether the satisfac- tions of the higher employments can be measurably obtained in the lower. On the right solution of this problem depends the whole 20 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES future of the industrial democracy, for there can be no public happi- ness without content and satisfaction from the daily work of the masses of mankind. President Eliot then enumerates the sources of joyousness in work : first, the pleasure of exertion, tlie active exercise of one's powers, bodily and mental ; second, achievement, particularly competitive achievement ; third, cooperation, es- pecially when involving rhythm and harmony ; fourth, the exercise of intelligence, judgment, or skill ; fifth, encounter- ing risks, danger, makmg adventures. Are these not familiar terms of writers upon play ? Are they not identical with the chief sources of pleasure in play ? And President Eliot, in the article, mentions the identity. A bare mention of some of the theories of play will make still clearer the relation of play to work. The theory advanced by Spencer and Schiller, that play was due to surplus energy, has recently been restated by Colozza, who makes play depend upon the "superfluity of energy over and above the essential needs of life," coupled with a high degree of psychic activity. Nearly all writers recognize this element of well-being as advantageous to play, although it is claimed that play some- times continues when surplus energy is no longer present. President Eliot recognizes this element in the joyousness of. work. " If labor is pressed beyond the limits of strength and health, content in it is impossible. Any overwork destroys the physical basis of satisfaction in toil." Hence the whole question of school hygiene and fatigue bears directly upon the successful blending of play and work in education. Again, the mental attitude is important in play and in the enjoyment of work. A disagreeable task has often been transformed into play by the mere shifting of the mental THE MEANING OF PLAY 21 attitude.^ I do not believe it right or wise to call work play, when there is no real connection between the two. To call distasteful work play does not make it play, surely ; but, on the other hand, there is often equal harm in premature dis- tinctions made by parents and teachers, which bias the child harmfully, giving him the impression that play is pleasurable and work is not, or that work is worth while and play is not. i i r 1 1 ■j'm^-f!^ -% P f \ ■! ■4. ■la * *♦■ r^. V , H i 'l- .. i ■1. .^^ i 1 9 \ s^ »* R ^ BSH r Playing Japanese We do violence to the child thus to press upon him premature and ill-judged distinctions between play and work, and such have been a by no means unimportant source of the joyless- ness of daily duties the world over. " Happiness is a state of 1 A gentleman relates that when he was a boy his fathei- succeeded in getting all the stones in a field picked up and piled in one spot by placing a large stone in the center and suggesting it as a mark for his boys to pitch stones at. All will recall how it was that Tom Sawyer got his fence whitewashed. 22 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES Work or Vlw mind much more than a state of body." " The causes of the prevaihng discontent," says President Ehot, " are not in the circumstances of the people, hut in the minds and hearts of the people themselves." Education in liarmony with child THE MEANING OF PLAY 23 development makes habitual a happy attitude of mind in both play and work, when they do come to be distinguished, and tends to bring into the lives and work of those who spend their days in labor much of the motive and method of the artist. Alexander's love of achievement, which impelled him to the conquest of the world, is not so unhke the love of achieve- ment of the man who invents a machine, writes a book, composes music, creates a new species of fruit, discovers the cause and cure of a disease, or finds a new and better wav of Work or Play? — A Dinner from their Own Gardens Photograph by Dr. C. F. Hodge doing an}i;hing. Alexander cried because there w^ere no more worlds to conquer, no further chance to achieve. Had he lived in tills generation, he might have learned that the worlds yet to conquer are uncountable and that each new world con- quered reveals still others hitherto unobserved. It is this 24 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES lesson that our youth sliould learn. Is it not the office of education to open up to each child an ever-widening field for achievement, an ever-increasing joy and satisfaction in accomplishing ? This joy of acliievement in the line of some permanent and useful interest related to life and adapted to its needs, is what the love of play may and should eventually develop into. Poverty, hardship, difficulty, even what in the absence of the right spirit and temper would be drudgery, may only add zest to the joy of successful achievement. Our school work should be so selected, so graded, and so presented that the child may not be deprived of the joy of achievement, of a sense of pride and satisfaction in liis ability to do. Subjects may be so presented as to be continually a year or two in advance of the cliild, often bringing a sense of weakness and humiliation instead of one of strength and pride. This not infrequently happens in the case of such subjects as arithmetic, technical grammar, and composition. We need a new term to express the idea of play as related to education. Play always involves work ; it is the cjiild's work. As we have said, the utmost seriousness attaches to it ; nothing covdd be more earnest, could be farther removed from " fooling." There is no adequate reason why, with tlie passing of childhood and youth, joy in activity should cease, nor why joy should not attend activity which has definite and useful results. Neither can I believe that it is the demand for activity, or the capacity of feeling joy in activity, even for its own sake, that is lost when man's estate is reached. The normal man must work, as truly as the normal child must play. And many men, if not indeed the majority of successful men, find their work §,8 absorbing and interest- ing as were ever their games and their sports. The habit of THE MEANING OF PLAY 25 activity, if acquired in prematurity, persists through manhood and womanhood. What was at first instinctive has become habitual. I am not sure that the best distinction that can be made lietween play and work is not this : one is the result of the force of instinct, the other of the force of habit ; if joy has gone from work, it departed with the loss of the sense of freedom. Given health, freedom (opportunity for initiative), and absence of fatigue, why is not the work of man perfectly analogous to the play of the child ? Toy Making at the Andover Play School Photograph by C. S. Moore CHAPTER II PLAY IN EDUCATION Play among the ancients. Primitive man undoubtedly recognized, in a way, the educational value of play. To many of the ancients games were of great importance. The Egyp- tians' idea was that heaven was a place for music, dancing, and games. According to Falkener many games are of religiovis origin and date back to rites of divination. Plato expressed the thought that man is God's plaything, and hence men and women should pass life in the noblest of pastimes. It is not surprismg, therefore, to find that use was made of play in the education of children. The Greeks were the first great exponents of play in educa- tion. Plato urged state legislation in regard to the games of cliildren and condescended to give good practical advice to mothers on nursery play that would be ideal for a modern mothers' meeting. The Greek educational games are classified by Sonnenschein as follows : 1. The games of the nursery. 2. The gymnastic exercises of the school. 3. The agonistic exercises a^d social games of mature life. In the women's chamber, for both boys and girls, were the rattle, ball, hoop (trundled by a crooked-necked iron), swing, and top. The boys also had stilts and toy carts, and the girls, dolls. Children sometimes made their own toys. Aris- tophanes speaks of a child who made ships and even frogs 26 PLAY IN EDUCATION 27 of pomegranate peel. Plato discountenanced too many toys for the nursery, as discouraging originality, advocated mimic tools for carpentering, and encouraged free play, those "natural modes of amusement which children find out for themselves when they meet." The outdoor games of the little Greeks seem very familiar. They played Odd or Even, Slap in the Dark (to gviess who The Call of Nati rk Photograph by John Boyd gave a box on the ear), Hunt the Slipper, Catch Ball, Hide and Seek, Heads or Tails (JxrrpaKLvha, played with oyster shells), 'X^urpivSa (child in the middle, others pinch or slap until one 28 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES is caught), Tortoise, a similar game, Brazen Fly, like Blind Man's Buff' (the eyes of the child in the middle are bandaged ; the child says " I will hunt a brazen fly " ; the rest answer, " You will hunt but you will not catch," and strike the catcher with thongs of leather until some one is caught), Kiss in the Ring, Tag, Ride a Cockhorse, and others. At seven years of age the Greek boy was sent to the pales- tra. As he started at break of day for school, accompanied by his pedagogue, he anticipated a mornmg of spirited play. He raced, leaped, and wrestled with the boys of his class, and then danced and sang until the liigh sun called him to rest and to lunch. The exercises consisted of (1) runnmg, (2) leap- ing, (3) discus throwing, (4) javelin casting, (5) wrestling, — the first two mainly for the legs, the second two for the arms and the eye, and the last for the whole body and temper. From sixteen to eigliteen years of age the Greek youth was admitted to the gymnasia and engaged in the pentath- lon, namely, running, leaping, discus throwing, wrestlmg, and boxing. The results of this part of Greek education are famOiar to all. The physical perfection of the Greeks, their wonderful temper, stand out as facts at which we have not yet ceased to feel astonishment. As to the sesth^tic value of the public games. Professor Hoppin of Yale says that the public games really gave a raison d'etre to sculpture, and that with the abandonment of the games Greek sculpture declined. Play in modern education. From the Greeks down to Froebel's time no definite system of eduf^tion by play was followed. Many writers and teachers recognized its value in education and not a few made practical use of it. Rabelais is as zealous in directing the play of Gargantua as in choosing PLAY IN EDUCATION 29 liis studies. Tennis and ball, riding, wrestling, swimming, every species of physical recreation — " there is nothmg which Gargantua does not do to give agility to his liml)s and Feeding the Birds Photograph by Mrs. E. E. Trumbull to strengthen his njuscles." Eabelais, in marked contrast to the laborious methods of his time, proposed to teach by play and have his pupil " learn even mathematics through recrea- tion and amusement." 30 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES Erasmus suggested that the teacher should palHate the tedium of drill in reading and writing by an attractive method. " The ancients modeled toothsome dainties into the form of letters, and thus, as it were, made the children swallow the alphabet." Comenius again brought the play interest of the cliild to notice by his use of objects, pictures, and puzzles. Nature Interest — Chasing a Squirrel The Jesuits made a conspicuous endeavor to utilize the game spirit in education by means of their cemulus, a device which they carried to an extreme. Each boy in school was pitted against some other boy in a kind of intellectual wres- tling match ; there was not a boy who was not watchmg to trip his rival. Frequently sides were chosen representing hostile camps, called Eome and Carthage, which engaged in pitched PLAY IN EDUCATION 31 battles ou some field of Latin grammar or Greek composition, thereby increasing greatly the zest of the pupils. Fenelon was an extremist in the matter of making studies agreeable to children. In study and moral discipline " pleas- ure must do all." "Conceal their studies under the appear- •ance of liberty and pleasure." " Mingle mstruction with play." " I have seen certain children who have learned to read while playing." Locke laid great stress upon the art of making all that cliildren have to do "sport and play." He mentions a game devised by an acquaintance " of great quality," who pasted the vowels and consonants upon dice, making a play for liis cliildren, he winning who threw most words at one cast of the dice, " whereby his eldest son, yet in coats, has played liimself into spelHng with great eagerness." Locke especially commended wrestling as an exercise for physical training. A conspicuous attempt to use play in education was that of Basedow. Quick gives an illustration in his quotation from Fred's Journey to Dessau. They play at soldiers, and Ilerr Wolke is officer. He gives the word in Latin and they must do whatever he says. For instance, when he says, Claudite oculos, they all shut their eyes; when he says, Circumspicite, they look about them; Imitamini sutorem, they draw the wax thread like the cobblers. Herr Wolke gives a thousand commands in the drollest fashion. Another game is the " hiding game." Some one writes a name and hides it from the children — the name of some part of the body, or of a plant, or animal, or metal — and the children guess what it is. Whoever guesses right gets an apple or piece of cake. One of the visitors wrote intestina and told the children it was a part of the body. Then the guessing began. One guessed caput, another nasus, another diglti, and so forth, for a long time ; but one of them hit it at last. 32 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES They had another game which was this : Herr Wolke gave the command in Latin and they imitated the noises of the different ani- mals, and made us laugh until we were tired. They roared like lions, mewed like cats, just as they were bid. Herr Wolke asked the children what he should draw. Some one answered, Leonem. He then pretended he was drawing a lion, but put a beak to it ; whereupon the children shouted, Non est leo — leo- nes non habent rostrum ! In the next exercise dice were produced and Nature Interest — Saving the Tadpoles Photograph by Dr. C. F. Hodge the children threw to see who should give an account of an engrav- ing. The engraving represented workmen at their different trades, and the child had to explain the process, the tools, etc. Montaigne and Eichter alike attached the greatest serious- ness and significance to the play of children. Spencer thought that instruction should excite interest and therefore be pleas- urable. He says : " Experience is daily showing with greater clearness that there is always a method productive of inter- est, — even of delight, — and it turus out that this method PLAY IN EDUCATION 33 proved by all other tests to be the right one." Play, free and spontaneous exercises, he says, are better than gymnastics. In 1796 appeared a remarkable book by Guts Muths, instructor of gymnastics at Schnepfenthal. This book, Spiele zur Uehung und Erliolvng des Koerpers des Geistes, had a great infhience upon the physical training of the German people. Guts Muths desired to revive interest in active games, wliich he believed had degenerated during the INIiddle Gatheking Wild Floweks Photograph by F. S. Andrus Ages. Believing with Plato that the games of youth were of political and national importance, he wished to counteract effeminacy and ennvii and develop vigor of body and zest in life by joyous, strenuous, but innocent sports. He greatly discountenanced games of chance, believing that they helped to cause a weakening of the nation, especially the nobility. He considered card games objectionable mainly because they crowded out active games, but he thought they were less objectionable in the case of laborers who obtained active exercise in their work. 34 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES Guts Muths considered that the natural impulse to activ- ity is the creator of play, and that ennui is always and only a favoring condition. The first object of play is the pleasure of the activity, the second the recovery or protection from ennui. Health of body and joyousness of spirit are of first importance in the rearing of children. The moral influence of play is self-evident. Ennui he considered one of the most oppressive of evils, — a sickness. Merriment and joyousness should be spread abroad. If men were only always joyous, there would be far less evil in the world. Guts Muths speaks of the value of having the sensitiveness and "corners" rubbed off in the plays and games of children, as a prepara- tion for life ; also of the value of having older people show an iuterest in the plays of children. The child opens his heart to the teacher thereby and they meet on common ground. Guts Muths speaks of the fact that animals play ; dogs, fishes, in fact all things, play. He quotes Wieland to the effect that work is against the purpose of nature. The most beautiful arts of the Muses are plays. " Artists play with nature, poets with their creative power, philosophers with ideas, beauties with our hearts, and kings, alas, with our heads." Guts Muths emphasized the recreative side of play. He admitted that love of play takes away the child's desire to work. The child desires to play and neglects his work ; but if this continues, the fault lies in the education. The child acquires a love of work only by habit and routine. No one works except from necessity and then from habit. Guts Muths described many games under two main clas- sifications, — Active Plays and Sitting or Rest Plays. These are subdivided into several classes, as Plays of Observation PLAY IN EDUCATION 35 and Judgineut, Plays of Attention, Plays of Fantasy and Wit, Purely Bodily Plays; also Plays of Memory, Plays of Taste, and Plays of the Understanding and Higher Judgment. But it is from Pestalozzi and Froebel that our primary schools have inherited most that is in line with the play activ- ities of children, — the grades more largely from Pestalozzi, the kindergarten, of course, from Froebel. Pestalozzi's conception that education is a growth, — " the outward evolution of an 1 .". '<«IM^v.;d^^^^Hi«c feiiAii _\^^| ^r* -•'••"^ ^^ -"**-. -V . -, •." . <' ' "^ Nature Interest — Gathering Specimens inward life," — was as old as Socrates, but Pestalozzi breathed anew into it the spirit of a living truth. The self-activity of the child became his guidmg star, the child's contact with natural objects and reaction to environment, the means. While Pestalozzi was lacking in logic and sense of proportion, thereby faihng in many minor matters and details, his intense and exalted humanity and the vitahty of truth have, with the addition of Froebel's teachings, given us much that is best in our primary schools to-day, — the principle of self-activity and of contact with nature. 36 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES While Froebel has influenced our primary schools as a whole less than Pestalozzi, he has emphasized the doctrine of self- activity and, by a more watchful study of child nature, has thrown light upon the nature and meaning of self-activity, Froebel was the precursor of modern cliild study, — an evolu- tionist in education, so far as it was possible to be at that time. Besides his fundamental teaching of self-activity, of " inner necessity and impulse," he distinctly expresses a theory of recapitulation, and lays stress upon the importance of allow- ing the child to be himself at each succeeding stage. This, as a general statement, is about all that modern research and child study can say to-day, but as to the understanding of those stages, of their real significance, and of their relation to edu- cation, we know a very great deal more to-day than Pestalozzi or Froebel could possibly have known. Pestalozzi died in 1827 and Froebel published his Education of Man in 1826, more than a quarter of a century before Darwin's immortal work on the Origin of Species appeared. And how much the studies of evolution made since then have clarified many problems of education and human interests ! A new conception of play. The studies of Perez, Preyer, Sully, Baldwin, Hall, and many others, and the host of pub- lications inspired in this country by President Hall, have emphasized and thrown light upon the postnatal evolution of children, as all well know. These have particularly empha- sized the biological and physiological aspects of child devel- opment and their relation to the mental. Froebel's attention was centered rather upon the recapitulation by the child of the steps of human knowledge. In common with Spencer, Comte, and probably also, as Professor Hailman suggests, with Pestalozzi in a measure, Richte, Goethe, Kant, Hegel, and PLAY TX EDUCATION 37 Herbart, Froebel lield that the genesis of knowledge in the individual must follow the same course as the genesis of knowledge in the race. Froeliel's evolution was one of social Photograph by Johu Boyd consciousness rather than one based on that of biology dat- ing back to Darwin and upon which students base their studies to-day. Evolution, child stud}', self-activit}', play, 38 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES must have a somewhat different significauce to-day than they could possibly have had to Pestalozzi or Froebel. The Schiller-Speucer theory of play, discussed by Groos, was that play was due to an overflow of energy. The over- fed nerve cells must discharge. The same idea appears in Eichter, Guts Muths, and others. Froebel hkewise based it upon an inner overflow^ or impulse, but emphasized the mental rather than the ph}'sical aspect. Groos recognized the mfluence of this surplus energ}', but finds the real gen- ,l«esis of play in inherited instincts or impulses, and its expla- nation in its preparation for future serious occupations m the struggle for lifel" Hall finds m play the motor habits and spirit of the past of the race persisting in the present. Gulick finds in it the manifestation of inherited tendencies toward certain activities allied to historic activities of the race, preserved by the principle of natural selection. The relation of play to the instincts has been noted by many others. , The dictvim of Froebel that the child should be allowed to be himself at each stage takes on a deeper significance when we understand that it is m the plastic period, or period of nascency of specific interests and powers, that may be pre- served to the child the countless hereditary impressions ; and it is then only that he may come mto full possession of his birthright, his by the right of transmission from countless' generations of tlie fittest of the race, and make them his own to transmit to generations still vmborn. I would not claim too much, but I cannot believe that there can be any Jir^ducation in the true sense of the word that does not deeply involve the emotions and the will, that does not take root in the inheritances that have come down from the motor habits PLAY IN EDUCATION 41 of the race ; and as these motor habits, endeavoring to persist in the present, are involved in play, we iind there the surest and nearest approach to a true education of the child. Just as the physician in his search for a cure for consumption has circumscribed the earth and finally come back to the thing in all the world the simplest and nearest, the first demand A Young Boat Builder Photograph by John Boyd of the child upon entrance into the world, — fresh air, — so we in our search for the best means of educating our children are coming back to that which was the first expression of his awakening soul, — his play. The use of play in the schools of to-day. As Groos has said, there are two ways of making use of play in education : first, by introducing the playful into the work ; second, by 3<^ EDUCATION BY TLAYS AND GAMES employing play as a means of development. But the playful ^element in instruction should not be confused with genuine play. It is this playful element rather than genuine play that has been generally utilized by teachers. It is by no means unimportant when rightly used. The kindergarten has utilized this playful element more than actual play. Many of the ring games fall short of being real play, the incentive to the activity which the teacher supposes the child to have being foreign to the child at that stage of development. Much of the occupation work is nearer genuine play, especially wlien free. The kmdergarten is very wisely introducing free play more and more. The concrete examples of the use of the playful element in education, as given in the references to Basedow and others (page 31), will l)e helpful in making the distinction clear. The hist■■;- #ti^' ^Ti^MM '^^^ mi ■«]| B i °J s '^W^k 5®?T^ Ji^ ^^^"^m TuE Elm Street ISchuol Yard and temptations. Cigarette smoking, the theater-going habit, petty stealing from fruit stands and stores, lawlessness and truancy, are some of the outward manifestations of the street-developed character. In this district the school building was a four-story structure located in the center of a lot containing about two thirds of an acre. On each side of the building was a play yard with strip of lawn in front. On the first floor of the building the lowest panes of glass in the windows were painted white, to prevent the children from looking out on the street. It is said that })risoners were formerly marched along this street to the police court and that the distractions thus caused seemed to justify the coating of the windows. However true this may be, the appearance of the police van in the vicinity or the ringing of the city fire alarm was sufficient at any time to empty the yard. 48 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES Such a school naturally presented problems in discipline and truancy. For the year ending June, 1901, there were recorded against it ninety-nine cases of corporal punishment and two hundred and eighty-one half days of truancy, the school in these respects having the worst reputation in the vicinity. I have reason to believe that the ninety-nine cases of pimishment reported included only the cases in which the ferule was employed, — probably not a large per- centage of the actual number, if the term " corporal punishment " were strictly interpreted. Ordinarily, teachers who work iinder such conditions become pessimistic and lose sight of high ideals in being forced to accustom themselves to practices against which their finer feelings and better judgment rebel. The boys' play yard was small and was covered with a loam which made it unfit for use in damp weather. In such a yard, without equipment of any kind, and with such a large number of boys, a principal quite naturally and easily fell into the role of policeman, pi-ohibiting games and suppressing activity. Such a policy, thougli [irobably employed l)y most of our principals to-day, drives children into the street and is one of the chief causes of truancy. Four or five weeks after the opening of school we set about improving our yard. The city covered it with a mixture of broken stones and sand. A wooden frame containing four pairs of rings and two horizontal bars was erected. The rings were of iron and were fastened to the frame by rope. The bars were each about six feet in length and were made of two-inch iron pipe. Eight boys could exercise at one time on this apparatus, and it soon dev-eloped that rajiid and vigorous exercise was necessary in order to enable the waiting lines of boys to participate in the pleasure. From time to time other pieces of apparatus were added until, in about a year, we had in the boys' yard the following in addition to the frame above : two punching bags, a twelve-pound shot, apparatus for high jumping and pole vaulting, game of skittles or out-tloor bowling, and an oval race track one thirtieth of a mile in length. As the yard was too small to allow unrestricted .ball throwing, bases were painted on the brick pavement at one ena'of 'the playground, and the boys were interested in the pitchers' art. Care was taken in the selection and jilacing of apjiaratus that the yard might continue to be available PLAY IN EDUCATION" 49 for free lalay. The large frame and track were permanent featm-es of the yard, the others were removed when not in use. Some of the apparatus was made by the boys. The city did not provide or pay for any of it. Some instruction in the use of the various pieces of apparatus was attempted with sufficient success to wan-ant the belief that such work as directors now do so admirably in indoor gymnasiums could be duplicated on a larger scale in grammar-school playgrounds. The rings, punching bags, shot, and race track seemed to hold the Boys making a Doll House (to be furnished by primary children) By permission of W. A. Baldwin interest most strongly. The track was used for team or relay races and occasionally for bicycle races. Long-distance running was quietly liracticed. A thirty-foot rope was frequently used for tug of war. All the pieces of this outdoor gymnasium were placed entirely at the disposal of the boys, and although I was told by those who had been connected with the school a dozen or more years that every movable piece would disappear, not even a bolt was stolen or lost during the entire four years. The yard became very popular. Boys were often using the gymnasium an hour before school in the morning ; there were hasty lunches and constant activity at noon, 50 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES and an hour after the closing of the afternoon session generally found the apparatus still in use. Saturdays the boys begged to be allowed to play in the yard, and the janitor often kindly allowed the privilege. Neighborhood boys, not members of the school, uncertain of the principal's disposition toward them, entered the yard diffidently and experimented witli the bars and rings and punching bags. Dele- gations of boys from other schools visited us to take notes and meas- urements. The city fire alarm was no longer strong enough to empty the yard, and prisoners received only occasional glances as they entered the courthouse across the way. Many of the boys sold newspapers, and sensational criminal court news seldom escaped them. They knew when to expect the prisoners for trial at the courthouse and often looked forward to their arrival. I have seen as many as two hun- dred boys, as if with one impulse, rush out of the side gate during a noon hour to gaze upon a pris- oner as he was escorted from the police wagon to the courthouse door. However, from the time the first piece of apparatus was piTt in, I never saw more than two or three boys at one time suffi- ciently interested to step outside the yard. For several winters the yard was flooded and used as a skating rink by both girls and boys. At the first snowfall the boys cleared the yard, piling the snow in the form of a dike around the edge. In a week or two this froze solid and formed a basin into which the city water was poured. Parents were especially interested in this feature of the outdoor work and urged its continuance, as they feared to have their children skate on the treacherous Connecticut near by. Windmill made by Boys at the Andover Play School PLAY IN EDUCATION 51 The girls had sufficient room on their lawn for the use of two croquet sets. Their yard was so small that it seemed best to leave it without apparatus. The outdoor gymnasium and supervised play made the boys hap- pier in their school life. It raised the tone of the school by bringing about a better disposition toward teachers and toward school work. It brought the principal in closer touch with the children and, while increasing his knowledge of them, strengthened his influence over them. The teachers took advantage strongly of the enthusi- asm and good feeling. They voluntarily discarded their ferules and worked for higher ideals. We interpreted " corporal punishment " strictly and reported accordingly. We did not deem it wise to abol- ish it entirely, but the number of cases was reduced seventy or eighty per cent. The most noticeable change, however, was in the truancy record. The following speaks for itself : Half Days of Truancy rf.corded against the School Year ending June, 1901 281 Year ending June, 1902 106 Year ending June, 1903 79 Year ending June, 1904 46 Year ending June, 1905 33 J. L. Riley, Principal Particularly in the vacation-school movement, with its far- reaching social and moral influence, play naturally takes a prominent place. The following, reprinted from "The Country Boy," Massachusetts Civic League, Leaflet No. 8, is suggestive. In certain schools in Andover, Massachusetts, there were circulated blank forms like the following : ANDOVER PLAY SCHOOL July 16 -August 24 APPLICATION FOR ADMISSION I wish to attend the Andover Play School. I prefer the following occupations in the order in which I have numbered them. 52 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES (Choose five) Collections : Minerals, stamps, coins (if you prefer some other, please mention what). Cooking (for girls twelve or over). Draw iNG. Field Work : Butterflies, birds, fishes, flowers, and ferns. Gardening : Flowers, vegetables. Outdoor Games and Plays (mention your favorite games and plays). Mechanics: Boats and boat sailing, dam and water wheel, machin- ery, steam or electric motors. Dancing (girls only). Dramatics (girls only). Music: Singing, orchestra, ])iau() (mention the instrument you can play). Photography (cameras not furnished). Sloyd : Basketry, cardboard and paper work (girls and boys under twelve), woodwork. Swimming. Printing (boys only). Each applicant is requested to name any occupation or study that may be preferred to those mentioned above. Name, Age, School and grade, I approve of this application, Parent's signature, Note. Applications must be handed in before April 1. The fee for the entire term is fifty cents, and the fee must be paid and a ticket of admission obtained be- fore July 1. If for any reason any one who has obtained a ticket cannot attend the school, the money will be refunded. But in every case the full fee must be paid for one week's attendance or more. There are to be three schools : one for boys and girls from live to eight years of age; one for girls from nine to fourteen; one for boys from nine to fourteen. This application is to be tilled out by children nine and over. Parents may apply for children under nine. PLAY IN EDUCATION 53 Applications came in promptly, and soon passed the hun- dred mark, when all other applications were refused. There were about fifty applications signed by boys from nine to fourteen, about thirty by girls from nine to fourteen, and twenty -odd by parents for children under nine. The choices of the boys fell in about the following order of preference, yet there was striking uniformity, each occupation having a goodly number of choices : outdoor games, woodwork, swim- ming, field work, gardening, printing, orchestra ; for the girls, cooking, basketry, field work, outdoor games, dancing, swim- ming, dramatics, gardening. Drawing was also popular with both boys and girls. The public-school plant was used, the only additions being the sloyd benches and tools, printing press and type, loaned by the Andover Guild, which organization was the source of financial support. The play school opened at 8.30 a.m. and closed at noon, or as soon thereafter as the children could be driven away to their dinners ; but some of the children and some of the teachers usually returned in the afternoon. The term lasted six weeks, from about the middle of July to the last week in August. It was the original pur- pose of the play school to enroll those boys of the community who spent the long summer vacation in the streets, in rough and profane ball games, in inordinate swimming, predatory expeditions, and like occupations ; but the earnest petitioning of not a few of the best people in tlie town for the admission of their children finally opened the doors of the school for some children of most excellent home influences. Perhaps the favorite occupation, on the whole, was the woodwork. There was a complete sloyd outfit and a tramed sloyd teaclier. No attempt was made to hold the boys to a 54 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES formal course. The woodwork was to serve as a sort of supply shop for the apparatus used in school. The boys made their own butterfly nets and fish nets for the nature work. They made the mounting boards used in mounting the speci- mens, the cases for the permanent collections, developing cages for the caterpillars, aquaria for the fishes, box traps for Archery — Bows mai>k m the Boys Photograph by C. S. Moore catcliing squirrels, etc. If a boy was interested in archery, he made his bow and arrows ; if in cricket, a bat ; if in kite flying, a kite ; if in making a present for a younger brother or sister, a toy table, perhaps. Mothers, too, reaped the bene- fits of the shop, for a boy often turned from his toy making to the making of a sleeve board, ironing board, bread board, shelf, or something else for the house. Sometimes the boys PLAY IN EDUCATION 55 united in making some giant affair of common interest, — a log house, a great windmill which supplied power for turn- ing the grindstone, a dam and sluiceway for the water wheel, or a catamaran for the swimming pond. The nature work was hardly less popular than the toy making. Nearly every morning there might have been seen a company of ten or a dozen boys starting out with a leader in search of Ijutterflies or fishes, and for the incidental study of birds or frogs or snakes, or whatever came to their notice ^- H 6 » I •I 7H ^ ^bS'- \ ^_^f? f^) ^~%.^-' 1 «s3i|e^ ^K* ^«1» !/. A Street Jjov's C'ollec tion Photograph by C. S. Moore while hunting. The older l)oys devoted tliemselves mainly to the butterflies, the younger to the fishes. Nearly every species of butterfly to be found in Andover during the season was captured, many kinds of caterpillars were taken and developed into chrysalides in the cages, and nearly all the different kinds of fishes to be found in the streams and ponds were caught and studied. The work consisted largely of out- door tramps, but there was also laboratory work, and the de- scription and drawing of the worm, chrysalis, and butterfly. Honeybees in an observation hive and ants m nests made 56 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES of school slates covered witli glass were watched. Some of the ants' nests were successfully kept and watched for months, one boy keepmg a colony all winter. The microscope was frequently used in the laboratory work. Notebooks on fishes were also kept. The interest of the boys was deepest in the gathering and general observation and naming of speci- mens, the watching and feeding of the fishes, and less in the minuter observation, drawing, and naming of parts. The zeal in hunting specimens was often intense. It was no uncom- mon thing to see a boy, when the school was not in session, alone, with a heavy pail on liis arm, a fish net in liis hand, sweltering along in the dog-day sun, seeking some new treas- ure for his aquarium. Boys who had good luck on these occa- sions — as, for instance, in catching some handsome speckled trout — would seek the leader in feverish excitement to com- municate the great achievement. The ignorance of many boys whose environment by no means justified their lack of knowledge was sometimes sur- prising. A grammar-school boy, visiting tlie school, knew the fislies simply as fishes, being unable to name with certainty a single species. Another boy, who was within one year of the high school, brought to school in high elation one morn- ing some "speckled trout" for the aquarium which proved to be tiny spotted salamanders, whose legs presented no diffi- culty to him in his classification. Allied to the nature work was the gardening. A part of the school yard was plowed and a definite portion allotted to each boy who chose gardening. Vegetables of various kinds were planted. Flowering plants were also intrusted to the boys' care, and were taken home and transplanted at the close of the school. The following spring many of these TLAY IN P:1)UCATI0N 57 boys were reported as having started gardens of their own at home. The second period of the day, one hour in length, was spent in outdoor play. In one section of the playground might have been seen a group of boys engaged 'in a match at archery. In another section the older l)oys, perhaps cUvided A Bov's Vivarium and Aquarium Photograph by C. S. Moore into opposing sides by some natural grouping wliich lent zest to emulation, were hard at some spirited game of ball. Else- where some of the younger or less athletic boys were play- ing at tenpins on the smooth driveway, or at bean bags. There were also, at times, football, ringtoss, tag games, boxing, wrestling, racing, jumping, vaulting, gymnastic tricks, kite 58 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES flying, boat racing i at Rabbit's Pond, swimming races at Pomp's or in the Shawsheen. Three times a week there was a division in swimming. The swimming lessons often served as a good opportunity for collecting outdoor specimens or plants for the aquaria. On rainy days there were indoor games, which partook more of the nature of social or parlor games, and wliich were intellectual rather than pliysical. The musically inclined boys were always eager for an orchestra. This took the form of the " kindersym- phonie." Tlie talents and attainments of the boys made the music necessarily crude, Init it was much en- joyed by them. The violin- ists were children who came for the orchestra alone, the play-school boys lieing confined mainly to time-beating instruments. There was also a class in piano playing wliich met twice a week, the school piano being used in practicing. 1 These boat races were races of the sail boats. made by the boys. One day I bought a handsome steel yacht at a toy store in Boston and offered it as a prize to the boy who could make a boat that would beat it. When the trial came off there was n't a boat made by the boys that did n't out- sail mine ; and I was somewhat embarrassed, but secretly proud, for there wasn't a boy who would accept my boat as a gift. -J PoLp Vaulting PLAY IN EDUCATION 59 The printing department appealed to some as real play. The press served to print the names of the boys in the several departments, the baseball teams, headings for school exercise papers, cards, some billheads, and, best of all, a four- page paper containing compositions by the boys on the work of the various departments, names of prize takers, cuts of drawings made in the nature work, lists of specimens cap- tured, and the like. Besides the drawing in the nature work there was a divi- sion in drawmg for those who preferred it to any other occupation they might have during that period. The work Girls MAKiNti Use uf Natukal Swimming Pool took mainly the form of large, free-hand drawings from objects. This was more nearly allied to the regular school work than that of any other department, unless we except the library, from which the boys eagerly drew books of stories, history, or nature for home reading. 60 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES The occupations of the girls were very similar to those of the boys in some respects and very different in others. The girls had no chance at general toy making as had the boys, but they cooked, made dolls' hats, dolls' hammocks, and baskets, of rattan and rafha, and did some fancy work. They played their outdoor games, went off on field excursions after Ifll W • ? 1( I !,' I I « I! • !| * I f i*»',..— ,., r> E.XIIllUT Ul' Ha^kkts Photograph by C. S. Moore ferns or insects, and went swimmmg. The facilities of most country towns in the matter of swimmmg for girls are much underrated. Two places were readily found where girls might be taught to swim. One was in a pond near a house where a good opportunity for dressing was given in a near-by shed. Another was later selected as even better, in a secluded spot along the Shawsheen River. Here the girls went freely, PLAY IX EDUCATION 61 liappily, and unmolested, witli their teacher, and several learned to swim in a short time. Dancing and dramatics occupied a portion of the girls' time, and at the close of the school a play was very suc- cessfully given to the public, the proceeds being given to the school. Some of the girls took gardening on equal terms with the boys, and raised their share of flowers and vegetables, which were in due season appropriated for their homes. While the conditions in Andover were favorable for carry- ing on a school like that described, they were l.)y no means Dramatics Photograph by C. S. Moore unusual. I have yet to see a country village where a similar school could not be successfully conducted, with the accom- panying benefits to the children, so many of whom are, with- out question, injured by the experiences of the long summer 62 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES vacation. Teachers there are in abundance who would gladly work in a vacation school for the price of their board. The salaries paid the " faculty " and helpers employed in the An- dover Play School averaged about four dollars a week. The highest salary paid was ten dollars, and the lowest nothing. During the past year a most successful school has been con- ducted in Andover by two teachers in the public schools, the total expense of which was less than three hundred and fifty dollars, the school enrolling sixty-five children. But such schools can be run at a much less cost if the community is willing that the teachers serve without pay, and playgrounds with many of the accompanying benefits may be conducted at about as near no expense as the community will allow. The following may be of interest as showing tlie impres- sions that parents got of the value of the playground influence on their children. They are direct quotations. " It kept him off the streets, and 1 knew where he was " ; " seemed per- fectly happy all through the summer-school term " ; " was better able to begin his scliool studies " ; " increased his happiness by having something to do"; "kept him out of mischief " ; " kept his mind occupied " ; " had liis own garden at home, and took care of it, — somethmg he was not inter- ested in before " ; " helped him at school " ; " made good use of things he learned " ; " was much interested in insects " ; " enjoyed himself every day " ; " was more agreeable, as he had something to think of " ; " set Mm thinking " ; " made home life more interesting in constructing things he saw at school " ; " made liim more ambitious " ; " made him inter- ested in his learning " ; " made a pigeon coop, studies birds a good deal and butterflies " ; " made him brighter and quicker " ; " made him good in his manners " ; " did him a PLAY IN EDUCATION 63 good deal of good on his character and disposition." These are typical of many expressions used by parents who felt that their boys were, through the play school, benefited rather than injured by the long vacation. They are by no means exhaustive of what might be said m summary of the value of playgrounds for country children, but they certainly will prove suggestive to those who are concerned about the chil- dren of the streets of our country towns. Gulick, in a remarkable paper on the " Psychological, Peda- gogical, and Eeligious Aspects of Group Games," dignifies the moral and social influences of ball and athletic teams. Lee places group games at the head of all schools of citizenship and says : In playing these games the boy is not going through the forms of citizenship, — learning parliamentary law, raising points of order, and moving the previous question, — he is being initiated into its essence, actually and in a very vivid way participating in the thing itself. He is experiencing citizenshi}), not learning about it ; undergoing the actual and habitual experience of losing the sense of his own individuality in that of a larger whole. To the boy playing football, tlie losing himself in the conscious- ness of the team, utterly subordinating his individual aims to the common purpose, is not a matter of self-sacrifice but of self-fulfill- ment, — the coming into his birthright, the satisfying of his human necessity of socialization, of becoming a part of a social or political whole. What is being born in that boy is the social man, — man the politician, man the citizen, — and it is my belief that in most instances this political or social man will get himself thoroughly and successfully born in no other way. . In these and other departments of school work the applica- tion of the play interest will depend much upon tlie adaptation of work to the stage of the child's development. Arithmetic, language, science, and history may be made to swing into line 64 EDUCATION P.Y PLAYS AND GAMES with the child's interests and powers. When such is done there is not enough difference between play and work to quar- rel about ; and the highest type of work is the work which has the largest amount of play in it. The great men of all ages, in every department of life's work, have had this play interest in their work. As Brinton says, " The measure of the value of play is the amount of work there is in it; and the measure of the value of wcjrk is the amount of play there is in it." To aid us in using play in education to the best advantage, we have the many studies of child development and interests. The following chapter is a very brief summary of the results of the best of these studies, and is intended to make clearer the principles invfjhed in tlie choice of the plays and games included in the course to follow. CHAPTEE III THE PERIODS OF CHILDIIOOD AND THEIR RELATION TO A COURSE OF PLAYS AND GAMES Period One (Ages 0-3). The rapid and wonderful changes through which a child passes prior to birth are hardly more wonderful than the changes of the first years of life. At birth the brain fibers are not complete, the nerve endings in the skin are not perfected, the different parts of the brain are not con- nected, and the striped muscles are very undeveloped. The child is without intelligence and without control over the muscles of the body. He cannot see, cannot hear, scarcely feels the single prick of a pin ; but at once under the stimuli of the world without and the impulse of life witliin all things begin to change. Gradually sensations of taste, smell, liear- ing, temperature, touch, and sight are received and recorded. The parts of the brain become connected and the different sense perceptions become associated. Meantime the brain and body are growing at a marvelous rate. The weight of the Ijody trebles the first year and the length increases seven or eight inches. The brain increases two or three times its weight the first year and about ten per cent more during each of the next two years. The sensations which are pouring in tlirough all the ave- nues cause their characteristic changes iii the brain, and mem- ory begins, very weak at first, and comparatively weak even at the end of the period, for few adults remember back of the 65 QQ EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES fourth year. As early as the sixth mouth movements seen and sounds heard are reproduced through the impulse of imitation. Meantime the rapidly growing body is constantly exercised. Every waking hour is spent in almost constant physical move- ment. These movements, beginning in the reflex, instmctive, and impulsive movements, increase in intensity in the sub- sequent motor plays of the child. With the accumvdation of sense perceptions and the development of association, concep- tion and reasoning begin, but reasoning remains through this period and long after largely a matter of association. Finally, with the development of association, memory, control of speech muscles, and imitation, speech appears. These years then seem to be given largely to the develop- ment of the senses, getting control of the fundamental move- ments of the body and its members, and the acquisition of speech. This has been termed the period of physical adjust- ment. It is very easy here to see the relation of play to men- tal and bodily development. Practically the whole psychic life and all conscious bodily movements conform to the nature of play. The child play of this period is determined by the peculiar needs and conditions of the developing brain and body. At first the interest centers about the mouth. Everythmg the child can grasp is crowded into the mouth with both hands and feet. As each sense develops keen interest centers upon it. Gradually the different senses are associated with each other, and each new power acquired adds new zest to the interest. With the ability to sit erect, for instance, comes increased interest in seeing ; with increased interest in handling objects comes a new interest in experi- menting with the senses ; with the acquisition of creeping comes an added interest in the room and its contents, and THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 67 vice versa. All the way along, interest follows the hne of developmg- powers. It is all-important that the environment should he such as to give suitable opportunity for the natural plays of this period. These plays we may briefly catalogue: sucking; grasp- ing ; mussing ; moutliing ; kicking and other movements of the limbs ; experimenting with the senses, — taste, touch, Building a Dam sight, hearing, smell, temperature; getting control of the body ; speech, as in bal)bling ; imitation ; creeping, climbing, walking ; talking ; memory, repetition, recalling ; exploring ; construction (destruction), the plays constantly widening the field of motor activity, sense perception, memory, imitation, and speech. To these may be added interest in passive motion, as in riding and swinging, interest in rhythm, — the basis of delight in Mother Goose and mother plays, and music. 68 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES Period Two (Ages 4-6). Tliis period, just preceding or iucluding the first school years, is a continuation of the first period in many essential features. There is still a rapid growth of the body and brain (the brain growing but little in size after the sixth year) and a predominance of the sensory and motor in the psychic life. The sensory side, however, is grad- ually being overtaken and surpassed by the motor. The memory is strengthening, the auditory and motor images seem- ing to be more distinct" and lasting than the visual. Sensory knowledge is far in advance of judgment. Eeasoning is still largely a matter of association, resulting frequently in ludi- crous and false inferences. / Since the child lacks so in experi- ence and observation of things in relation, his understanding is deficient in grasp of relation and proportion, and he jumps at conclusions. Butter is thimght to come from butterflies; the smoke makes the sky; water is alive because it runs; if one hand is the right hand, the other must be the wrong hand ; a holiday is a day to "holler" in. It is a guessing period. Imita- tion, which we saw was well developed by the second year, has changed somewhat in character. The first imitations were largely direct imitations of movements and sounds of adults. During these years the cliild continues to imitate adults rather than other children or animals, but the imitation is less direct, less instinctive and impulsive. With his wider knowledge and increased power of doing, the child begins to adapt the act of the adult to some play idea of his own. Instead of simply making believe sweep or dust, he plays he has a house and actually sweeps and dusts it. Coupled with the strong impulse to imitate is the great suggestibility of this period. It is preeminently a time of suggestion and imi- tation. The imagination is very active. Having an increased THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 69 fund of sensory facts and being unhampered by sense of rela- tion and proportion, he builds freely with his mental images. Familiar ideas are altered to suit a passing fancy : a box becomes a boat, a playmate a horse. Imaginary playmates, even, are created. Playing with the imagination often becomes a source of cliildish hes : it is also the basis of the animistic i'i:i,Li\o THE Tkkks Photograph by C. S. Mooi-e tendency wliicli invests even the pebbles with life. The devel- oping interest in cause and effect and in the relations of tilings is expressed in the passion for questioning. Interest in com- mon objects and toys culminates at the close of this period, intensifying interest in ownership, collecting, and hoarding. After the fourth year children play with other children rather than with adults. It is not an unselfish period, however. 70 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES The child is unable as yet to grasp well the relation of his acts to other chiklren. He is selfish and self-assertive ; in liis play with other children his activity has little cooperation. What he does is for himself ; desires clash, and quarrels are frequent. It is stUl a period of keen and volatile emotions ; anger, jeal- ousy, fear, syiiqmthy, pity, and love are easily aroused. The play activities of this period reflect the characteristics of growth and development at this time. They center about free motor activity, largely for its own sake and not for the sake of results ; about common objects and what may be done with them ; experimentation of the senses and accumulation of sense knowledge ; memory ; explanation of things, guessmg, questioning ; play of the imagination ; and especially imitation. In these activities are iiaturall}' involved constructive play of a crude sort; a free use of the hands and common objects as . tools ; interest in plants and animals as playfellows ; exploring ; imitation plays, as house, store, trains, sewing, cooking ; count- ing, measuring; collecting and hoarding; story interest, rhythm, music, dancing. Nearly the whole field of interests is covered, but the character of the manifestation of those mterests is typical of the period and has largely to do with free motor activity, sense perception, and imitation. These facts are con- sistently held m mind in the selection of the plays, games, and toys mentioned in the Course of Plays and Games for this period. Period Three (Ages 7-9). Coming now to children of seven, eight, and nine years of age, we. need to note several important changes. The rapid brain growth of the previous periods ceases during this period, and the brain reaches nearly its full weight at about eight. In general, it is a period of rather slower physical development, including also a brief THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 71 period of regression of indefinite length (for its culmination differs more or less in different individuals), which is impor- tant on account of the dangers attending it, but which parents and teachers have 'Seldom seriously considered. Somewhere about the eighth or ninth year there comes a setback to the chUd. There is a change in the circulatorv system, — the Selecting the Logs Photograph hy C. S. Moore veins and arteries are larger proportionately than the heart, and there is a tendency to heart weakness. Second dentition is taking place, and the child is liadly off as regards chewing surface, many children having from two to five of their teeth missing and from thirty to forty per cent of them diseased. The child is liable to toothache and disturbances of digestion. He fatigues more easily than formerly and is often thouglit to be lazy or stupid. Returns from teachers showed the smallest 72 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES number of bright children and the largest number of dull children in this period. More children fail of promotion in this period than in any other. Just now there is a tran- sition from the diseases of children to those of adults, about half of the diseases occurring at this time belonging to the previous period and about half to adult life. There is an increased tendency to speech disorders, as shown in the studies of Dr. Hartwell. Dr. Hartwell's tables of the specific intensity of life show that, while from the age of seven to twelve there is generally a rapid increase in immunity from disease, yet at the age of eight to nine, for girls, there is a 'lessened rate of increase, and at the age of nine to ten, for boys, there is an actual drop in specific intensity of life. On the whole it is a weak period, a period of transition, which Bryan considers as important as the dawn of puberty. The regression noted in this period King thinks is appar- ent rather than real, that it is a period of readjustment rather than one of regression. Interest now is shifting fjom the activity itself to the end accomplished, and the child has come to a realization of the need of a radical change in his adjustments, physical and psychical. He soon finds that his powers for accomplishing are far behind liis ideals, and he is bewildered and thrown back upon himself, halt- ing, as it were, until the new adjustments are working more smoothly. In this period the "reasoning powers are still weak, the understanding seeming to be best aided through suggestion and analogies. The questioning interest continues ; memory is strengthening. Imitation is perhaps less prominent than before, but the child is still very susceptible to imitation and suggestion. The child now, however, imitates the idea rather THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 73 than the thing. Imagination continues very active and liegins to be of a creative type, but related more to the facts and needs of life. The animistic tendency so strong in the previ- ous period is weakening. The predominance of the sensory and motor in the psychic life of the child still continues and gives color to the play and game interests of the period. The senses are practically perfected and sensory interest continues very strong, while the motor activity is even greater than before. But the interest in motor activity is now shifting, as mentioned above, from interest in activity to interest in result. The child no longer simply drives nails into the soil or a board, — he tries to make something. He does not simply romp and run, — he plays a game. Details of motor activity are coming into prominence, and interest in skill is developing. AVith the child's conscious- ness of increasing power and skill, awakens interest in compe- tition. Therefore he begins to play games, that is, to play according to form and rule with other children, whereas before his play was largely free, informal, unorganized activ- ity. The child is not yet able to coordinate his activity with that of others, and there are as yet no truly cooperative games. In many games of this period sides are not chosen, each child playing for himself; but even when sides are chosen, the play remains for the most part individualistic. There is now approachmg culmmation in interest in traditional games, games of chase, and doll play. Interest continues high in common objects as toys, and in dramatic and representative play. Interest is very strong in collections. The constructive interest is centering upon the thing made. The child's ambi- tion is often quite beyond his skill, but his efforts are worthy of respect and encouragement. There is a strong general 74 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES interest in natvire, plants, animals, pets, and in exploring. Kline finds at this age a third runaway period. In tliis period we find the tendency to play with other children increasing, and the cliild is not quite so selfish. With the development of the formal game interest we find an increasing regard for law. A tendency to tease and bully is common m children of this period, and is due perhaps to a sense of increasing power BUILIJIXG THE CaHIN Photograph by C. S. Moore and the desire to exercise it. Interest still liolds in fairy tales and folklore, but towards the close of the period inter- est in narrative history begins. This is, then, essentially a transition period. There is a general shifting all along the line, — in the growth of the nervous system, in rate of bodily growth, in the circulatory system, in dentition, in diseases, in interest. It seems to be a special office of this period, after having perfected the senses, THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 75 to hegin to develop the finer coordinations of motor activity with sense judgments. To this end the shifting of the inter- est from activity to the result of the activity is helpful, in that it necessitates the development of skill. The plays and games of this period must involve motor activity of infinite variety, but with definite purpose and interest in the outcome. We see here the value of simple competitive games, traditional ■&• ?SA ■KgeHNHER ^H9I K 9^ ■ ^^^. li^K 1^1 E ii wmaXC?^^. 'I .V •- im '•"^^KlS^ffS!^ K 1 \ X*^ Pfes ^NM<^<«- "^jf^ ^H SWWi^^^'^' - ^^^Sr fe^^^-i^;^y, •_ \ The Cabin Photograph by C. S. Moore games, games of chase, constructive play, with an infinitude of common objects and with toys ; we also see the value of dramatic and representative play, and of doll play, of which latter Dr. Hall says, " The number of motor activities that are both inspired and unified by this form of play, and that can always be given wholesome direction, is almost incredil)le and has been too long neglected both by psychologists and teachers." 76 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES Nature does uot at any time deal with a section of the child but always with the whole child. She but places the emphasis differently at different periods. The emphasis peculiar to this period we have already pointed out. We must not fail, how- ever, to mention those other plays which involve the develop- ing powers of the child in every direction, — games involving experimentation of the mental powers, attention, observation, imagination, reasoning, memory, trial of the senses, number in- terest, collecting, nature interests of great variety, drawing, lan- guage plays, story interest, music, rhythm, and dancing, — all of which have their special value at this time of life and are to be found suggested in the Course of Plays and Games for this period. Period Four (Ages 10-12). This is the most important period in elementary education so far as the details of school work and the formation of habits are concerned. The body is not growing so rapidly, the brain has practically ceased grow- ing, and there is not the great functional advance which is to accompany the advent of puberty in the period following. There is a lull m the demands upon the system, — it is a time of storing up of energy. There is less liability to dis- ease. The specific intensity of life culminates in boys at from twelve to thirteen years, and in girls at from eleven to twelve. The heart is gaining in proportionate size and strength as compared to the size of the arteries, and tliere is less liability to fatigue than in the previous period. The child is at the height of physical activity. More games are played now than at any other age. In the nervous system, while the brain has practically ceased growing in weight it is changing rapidly in structural development. According to Clouston, the special import of tliis period m the nervous system is the coordination of THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 77 muscular action and the senses. The coordinations begun in the previous period, but not developed to the point of fine adjustments, are now given depth and scope. This is the time when there must be laid the foundations of any future great skill. Skill in games, in manipulation, in the use of tools, in the playing of musical instruments, correctness and facility in pronunciation of foreign languages, cannot be so surely A Universal Passion acquired if delayed beyond this period. It is therefore the period for drill and the forming of neuro-muscular habits. Reasoning remains comparatively weak throughout this period, but is slowly strengthening. A tendency to critical judgment is appearmg. The perceptive powers continue active, and the cliild is capable of close observation. It is still an eye and ear period. Memory is likewise strengthening, particularly memory for objects and their names. Imagina- tion is active, suggesting here the value of objects and pictures 78 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES for illustration. The animistic tendency is disappearing and superstitions are decreasing. The child is quite susceptible to suggestion, but he is influenced more by companions than by adults. He is never so removed from grown-ups as in this period. He is still selfish and self-assertive, yet gaining in social interest. He begins to form societies or clubs largely for games, athletics, and predatory expeditions ; but he unites with others rather for his own profit. In the cooperative games the individualistic element still remains prominent. Tliere is an increased regard for rule and law. In the matter of games, interest in running games is cul- minating. There is taking place a shifting of interest from games which are not cooperative to games which are coopera- tive. Interest in collections is at its height. The methods of collectmg are by finding and, in this period increasingly, by trading and buying. In nature, interest in pets, particularly in dogs and in the training of dogs, is rapidly increasing, reach- ing culmination in the next period. Interest in nature collec- tions is high. Great mterest in dolls is continuing. In drawing, interest centers upon action and the representation of one or two details, leaving the others in a jumble. The drawings are symbolic rather than correct representations. In construc- tion, interest increases in the details and skill of workman- ship. In literature the dominant interest of the boy is shown in preference for action and adventure. There is added inter- est in history, in historical biography, and in general litera- ture. The general puzzle interest culminates in mechanical pvizzles at eleven years of age, in geometrical puzzles at from twelve to thirteen. The games and plays of tliis period will be of great number and variety, involving great activit}', considerable skill, often THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 79 some cooperation, and will tend to further the development of the finer motor adjustments and the coordination of muscular action with sense judgments, which it is the special office of this period to develop. They will also invohe all the develop- ing powers of the child, each peculiar need of the boy and girl being met by the emphasis upon this or that feature of the Preparing for War Photograph by Mrs. E. E. Trumbull activity which the awakening interests will determine. The Course of Plays and Games for this period endeavors to sug- gest such plays and games. Period Five. (Ages 13-15). Just as there was at about the age of eight or nine a period of readjustment of motor ideals, so at about twelve, the last year of the previous period, there is a time of halting, uncertainty, and readjustment of 80 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES social ideals. We are now at the threshold of a new birth, a uew conception of life and of the use of powers. This is the period of most rapid bodily growth. The heart increases rapidly in size relative to the blood vessels, and there is a marked increase in blood pressure. There is also a rapid increase in lung and chest capacity, in strength of grip of hand, and in control of accessory muscles. The sexual organs are developing rapidly. While the brain is not perceptibly increasing in weight, there is a rapid structural change and accelerated development of association libers. It is the period of greatest tendency to nervous disorders, and there is an increased liability to disease. This is the time of the most rapid development of the heart and emotions. Love, pity, fear, anger, jealousy, emula- tiuu, ambition, have a new awakening. There is frequently great emotional instability. Anger and pugnacity increase ; sympathy increases. There is periodic laziness, awkwardness, self-consciousness, tendency to reverie, dreams of greatness, self-assertion. There is a tendency to affectation and manner- isms, to slang, to desire to show off, to freakishness and pranks. There comes now a new tendency to imitation and sug- gestion. There is a shifting of susceptibility to influence of companions to susceptibility to influence of adult ideals and example. There is a striking increase in susceptibility to religious influence ; also the greatest liability to incorri- gibility, misdemeanors, and crime. There is a desire to leave home, yet susceptibility to homesickness. There is a keen sense of humor, a tendency to practical joking, great sensi- tiveness to praise, censure, or ridicule. There is now an increased tendency to rudimentary organi- zations, gangs, and clubs, and great interest in competitive THE PERIODS OF CHILDHOOD 81 and cooperative games ; also in the taking and giving of stumps. The circle of favorite games is narrowing, and sex differences become prominent. There is great admiration for physical prowess, hero worship, love of adventure, and love of hunting and camping. Reasoning is strengthening. There is on the whole less liability to errors in reasoning. The memory is increased and the imagination is very active. The general reading interest War Photograph by C. A. Putnam is at its height. A genuine historic interest appears ; also interest in drama. The collection interest gains in definite- ness and permanency. There is great interest in nature and the training of animals. There is an increase in the regard for money and in trading. The puzzle interest involves mainly language and arithmetical puzzles. There is an uicreased interest in music and in rhythm. The en^'ironment in this period, then, should furnish oppor- tunity for games and plays involving great physical activity 82 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES and adapted to develop the large muscle areas, to continue the development of the finer motor adjustments, and to relate mdividual activity to a social group. These plays should develop the manly qualities, — courage, generosity, staying power, and social consciousness. The increased interest along the many lines mentioned above should be a means for sup- plying many varied activities tendmg to direct the attention and interests without rather than witliin, relieving the pecuhar and often morbid emotional tendencies of this time. The nar- rowmg circle and increased intensity of interest make this a favorable time for fixing permanent interests m some line, — in athletics, nature, science, literature, music, or art. The fol- lowing Course of Plays and Games is intended to suggest such activities and the peculiar emphasis to be laid upon each ; also to suggest many games involving the peculiar activity needed by the developing mental powers at this time. Pakt TI A SUGGESTIVE COURSE OF PLAYS AND GAMES PEEIOD ONE (Ages 0-3) "^ Essential characteristics. The essential characteristics of this period are the development of the senses, rapid brain growth, getting control of the fundamental movements of the body and its members, the development of speech, and imitation. Apparatus and toys. The apparatus and toys of special interest inchide eounnon objects, such as smooth stones, sticks, spools, keys, spoons, tin dishes ; bright objects suspended to attract sight, objects suspended above the cradle to induce reaching, a bell or some other bright object sewed to the stock- ing to induce pulling, paper suspended above the feet to induce kicking ; soft, hard, smooth, rough, light, heavy, warm, cold, objects ; a celluloid ball, rubber animals, boxes, nest of boxes, bottles, blocks, etc. ; harmonica, trumpet, whistle, bell ; flag ; rocking-horses, seat swing ; dolls ; cart, doll carriage ; toy fur- niture ; linen picture books ; paper and crayon ; slide, — a smooth board waxed and rubbed, having one end placed on a chair or box, on to which the child may cKmb and slide down the board ; outdoor sand pile, iron spoon, shovel, tin cans, pail, sand forms, cart ; indoor sand box. 83 84 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES First plays of infancy. These iiiclude free bodily move- ments (mihampered by clothing); handling of the body and common objects ; experimenting with the sense of touch, with temperature, taste, smell, hearing, sight ; mussing paper, Exploring rattling keys, pounding with a spoon ; rolling on the bed or on a blanket on the floor ; climbing off the bed or off chairs ; creeping ; climbing downstairs, upstairs, on chairs, and the like ; walking ; exploring room, house, yard ; imitation of movements and sounds. Later plays of infancy. These include continued experi- menting with the senses and motor apparatus; free motor plays, like running, climbing, swinging, rocking, pushing, dragging, drawing, and the like ; free play witli toys and PERIOD ONE 85 with common objects used as toys ; exploring ; simple con- structive play with blocks, digging in the sand, mud play; imitative plays, such as direct imitation of acts and words of adults ; doll play ; markmg ; listening to music and singing. A C'lTv Sand Pile attempts at singing ; Mother Goose plays ; countmg ; repeti- tion and rhythm. The games and mother plays adapted to this age include such as Peekaboo ; This Little Pig Went to Market ; Brow- bender ; Creep, Mouse ; Here is the Church ; Kicking ; Falling ; Tick-Tack ; Pat-a-Cake ; Wash the Lady's Dishes ; Piide a Cock- horse; Trot, Trot, to Boston, and other Mother Goose rhymes; Chase ; Hide and Whoop ; Dance and Sing ; Marching ; Ping-a- Ping, Posie ; and finger plays. PEEIOD TWO (Ages 4-6) Essential characteristics. The essential characteristics of this period are continued rapid brain growth and develop- ment of the senses ; accumulation of sense perceptions ; per- fecting the control of the fundamental movements and of the speech organs ; great physical activity, the interest centering An Old-Timk Plav in the activity rather than in the result ; imitation, particu- larly of adults and advdt occupations ; active imagination, dramatic and representative play ; interest in toys ; doll play; play which is individualistic rathej" than social ; curiosity and questioning ; guessing ; construction ; collecting and hoarding of trivial objects ; beginnings of graphic representation and musical interest ; story interest ; spontaneous counting. 86 PERIOD TWO 87 Apparatus and toys. The apparatus and toys of special interest include the following : outdoor sand pile, shovels, sand forms, tin cans, blocks, stones, and other miscellaneous materials, as boards, boxes, sticks, spools, dowels, twigs, etc. ; carts, reins, whips ; climbing tree or ladder ; slide (such as a smooth, waxed board, with climbing mount) ; single-pole swing ; see- saw ; parallel rails (2 by 4 joists, mounted a few inches from the ground, for balanced walking and running) ; elevated rail or fence ; jumping hole, filled with sawdust, straw, or other soft material ; doll house, improvised by children out of dry-goods box, or made by older children or carpenter ; dolls ; doll carriage, go-carts ; toy furniture, strong and durable as possible ; chairs, tables, beds, hammocks, bureaus, tubs, rub boards, flat- irons, brooms, stove, kitchen dishes, tea sets, etc. ; toy animals, toy circus ; harmonica, trumpet, drum, flag, toy sword ; balls, bean bags ; windmills ; engine, train of cars ; wheelbarrow, rake, hoe, watering pot ; indoor sand box ; building blocks ; scissors, paste ; sewing cards and sewing material ; 1)eads ; clay for modeling ; pencils and paper ; cray- ons or paints ; pictures and picture books. Photograph hy F. E. Bronson 88 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES In this coimectioii shuuld be mentioned the use of school play rooms. The following account of such a room is suggestive. Vov cluldren of this period indoor play rooms are desirable at any season of the year, but essential in the winter niontlis. I have in mind a play room in a country village of perhaps a thousand people. This village is a suburb of one of the larger cities of Massachusetts. The people are uniformly in humble circumstances, the majority A I'l.Av-Hooii Gkolp Photograph by M. Barnes btiing of the mill operative class and foreign born. The one school of the village, enrolling about two hundred and fifty children, has a first-grade room, in which there are fifty-six or eight children, about half of whom, on the first day of school, had not enough command of English to understand the simple directions of the teacher. Some of these children were scarcely more than babies, and fell asleep in their seats by the dozen. Across the hallway from this room an un- used room has been converted into a playroom. The room contains two sand piles, a swing, a smooth board slide, a doll house, house- hold furniture, cart, doll carriage, dolls, blocks, balls, picture books, PERIOD TWO 89 sliced pictures, toy soldiers, toy animals, toy circus, and other things. For more than a year and a half the children have been turned, about sixteen at a time, into this room, by the single teacher in charge, the door closed, and the children left entirely to their own devices. Here they play happily and freely. The marvel of it in- creases ; for, after all these months, tl^e teacher has yet to find the first case of quarreling, noisy disorder, or abuse of toys or apparatus. A Play-Room Corner Photograph by M. Barnes We parents of three or four scrappy, well-brought-up childi-en, of ages not permitting a social ensemble in their household play, may have much to learn of the socializing power of a play room sup- plying the right plays and toys to a group of children of a uniform stage of development and with similar play ideals. Other teachers of this school have attempted, with poor success, to utilize the play room for older children without first adapting the environment to the age of the children. The expense of this play room has been less than 90 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES thirty dollars a year. It has made iti possible to care for the first-grade children without employing an assistant teacher, thereby saving the town several hundred dol- lars since it was opened. Free, active plays. These include such activ- ities as running, rolling, sliding, climbing, wrest- ling, pushing, pulling, lifting, hauling, drawing, jumping, digging, throw- ing, tossing, catching, etc., and experimenting with the l)ody and the Co.MH.VDES senses. Imitative and dramatic plays. These include such plays as dolls, house, store, conducUu', horse, bear, Indians, fire- men, blacksmith, school, doctor, circus, soldiers, and the like. Constructive plays. These include such activi- ties as playing in a sand pile, clay modeling, build- ing with blocks, sewing, improvising houses, trains, stone fences, dens, etc., with miscellaneous mate- rial ; cutting free-hand, cut- ting out pictures, pasting ; stringing beads; parquetry. Collecting and hoarding plays. These include the Feeding the Hungry 1 1 ' 3^^| 1 r| ISJ^ i^^l 1 1 ^^B '^^H feE^L: ,. _ , --,£.-r .; •' -,. J " '" ■ • *><*xSx^iil PERIOD TWO 91 collecting of colored paper, ribbons, buttons, pictures, and miscellaneous knickknacks ; picking flowers, gathering nuts, picking berries, collecting leaves, and the like. Nature plays. The nature interest finds ex- pression in field excur- sions ; in watcliing birds and other animals ; in ex- ploring ; in picnicking ; in camping with their elders. The planting of seeds, transplanting of flowers, watering and caring for flower beds, and the feeding of pets may be entered upon incidentally in tliis period, but the children are not yet ready for responsibility in the care of flowers or pets. 8cI1()()L-Va1UJ (iAME.S (_)UTDO0K KiNDEKGARTEN GaMES Drawing plays. These include spontaneous drawings on the blackboard ; drawing with pencil on paper ; coloring pic- tures with crayons or paints ; tracing pictures on the black- board, on slates, or on paper. 92 EDUCATION BY PLAYS AND GAMES aBBIErT*'~*BMfai -i-JSl^^^^A J JJ^HTi jy^iaJ^'j:',-. .|»iM:j , '0m^ J^B^^^^IBI WHKk I^I^HiJiBni&E'^^^^ll n^ r m ^^;-5i|l^ i^^'^yL|£ '«. umt^W Mj^^^ . «pi i^Bir'^.^^ i'"' HJ^K^Ku^Bhi^i^^RpL' '^ 9I^^H^Bi^ mt^K^ .:mm FkEE Pl.VV in the KlNDEKGAKTEN Music plays. These have to do with singing and listening to music, with rh}'thniical niovenieuts, motion songs, finger iR':!'* ^wi^"* l'^^^^^^ ^^gfs**:^^ '^ (•■^'" 5ir . '' "iMfl&jiife^r '^^*'