[Sidenote:  Magic Lantern]

The magic lantern is an innocent and comparatively cheap means of playing with light.  If it is well taken care of and fresh slides added from time to time it can be made a source of pleasure for years.  Jack-o’-lanterns are great fun, and when pumpkins are not available, oranges may be used instead.

[Sidenote:  Rhythmic Movements]

Besides these elemental playthings the child gets much valuable pleasure out of the rhythmic use of his own muscles.  All such plays Plato thought should be regulated by music, and with this Froebel agreed, but in the Household this is often impossible.  The children must indulge in many movements when there is no one about who has leisure to make music for them.  Still, when they come to the quarrelsome age, a few minutes’ rhythmic play to the sound of music will be found to harmonize the whole group wonderfully.  For this purpose the ordinary hippity-hop, fast or slow according to the music, is sufficient.  It is as if the regulation of the body to the laws of harmony reacted upon minds and nerves.  Such an exercise is particularly valuable just before bed-time.  The children go to sleep then with their minds under the influence of harmony and wake in the morning inclined to be peaceful and happy.

[Sidenote:  Songs]

A book of Kindergarten songs, such as Mrs. Gaynor’s “Songs of the Child World” and Eleanor Smith’s “Songs for the Children,” ought to be in every household, and the mother ought to familiarize herself with a dozen or so of these perfectly simple melodies.  Of course the children must learn them with her.  When once this has been done she has a valuable means of amusing them and bringing them within her control at any time.  She may hum one of the songs or play it.  The children must guess what it is and then act out their guess in pantomime, so that she can see what they mean.  Perhaps it is a windmill song; their arms fly around and around in time to the music, now fast, now slow.  Perhaps it is a Spring song; the children are birds building their nests.  Other songs turn them into shoemakers, galloping horses, or soldiers.

[Sidenote:  Dramatic Plays]

Dramatic plays, whether simple, like this, or elaborate, are, as Goethe shows in Wilhelm Meister, of the greatest possible educational advantage.  In them the child expresses his ideas of the world about him and becomes master of his own ideas.  He acts out whatever he has heard or seen.  He acts out also whatever he is puzzling about, and by making the terms of his problem clear to his consciousness usually solves it.

[Sidenote:  Dancing]