The Montessori weighted forms are excellent for training his muscular recognition of difference of weight, and an excellent way is to put various quantities of birdshot into half a dozen exactly similar little rubber balls that can be purchased at any toy store for two cents apiece.  Then hand the boy one of the weighted balls, and after he has felt its weight put it back with the other similar-appearing balls and see if he can again discover it.  An outfit for training his tactile sense can be made in any home by collecting duplicate pieces of cloth having different textures; such as velvet, rough woolen tweeds or homespun, silk, satin, cambric, muslin, etc., and pasting one set on cards.  Also by stretching on a wooden frame, strings of varying sizes, weaves, and twists, and having a bunch of duplicates from which he can select, by sight and touch alone, the pieces that correspond, each to each, with those on the frame or on the cards.  If there is a guitar, or mandolin, or zither, or a piano, available, perhaps, by and by, the mother can teach the child to recognize the difference in the vibratory sensation perceived by his fingers touching the body of the instrument when a low note and a high note are struck alternately.  She can make a game of this, too, by later having him close his eyes and place his fingers in contact with the instrument and then tell her approximately what string or key she struck.  The next step, if she can take it, is to place his little hands upon her chest to feel the lowest notes of her voice, and upon both the chest and the top of her head to feel the highest, and endeavoring to get him to recognize the similarity in vibratory sensation between what he now feels and what he previously felt on the musical instruments.  The last step in this series of exercises to awaken a recognition of vibratory sensations is to lead him to feel in his own chest and head the vibrations set up by his own voice in shouting and laughing, crying or babbling.

These hints that are so quickly and easily given, require weeks and months of patient, happy effort to carry out.  Beware that no one of them is repeated or continued so long at a time as to become a thing dreaded and disliked.  Remember that the attention of a little child is like a constantly flitting butterfly that rests for only a moment or two on anything before dancing away to something else.

There are many little games with kindergarten materials that can be used to develop the powers of attention, observation, imitation, and obedience.  The laying in simple designs, by watchful imitation of the mother, of colored sticks, colored squares, etc.; the building with colored blocks; stringing of large beads; weaving with wide strips of colored paper simple designs that a mother could invent with the material at hand or could learn from any kindergarten manual.  The point that must be firmly, but pleasantly, insisted upon in these exercises is careful and obedient following by the child of the exact order of movement and manner of placing adopted by the mother teacher.  The entire value of these exercises for the purpose she wishes to accomplish depends upon accurate observation by the child and implicit obedience.