The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1897-06-26
KINDERGARTEN IN SUNDAY
SCHOOLS

BY MISS NC CARTHY,
Principal of Minneapolis Training School.
Aims Of kindergarten Sunday Schools:
To awaken right feelings and desires.
To give opportunity for action along
the lines of right feelings or desire.
The Means:
Right feelings must be aroused by the
surroundings: 1. e. the attitude of the
teacher.
The sympathy must be aroused by
social intercourse between the children.
Concrete objects to make vivid the
ideas.
Feelings to be aroused are:
Self-forgetfulness. To prepare for
receptivity.
Receptiveness.-Take in to give out.
Responsiveness.-Exp is nee
essary to growth.
Happiness.-Bestc condition for growth.
Wonder.-Child is interested in the
wonderful.
Respect.-Respect the wonderful.
Love.-For man, for God.
| Now furnish means for the activity of
all these feelings as they are developed.
and the result will be right action. that
is. loving in practical way; love of
nature as Gods work; delight in mans
work as showing the divine in man.
The result is nature growing up in
harmony with life at its best.
The first thing to strive for is self
forgetting. AL. kindergartners know
how to do this. Go to work as you do
on the first day of kindergarten. Make
the children feel at home in the room,
aud with you. Speak of the nice room.
They may bring something to make it
more beautiful if they wish to. What
would be nice to bring. etc. You have
brought picture that you think they
would like to have in the room. Show
the picture of the weather vane," and
after all have seen and told their ideas,
speak of the unseen force.
Feeling is force seeking action. A
child should be guarded from feeling
more than he can express in deeds
Sympathetic emotion and loving desire
must be guided into kindly action. else
verbal expression of sympathy will be
regarded as quite ample quittance of
obligation to a neighbor. Familiarity
with Bible history alone will not satisfy
the teacher who is striving to develop a
genuine love for doing. constituencies
to divine meaning. ready recognition
of the law of cause and effect. and to
awaken unconscious desires along the
line of physical and spiritual health.
The true teacher is willing that the
child shall be child in the religious
life. as in the physical and mental.
Truth that appeals to the sensibilities
will reach the child long before he is
ready to take it up through his reason.
Religious forcing" cannot be less un.
wholesome than mental and physical
forcing"
Begin with the physical and material
in Sunday school lessons. "Howbeit
that was not first. which is spiritual.
but that which is natural, and afterward
that which is spiritual"
We are to make the child self forget
full that he may be made receptive. He
is filed with right desires that he may
give out the natural result of right de-
sires in right action, self-forgetting. re-
captivity. responsiveness, happiness that
follows receptivity and responsiveness.
Arouse wonder. How? By showing
the wonderful works of the Creator.
before coming to the children the
teacher will be more ready and at her
ease, il she has thought out an order of
exercises so that they will result in
climax, the new point for the day. This
concentrates effort, and gives strength
to the ideas through sequence. The
children are not to know that the teach
or has program. The ideas are sug-
gestions, and may sometimes call out
other conception than those she desires.
| All unexpected turns should be met and
utilized. connected to the main idea. II
this is impossible give the thought a
passing consideration, thus satisfying
the child without dissipating the gener-
al thought. II the teacher feels that for
any reason she is failing to reach the
children, let her leave her plan, strike
the thought that seems to prevail. and
get all out of it possible. Never insist
on the letter of attention, when the spir-
it is abeent."-Anna Bryan.
This you will rarely have to do if you
yourself feel the unity of all things as
most kindergartners do.
MINNEAPOLIS. MINI.