The morning journal-courier., 1908-02-06

g | puDlloiitd pS luN EhiiiCl lNclil Civic Association, Mir. Joseph Lee points out three ages in the develop ment of children calling for distinct ly different play opportunities What meets the needs of the children under six is no more suitable for what he calls the Big Injun age, the age of self-assertion, from about six to about eleven than a regulation baseball dia- mend suited to boys in their teens, is of use to the infants.
 If you see child under six playing in a city street q am now quoting from Mir. Lee as I shall do freely) the chances are that if he is doing any thing besides running about and squealing. he is sitting on a curbstone playing with the dirt in the gutter. And it is an even chance that he has a broken bottle or tomato can which he first fills and then empties out on the sidewalk and then. after some study and manipulation of the output, fills again.
 Now that child is doing something universal, something that all chill den want to do; and from him we can learn about all there is to know about playthings and play material for chil dren of his age. The dirt is the inn portant thing. It is not its dirtiness that attracts. He is too young to appreciate the value of that. What he wants Is material. material to work in, material that he can use. something that will he docile, responsive to his hand and touch, something plastic, not with definite form or preconception of its own, but ready to do what he tells it.
 First. if he is very small or has no receptacle to put it in. he will take a 1 handful of the dirt or sand or what ever it is and simply lift it up and let it drop.
 Next he will want it to hold a form given by his hands.
 For this purpose the material must be a little damp, as in the mul-pi like mother used to make And soon the child will use borrowers or other mclds for shaping it.
 A sand-boX or its equivalent is Gc- ! cordingly the center of the play | ground for children of this age, and such playgrounds are often called sand gardens.
 But sand on sand is nothing Note l the child's use of the sidewalk or steps. One needs an operating table some hard flat surface where the phenomenon can be isolated, and where pies can be put and seen
 From sand the child goes cn t) dc mand material of many other kinds.
 Children will play with almost any. thing, and, except for few old fav. orites, almost anything seems equally good.
 How expressive of the chiid's puln of view is Stevenson's dehghtfu couplet:
 The world is so full of a number O
 things
 think we should all be as happy al
 kings
 Their playthings must be plastic {, the mind as well as to the hand. Lit eral resemblance to the thing person flied is of no importance.
 An element of suggestion is good hair on the head-end of doll,
 horses head on the top of the hobby horse. But a very little suggestion i enough
 The play of this age is social Chil dren like most to play in a circle. Be ing in circle is in itself almost game to them. And the society of thei contemporaries is not merely wha they like; it is what they need--fo the sake of rest, if for nothing else A boy of four who has for years ha the whole care of the family on hi shoulders--the detailed direction an supervision of the life and movement of his father and mother, the servant and the stranger within the gates such a boy needs sometimes to rela,
 to lay aside the cares of office and un
 bend So that play at home is nc enough. The playground for this az , centers round the sand court and tn
 safe, sheltered lawn, where roun games can be played. , Next comes the Big Injun perioo i the period of self-assertion; the perio ; when the child revolts from make bt , ieve and longs for something real; th . age of investigation, of mischief. scepticism, and therefore of learninl the age of contest, of self-meesurt i ment against others and against tf . world. This phase of development b, {, gins in both boys and girls at abo, the age of six, and it's characterist 1 pecially in boys. during the succeedir r five or six years.
 E It is the search for relaxity that , the essential element in the love f mischief. The reason q boy wants Q turn on the water, to play with tf e matches--the reason why in *ever,
 thing that he selects to do he seen t to show such wonderful and unerrir
 instinct for precisely the most tror
 blesome, noisy, and generally obje n tionable thing within his restrict, v range of choice-is simply because Is the noisy and troublesome thin
 that are the most real, that have il z most life in them
 /. This interpretation of the tenden
 to mischief does not mean that | :, tendency ought to be allowed fir , scope on q playground or anyVhe else. On the contrary. such permi VI sion would falsify the child's recko ing and defeat one of the objects his search. One of the things he y testing Is tho reality of your soei y laws and institutions.
 '' Summer playgrounds for small ch E. dren should be, so far as possible. y parks on the grass under the shade y trees. For it is perfectly possible. northern cities at least, to mainta turf in a playground for the small children provided the conditions a the management are made right. TT fl means that the soil and the draina '- and the arrangements for wateri n must be made right in the first pla