Discover what pedagogists thought about the education of children from 3 to 6 years old in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries!
According to the German educational theorist Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel (1782-1842), children’s play activity should not be seen as a mere pastime, but as a powerful means of expressing the spirit – both in a religious and scientific sense – of the child. Fröbel is the creator and inventor of the first educational toys, which reflect his belief in the significant role toys play as tools for early childhood education. These ‘gifts’ were designed to help children develop skills such as coordination, motor skills, visual memory, and spatial perception, while also stimulating imagination and introducing mathematical concepts.
The series consists of twenty toys and practical tools, each characterized by increasing complexity. They are intended to introduce children to physical forms, relationships found in nature (such as big-small, light-heavy, etc.), and to awaken the recognition of common elements in the world around them. The system progresses from simple to complex: from solids to planes, to lines, to points, and eventually to the third dimension through manual activities like clay work. Even today, many of Fröbel’s ideas and materials remain in common use. For instance, wooden block toys are still considered a fundamental learning tool in early childhood education, but it was Fröbel who introduced their widespread use in educational methods for young children.
At the Museum of Education, in addition to some of Fröbel’s ‘gifts,’ there is also an original early twentieth-century Fröbelian ‘Game of Sticks’ in its original box, as well as a valuable first Italian edition of the volume Practical Manual of Kindergartens for Use by Educators and Mothers of Families, published by Civelli in Milan in 1871.
The Museum also preserves examples of Montessori materials, such as weight boards and sandpaper letters, as well as Agazzi materials, including a bingo game and several markers that allow children to distinguish their own materials from those of their peers without needing assistance from an adult.
Maria Montessori and the sisters Rosa and Carolina Agazzi, at the beginning of the twentieth century, demonstrated particular care and attention to childhood as an active subject of education. Montessori, a doctor and scientist, initially embraced positivist theories, but over her long pedagogical career, she developed an approach that also incorporated spiritualism, including Catholic elements. The Agazzi sisters, on the other hand, supported by Lombardo Radice, represented an expression of Catholic spiritualism in the early twentieth century and became the model that inspired Italy’s state-run nursery schools, which were established in 1968.