Play is not the reward – it is the curriculum.

Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) had the idea of a Children’s Garden where little people wouldn’t be forced to learn, but would grow by playfully exploring a set of manipulatives called Fröbel gifts of wooden blocks and activities like weaving, paper folding, modelling clay and drawing.

This was not art class, but a sandbox in which the child discovered structure. The paper folding, for example, was not modern origami because the goal was not to produce a recognizable object — an animal or a flower — but to notice what emerged through the act itself. Symmetry, pattern, and structure were embedded in the folding.

Frank Lloyd Wright, Piet Mondrian, and Buckminster Fuller were inspired as young people, but they are only the most visible examples. Children were given a space where exploration was valued over instruction. They were developing ways of seeing — noticing patterns, symmetry, and structure. These habits of mind are mathematical at their core.

Thank you for Kindergarten, Frederich. ❤️