Toots and his Friends
Kate Tannatt Wood
language
(, April 15, 2014)
Toots and his FriendsWHEN Toots was old enough to enter a little school, his mamma said he must go to a Kindergarten, which, you all know, is a delightful place for all children. Our good German friends first thought of it for their little people, and here in America we have found it an excellent fashion to follow. Block building, song singing, and drawing with pretty things in needlework, and forms in clay, not only teach the children to think but to do, and good thinking must always come before well doing, Toots' mamma knew a kind German lady who understood teaching the little ones, and after some delay a school was opened and Toots was a pupil. He cried hard at first. He was afraid of strangers, and he dreaded to speak aloud before them, although he was such a rogue at home. His mamma bought him a pretty lunch basket and put in it some little cakes for his lunch, and then they rode away in the horse car to the schoolroom. After the first day Toots was always ready to go. "It is only play," he said. But it was more than play, for every night Toots had something new to tell; sometimes he had watered the plants in the school-room, sometimes he talked of cubes and triangles, sometimes he sang a little song. Toots was learning without knowing it, and all the time he was very happy. No one was allowed to say a naughty word, no one was ever rude or unkind, and all the little eyes and hands were trained.