Friedrich Froebel was a German educator who established kindergarten in the early 19th century based on his philosophy of education. He believed that play was essential to children's learning and development. Through his gifts and occupations used in kindergarten, he aimed to promote children's self-directed learning and socialization. Froebel's ideas became widely adopted and kindergartens were established across Europe and North America by the late 19th century. Modern early childhood education continues to be influenced by Froebel's emphasis on play and developing the whole child.

2. • Friedrich Froebel was born on April 21, 1782, in
Oberweissbach, a small village in Thuringia, Germany.
• Froebel's mother died when he was nine months old.
When Friedrich was four years old, his father remarried.
Feeling neglected by his stepmother and father, Froebel
experienced a profoundly unhappy childhood.
• The year 1805 marked a turning point in Froebel's life. He
went to Frankfurt intending to become an architect but
instead ended up teaching in a preparatory school. The
effect of this teaching experience on Froebel was such
that he decided to make education his life's work.

3. • In 1808 he went to Yverdon, Switzerland, where he tutored
boys attending Johann Pestalozzi's institute. Feeling
somewhat lacking in his own educational background, he
left Yverdon in 1811 and studied at the universities of
Gttingen and Berlin until 1816.
• In 1816 Froebel opened the Universal German Educational
Institute at Keilham, a school based on his own educational
theories.
• Its curriculum was comprehensive in nature, covering all
aspects of the student's growth and development—both
physical and mental.

4. FROEBEL'S KINDERGARTEN
PHILOSOPHY.
In the Education of Man (1826), Froebel articulated the
following idealist themes:
1. All existence originates in and with God.
2. Humans possess an inherent spiritual essence that is the
vitalizing life force that causes development.
3. All beings and ideas are interconnected parts of a grand,
ordered, and systematic universe.

5. • The kindergarten is a special educational environment in which this
self-active development occurs.
• The kindergarten's gifts, occupations, and social and cultural
activities, especially play, promote this self-actualization.
• Froebel was convinced that the kindergarten's primary focus should
be on play–the process by which he believed children expressed
their innermost thoughts, needs, and desires.
• For Froebel, play facilitated children's process of cultural
recapitulation, imitation of adult vocational activities, and
socialization.
• According to Froebel's theory of cultural recapitulation, each
individual human being repeated the general cultural epoch in his or
her own development.

6. • Using play, songs, stories, and activities, the kindergarten was
designed as an educational environment in which children,
through their own self-activity, could develop in the right
direction.
• Froebel's reputation as an early childhood educator increased
and kindergartens were established throughout the German
states. By the end of the nineteenth century, kindergartens had
been established throughout Europe and North America.
• The kindergarten provided a milieu that encouraged children to
interact with other children under the guidance of a loving
teacher.

7. THE KINDERGARTEN CURRICULUM
Froebel developed a
series of gifts and
occupations for use in
kindergartens.
Representing what
Froebel identified as
fundamental forms, the
gifts had both their
actual physical
appearance and also a
hidden symbolic
meaning.

8. FROEBEL'S GIFTS WERE THE FOLLOWING ITEMS:
• Six soft, colored balls.
• A wooden sphere, cube, and cylinder.
• A large cube divided into eight smaller cubes.
• A large cube divided into eight oblong blocks.
• A large cube divided into twenty-one whole, six half, and twelve
quarter cubes.
• A large cube divided into eighteen whole oblongs: three divided
lengthwise; three divided breadthwise.
• Quadrangular and triangular tablets used for arranging figures.
• Sticks for outlining figures· Whole and half wire rings for
outlining figures.
• Various materials for drawing, perforating, embroidering, paper
cutting, weaving or braiding, paper folding, modeling, and
interlacing.

9. • In the early twenty-first century, kindergarten
teachers continue to emphasize Froebel's ideas of
developing the social side of a child's nature and
a sense of readiness for learning.
• The important outcome for the kindergarten child
is readiness for the intellectual learning that will
come later in his educational career.

10. Today’s application
Before Froebel, Kindergarten didn't exist, now
it's a obligation due to its importance in the
children's educational process.
Nowadays many institutions are working with
the progressive ideas developed by Froebel,
because they appreciate children as free,
active, feeling and thinking human beings.
Thanks to Froebel´s ideas, now the teachers
are aware about the importance of game in the
children's learning process.

11. “Play is the highest expression of human
development in childhood, for it alone is the free
expression of what is in a child's soul.”
Friedrich Froebel.

12. "The play of children is not recreation; it
means earnest work. Play is the purest
intellectual production of the human being,
in this stage … for the whole man is visible
in them, in his finest capacities, in his
innermost being." ~ Friedrich Froebel

13. READ MORE:
• http://biography.yourdictionary.com/friedrich-wilhelm-
august-froebel
• http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/
articles/friedrich-froebel
• http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1999/Fr
oebel-Friedrich-1782-1852.html