V Games with Stories

Finger Stories

Froebel was the first educator to discover the educational value of simple, instructive mother-plays. His “Mother Play Book” is one of the greatest books in the whole history of education. In it Froebel pictures home as it ought to be, and accompanies the mother in her daily round through the house, garden, field, worship, market, and church. Here is one of his charming set of finger games for the mother to teach her child while he is yet in her arms:

This is the mother, good and dear;

This is the father, with hearty cheer;

This is the brother, stout and tall;

This is the sister, who plays with her doll;

And this is the baby, the pet of all.

Behold the good family, great and small!

In such a song, the dawning consciousness of the child is turned to the family relations, and is surely an improvement on the old nursery method of playing “This little pig went to market.”

There are also little story finger-plays in which gestures may be employed as in the finger-play rhymes. A collection of these finger stories, the first play stories for infants, is given in “Descriptive Stories for All the Year,” by M. Burnham; and in “Finger Plays,” by Emilie Poulsson.

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