Kindergarten

Kindergarten is a preschool approach built around play, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction, easing the transition from home to formal schooling. Friedrich Froebel opened the first play and activity institute in 1837 in Bad Blankenburg, in the German principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, and renamed it Kindergarten, garden of children, in 1840. He built it around self-directed play, songs, stories, and a set of structured play materials he called gifts and occupations, so that children would develop through their own self-expression rather than direct instruction. Women he trained went on to open kindergartens across Europe and, eventually, around the world.