This is the first comprehensive book about the original kindergarten, a revolutionary educational program for children that was invented in the 1830s by the charismatic German educator Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) and grew to become a familiar institution throughout the world by the end of the nineteenth century. Using extraordinary visual material, it reconstructs the most successful system for teaching young children about art, design, mathematics, and natural history ever devised. Kindergarten - a coinage of Froebel's combining the German words for children and garden - involved not only nature study, singing, dancing, and storytelling, but also play with the so-called Froebel gifts - a series of twenty educational toys, including building blocks, parquetry tiles, origami papers, modeling clay, sewing kits, and other design projects, that became wildly popular in the nineteenth century. Architect and artist Norman Brosterman tells the story of Froebel's life, explains his goals and educational philosophy, and - most remarkably - describes each of the gifts, illustrating them all, as well as many examples of art by nineteenth-century kindergarten teachers and children, and diagrams from long-forgotten kindergarten textbooks. In a section of the book devoted to the origin of abstract art and modern architecture, Brosterman shows how this vast educational program may have influenced the course of art history. Using examples from the work of important artists who attended kindergarten - including Georges Braque, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Le Corbusier, among others - he demonstrates that the design ideas of kindergarten prefigured modern conceptions of the aesthetic power of geometric abstraction.

Education experts agree: the first years of a child's education are crucial to lifetime educational achievements. Parents and teachers have known this instinctively for years--the fact thatWhat Your First Grader Needs to Knowremains the bestselling Core Knowledge title is solid proof--and in response to their repeated requests, Doubleday is proud to offerWhat Your Kindergartner Needs To Know. The latest volume in the phenomenally successful Core Knowledge Series, which has more than one million copies in print in hardcover alone, features eighty pages of vibrant, full-color illustrations and a user-friendly design--specifically created for parents and teachers to use with kindergarten-age children. Based on E.D. Hirsch's realization that much of the decline in America's educational standards has occurred because vague "skills," not information, are taught in the primary grades, it emphasizes fundamental knowledge in math, science, art, history, language arts, geography, and technology.  E.D. Hirsch and the staff of the Core Knowledge Foundation worked with more than two thousand parents and teachers to create a book that children will enjoy while they learn.

Since the love of her life betrayed her, Meg has had a hard time putting into practice her Hokey-Pokey Theory of Life, which demands that you put your whole self in. What's the point of opening yourself up if your heart comes back a little more broken each time; These days, Meg and her nine-year-old son Henry are taking on the world in their own lively way, and it's enough. Then Meg unexpectedly finds love in the form of an exotically handsome Iranian-American who befriends her and Henry over a game of chess in a coffee shop. When Meg takes another leap of faith, she begins to discover that in order to heal you have to hurt, but most of all, you have to live your life and put your whole self in -- to life, to love, to whatever comes your way.

In an era of high-stakes testing and accelerated curricula, it is easy to forget that the word kindergarten means "children's garden." This enchanting 1894 account of Friedrich Froebel, the German inventor of kindergartens, is a refreshing reminder of the essential role of play and creative exploration in the development of children. Froebel was instrumental in bringing kindergartens to the United States and is widely recognized as a pioneer of modern education.

1. "Teacher resource"--Cover.
   
2. Grade Pre-K.
   

What begins as a business move born of pure financial desperation turns into a woman's quest to reinvent herself, and in the process expose the unbelievably preposterous underbelly of Manhattan's elite private school admissions process for five year olds.