Origin of Kindergartens Kindergarten is a German word which literally means childrens garden. It is a form of education for young children which serves as a transition from home to the commencement of more formal schooling. Children are taught to develop basic skills through creative play and social interaction. In most countries kindergarten is part of the preschool system of early childhood education. Children usually attend kindergarten any time between the ages of two and seven years, depending on the local custom. Friedrich Fröbel opened the first kindergarten on June 28, 1840 to mark the four hundredth anniversary of Gutenbergs invention of movable type. Fröbel created the name and the term Kindergarten for the Play and Activity Institute, which he had founded in 1837 in the village of Bad Blankenburg, in the small, former principality of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Thuringia, Germany. The first kindergarten in the United States was founded in Watertown, Wisconsin by Margarethe (Meyer) Schurz (wife of activist/statesman Carl Schurz) in 1856. It was based on Fröbelite principles that she had learned about in Europe. Schurz’s older sister, Bertha Meyer Ronge, had opened Infant Gardens in London (1851), Manchester (1859), and Leeds (1860). Margarethe Schurz initially taught five children in her home (including her own daughter, Agatha) in Watertown, Wisconsin. Her success drove her to offer her education to other children as well. While Schurzs first kindergarten was German-language, she also advocated the establishment of English-language kindergartens. She is credited with converting Elizabeth Peabody to the Fröbel philosophy at a meeting in Boston in 1859. Later that year, Peabody founded the first English-language kindergarten in America in Boston, following Schurzs model. The first free kindergarten in America was founded in 1870 by Conrad Poppenhusen, a German industrialist and philanthropist who settled in College Point, New York, where he established the Poppenhusen Institute, still in existence today. The first publicly financed kindergarten in the United States was established in St. Louis in 1873 by Susan Blow.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 08:08:40 +0000
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