Jean Lee Hunt

“ They call for affection and solicitude, and the kind of play into which they fit is more limited in scope, less stirring to the imagination, but more usual in the experience of children, because play material of this type is more plentifully provided than is any other and, centering attention as it does on the furnishings and utensils of the home, requires less contact with or information about, the world outside and its activities to provide the mental content for interesting play. ”

“ Wells lays emphasis on his great good fortune in possessing a special set of "bricks" made to order and therefore sufficient in number for the ambitious floor games he describes. Comparatively few adults can look back to the possession of similar play material, and so a majority cannot realize how it outweighs in value every other type of toy that can be provided.
Where the budget for equipment is limited, floor blocks can be cut by the local carpenter or, in a school, by the manual training department. ”

“ In the epochs of play development interest in these larger scale toys precedes that in more complicated schemes with smaller ones. Mr. Wells' stress on the desirability of a toy soldier population really reflects an adult view. For play on the toy soldier and paper doll scale develops latest of all, and because of the opportunities it affords for schemes of correspondingly greater mental content makes special appeal to the adult imagination. ”

“ Blocks are of course the most important type of initial material to be provided; beyond this the generally accepted hypothesis is embodied in the "Do-with" series which provides, first a doll family of proportions suited to block houses, then a set of farm animals and carts, then a set of wild animals, all designed on the same size scale, of construction simple enough to be copied at the bench, and suggesting, each set after its kind, a host of supplementary toys, limited in variety and in numbers only by the experience of the child concerned and by his ability to construct them. ”

“ The child is to be pitied who has not at some time revelled in a packing-box house big enough to get into and furnished by his own efforts. But a "village" of such houses offers a greatly enlarged field of play opportunity and has been the basis of Miss Mary Rankin's experiment on the Teachers College Playground. ”

“ Play material smaller than the "Do-with" models and better adapted to this latest period than are either soldiers or paper dolls remains one of the unexplored possibilities for the toy trade of the future. ”

“ Plentiful as such materials are in the shops, it is difficult to assemble anything approaching a complete outfit on the same size scale. One may spend days in the attempt to get together one as satisfactory as that pictured here. The reason seems to be that for considerations of trade such toys are made and sold in sets of a few pieces each. If dealers would go a step further and plan their sets in series, made to scale and supplementing each other, they would better serve the requirements of play, and, it would seem, their own interests as well. ”

“ There are some important differences, however, between the content of a play scheme like this and one of the kind we have been considering (see cut page 30) . These result from the size and character of the initial play material, for dolls like these invite an entirely different type of treatment. One cannot build villages, or provide extensive railroad facilities for them, nor does one regard them in the impersonal way that the "Do-with" family, or Mr. Wells' soldiers, are regarded, as incidentals in a general scheme of things. ”

“ The balcony is a device to increase floor space that has been used successfully in The Play School for several years. It is very popular with the children and contributes effectively to many play schemes. ”

“ Colored tissue papers, scissors and library paste are always in demand.
Color Materials--Crayons, water color paints, chalks (for blackboard use) are best adapted to the needs of play when supplied in a variety of colors and shades. For drawing and painting coarse paper should be furnished in quantity and in sheets of differing sizes.
"If children are let alone with paper and crayons they will quickly learn to use these toys quite as effectively as they do blocks and dolls." ”

“ Materials for housekeeping play are of two general kinds, according to size--those intended for the convenience of dolls, and those of larger scale for children's use. The larger kind should be strong enough and well enough made to permit of actual processes. ”

“ No one of them is ready with final conclusions but among them opinion is unanimous that constructive play is stimulated by an initial supply of consistent play material calculated to suggest supplementary play material of a kind children can manufacture for themselves. ”

“ In addition to its more obvious possibilities for constructive and manual development, Miss Rankin's experiment offers social features of unusual suggestiveness, for the village provides a civic experience fairly comprehensive and free from the artificiality that is apt to characterize attempts to introduce civic content into school and play procedure. ”

“ Additional curved blocks corresponding to the unit block in width and thickness are a great boon to engineers, for what is a railroad without curves!
Transportation toys can be perfectly satisfactory when not made strictly to scale. Indeed, the exigencies of the situation generally demand that realists be satisfied with rather wide departures from the general rule. Train service, however, should accommodate at least one passenger to a car. ”

“ Such rough lumber affords good experience in manipulation, and its use may help to establish habits of adapting materials as we find them to the purposes we have in hand. This is the natural attack of childhood, and it should be fostered, for children can lose it and come to feel that specially prepared materials are essential, and a consequent limitation to ingenuity and initiative can thus be established. ”

“ On the other hand, some projects and certain stages of experience are best served by a supply of good regulation stock. Boards of soft pine, white wood, bass wood, or cypress in thicknesses of 1⁄4", 3/8", 1⁄2" and 7/8" are especially well adapted for children's work, and "stock strips" 1⁄4" and 1⁄2" thick and 2" and 3" wide lend themselves to many purposes.
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TOYS
The proper basis of selection for toys is their efficiency as toys, that is:
They must be suggestive of play and made for play. ”

“ This working hypothesis for the selection of toys is as yet but little understood either by those who buy or those who sell play materials. The commercial dealer declares with truth that there is too little demand to justify placing such a series on the market. ”

“ Uprights rest on bases of 2" x 3" material, 3'-7" long, connected by a small platform in the form of an H.
Bases and uprights are bolted to dogs or pieces of wood 2" x 4" x 5'-8" set in the ground about 3'-0". ”