Cubes Spheres Cylinders. 470-D. [a.k.a. Mrs. Hailmann’s Colored Wooden Beads.
[Springfield, MA:]: Milton Bradley Company, [n.d., ca. early 1920s.]. [ Together with: ] Hailmnn, Eudora Lucas.] [Mrs. Hailmann’s Colored Wooden Beads. 470-A.] [Springfield, MA: Milton Bradley Company, n.d., ca. early 1920s.] Box (9 x 7 x 4 ”) containing about 850 half-inch beads (about 600 spheres, 120 cylinders, and 130 cubes). Probably out of a total set of 1,000. Green wooden box seemingly lacking paper label. Some rubbing and general wear. Good. Box (9 x 7 x 4 ”) containing 140 color-painted wooden spherical beads (1” diameter). Out of a total set of 144. Some rubbing and general wear. Some of the beads have letters written on them in ink in a childish hand and some are strung on a cord. The box also contains also contains seventeen wooden beads that are similar in appearance but seem to be from a different set, plus two additional lengths of cord. A very good set despite a few missing beads. Green wooden box with printed paper label on one side of box identifying this as the “470-D” variant. Item #17705
The earliest advertisement for these beads (which were also referred to as “Mrs. Hailmann’s Colored Wooden Beads”) that we could locate appears in a January 1889 issue of School Education, though Eudora Lucas Hailmann (1835 - 1904) devised these beads sometime around 1882. That year, Hailmann’s husband William (1836 – 1920) organized a national “Friends of Froebel” meeting, at which the Hailmanns demonstrated multiple innovative materials to other kindergarten educators. The beads were “widely demonstrated and exhibited” after that point (Hewes, p. 103). Ads for a line of nine variant sets begin to appear in the early 1920s: the Milton Bradley Co. offered sets of ” beads numbered 464-466, 473, and 470A-470C (by weight or in sets of 1,000), plus sets of 1” beads numbered 470D-E (in sets of 144 and 500 beads, respectively). The unlabeled box included here seems to be set 470-A, which is described in a 1923 advertisement as “1,000 in. (spheres, cubes, cylinders), wood box.” Notably, these beads utilize the same three basic geometric forms as the second Froebel Gift—the sphere, cylinder, and cube—which Froebel “considered to be the most profound of all, claiming that to understand the second gift was to understand kindergarten” (Brosterman). Froebel theorized that learning was only possible through the act of comparison and saw the relationship between the three shapes as demonstrating both contrast and unification: “The sphere with no flat planes, the cube with no curves; the sphere an expression of motion, the cube of absolute rest…The cylinder, curved and flat, motion and rest, variable and static, was synthesis” (Brosterman). While the second Froebel Gift presents students with only one sphere, cylinder, and cube (plus a wooden stand and string), the numerous beads allow students more options in experimentation and play.
Hailmann was an early childhood educator who studied Froebelian pedagogy in Europe. Both she and her husband were some of the earliest promoters of the philosophy of Froebel in the United States. Together, the Hailmanns developed curricula for both children and teachers, established two of the first normal schools in the country, and published New Education (1876 – 1893), the primary periodical for Froebelian educators across the United States. They also established the Froebel Institute, which later became the Kindergarten Department of the National Educational Association (NEA) in 1884. As president of that department in 1888, Eudora was the first woman to sit on the NEA governing board. Between 1894 and 1897, while Hailmann’s husband was serving as the Superintendent of Indian Schools under President Cleveland, she developed three normal schools and forty reservation kindergartens with training programs for aides and parents. OCLC records no copies. Brosterman, Norman. Inventing Kindergarten (1991), p. 46. Hewes, Dorothy W. W.N. Hailmann: Defender of Froebel (2001), p. 103, 107.
Price: $950.00