Then came the payment, which required little accounts.

When the game was over, a different one followed, perhaps something which rendered the little hands skilful by preparing fine weaving from strips of paper; for Froebel had perceived that change brought rest.
Every kindergarten should have a small garden, to afford an opportunity to watch the development of the plants, though only one at a time--for instance, the bean.

By watching the clouds in the sky he directed the childish intelligence to the rivers, seas, and circulation of moisture.
In the autumn the observation of the chrysalis state of insects was connected with that of the various stages of their existence.
In this way the child can be guided in its play to a certain creative activity, rendered familiar with the life of Nature, the claims of the household, the toil of the peasants, mechanics, etc., and at the same time increase its dexterity in using its fingers and the suppleness of its body.

It learns to play, to obey, and to submit to the rules of the school, and is protected from the contradictory orders of unreasonable mothers and nurses.
Women and girls, too, were benefitted by the kindergarten.
Mothers, whose time, inclination, or talents, forbade them to devote sufficient time to the child, were relieved by the kindergarten.

Girls learned, as if in a preparatory school of future wife and motherhood, how to give the little one what it needed, and, as Froebel expresses it, to become the mediators between Nature and mind.
Yet even this enterprise, the outcome of pure love for the most innocent and harmless creatures, was prohibited and persecuted as perilous to the state under Frederick William IV, during the period of the reaction which followed the insurrection of 1848..