3 But is he still relevant?

TINA BRUCE: I'd love to talk about why Froebelian ideas are so important, especially for babies and toddlers. Actually, looking at the babies and toddlers was Froebel's last piece of work. He didn't develop that until towards the end of his life. And Froebel did watch a lot of great educators have done. He began to realise how very important the babies were. He started with middle childhood.

Then he moved to the children we now call kindergarten children, from about two or three years old til seven. And then he really embraced babies and toddlers and working very closely to encourage their parents. So Froebel is important because he believes that we can help children to have fulfillment, to have wonderful intellectual lives if we can help them in a nurturing, loving environment.

And for the babies and toddlers, that begins in their home with their parents, their family. Froebel was one of the first great educators to really begin to understand how important babies and toddlers are, that these tiny little children, from the start, are learning things, developing all the time. And he believed that children could be very intellectual and very fulfilled, but they needed a lot of loving nurture in their families so that this would help their thinking to develop very deeply.

And he believed in something that he called unity. And that meant that he was thinking about how everything connects. So the first thing is that we help babies to understand themselves, who they are. Who am I? Those understandings that are so important for the whole of your life. But this is where Froebel is very special. From the start, he's putting a big emphasis on how children connect with other people. And so the wider world, the community is there from the start.

And he began to realise that children need to be cuddled and that their experiences are coming from their firsthand senses. So we talk about firsthand experience. He called it self-activity.