along with block villages and other community life in miniature.

FLOOR BLOCKS

In his reminiscences of his boyhood play Mr. 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. The blocks in use at The Play School (see cut, p. 20) are of white wood, the unit block being 1-3/8" X 2¾" X 5½". They range in size from half units and diagonals to blocks four times the unit in length (22").

The Hill Floor Blocks at the Gregory Avenue School

At present there is but one set of blocks on the market that corresponds to the one Mr. Wells describes. These are the "Hill Floor Blocks," manufactured and sold by A. Schoenhut & Co., of Philadelphia. They are of hard maple and come in seven sizes, from 3" squares to oblongs of 24", the unit block being 6" in length. There are 680 pieces in a set. Half and quarter sets are also obtainable. They are the invention of Professor Patty Smith Hill of Teachers College, Columbia University, and are used in The Teachers College Kindergarten and in many other schools.

Useful alike to builders and cabinet makers

Advanced research in Peg-Lock construction

The School of Childhood at the University of Pittsburgh makes use of several varieties of blocks, some of commercial manufacture, others cut to order. The list given is as follows:[C]

A. Nest of blocks.

B. Large blocks made to order of hard maple in five sizes:
Cubes, 5" X 5".
Oblongs, 2½" X 5" X 10".
Triangular prisms made by cutting cube diagonally into two and
four parts.
Pillars made by cutting oblongs into two parts.
Plinths made by cutting oblongs into two parts.
Light weight 12" boards, 3'-0" to 7'-0" long.

C. Froebel's enlarged fifth and sixth gifts.

D. Stone Anchor blocks.

E. Architectural blocks for flat forms.

F. Peg-Lock blocks.

As children become more dexterous and more ambitious in their block construction, the Peg-Lock Blocks will be found increasingly valuable. These are a type of block unknown to Mr. Wells, but how he would have revelled in the possession of a set! They are manufactured by the Peg-Lock Block Co. of New York. Cut on a smaller scale than the other blocks described, they are equipped with holes and pegs, by which they may be securely joined. This admits of a type of construction entirely outside the possibilities of other blocks. They come in sets of varying sizes and in a great variety of shapes. The School of Childhood uses them extensively, as does The Play School.

FLOOR TOYS

The "Do-with Toys" shown in the accompanying cuts were designed by Miss Caroline Pratt some years ago to meet the need generally felt by devotees of the play laboratory of a consistent series of toys to be used with floor blocks. For if the market of the present day can offer something more adequate in the way of blocks than was generally available in Mr. Wells' boyhood, the same is not true when it comes to facilities for peopling and stocking the resulting farms and communities that develop.

Mr. Wells tells us that for his floor games he used tin soldiers and such animals as he could get--we know the kind, the lion smaller than the lamb, and barnyard fowl doubtless overtopping the commanding officer. Such combinations have been known to children of all generations and play of the kind Mr. Wells describes goes on in spite of the inconsistency of the materials supplied.

But when we consider fostering such play, and developing its possibilities for educational ends, the question arises whether this is the best provision that can be made, or if the traditional material could be improved, just as the traditions concerning blocks are being improved.

A few pioneers have been experimenting in this field for some years past. 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.

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.