Introduction

Speaking about pedagogical literature presupposes thinking about a particular form of socialization of the individuals at school: the “school shape” (^{VINCENT; LAHIRE; THIN, 2001}). The invention of the school form took place around the sixteenth century, alongside the “discovery of childhood”; which is, with the adult consciousness of the particularities of childhood. Through improvement of modern pedagogical rationality, circulation of the printed book and socialized literacy, several books of an educational nature are produced, written by moralistic educators, destined to guide the education of children in school institutions. In this process of structural changes in Western societies, the school is “reinvented” and the child becomes a “student” (^{ARIÈS, 1978}; ^{BOTO, 2002}; ^{POSTMAN, 1999}).

Affiliated to the knowledge and prescriptions of Pedagogy, the school form imposes a set of impersonal relationships between educational individuals. It is about guaranteeing the normality and the simultaneity of the formal education processes, through book-school practices (^{VINCENT; LAHIRE; THIN, 2001}). The school form establishes, thus, a pedagogical relationship characterized by “impersonality”. It is no longer a person-to-person relationship, but a submission of the teacher and students to specific impersonal rules from “[...] a closed and totally organized space for realization, by each one, of their duties, in such a carefully regulated time that cannot leave any unforeseen movement, each one submits his activity ‘to the principles’ or rules they must follow” (VINCENT; LAHIRE; THIN, 2001, p. 15).

Simultaneously with the modernity transformations, the philosophical-pedagogical thinking from Erasmus of Rotterdam to Jan Amós Comenius, and, posteriorly, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau to Friedrich Wilhelm August Fröbel, besides spreading a new image of a child, contributes to institutionalize childhood when considering, by analogy, this initial time of human life as “school time” (^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

By associating childhood with “sowing time”, as reflected by ^{Fernandes (2018}), modern pedagogical thinking guides actions of a specific and separate space to childhood; then governed by the dynamics of the clock, differentiation of ages, ranking and grading of activities and corresponding content, presentation and adequacy of teaching materials, and a new pedagogical relationship established with the master: the “children's school”. In this new social constitution, punishments are abolished, the languages, and games are valorized. Childhood time is confused with learning time, and turns the child into a student. The former schoolmaster becomes an “expert” of the nature, childhood experiences and activities.

This set of attributes that went along with the emergence of the modern school and characterize the “new” ways of teaching in republican educational institutions, defines what the social historians Guy ^{Vincent, Bernard Lahire and Daniel Thin (2001}) called "school form". The school form imposes a set of rules and a predominance of pedagogical relationships established between adults and children, guided by an impersonal practice, disconnected from the language, the world of things and their symbologies (^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

In this sense, speaking of a pedagogical literature presupposes considering the existence of a written pedagogical rationality related to “objectified knowledge”, which achieved his coherence and excellence in and through writing, through a work of classification, division, articulation, establishment of relationships, hierarchization etc.; which should, thus, be internalized and externalized by educational individuals. Hence, talking about a pedagogical literature requires considering that:

A pedagogy of drawing, music, military activity, dance, etc., it is not possible without the writing of drawing, a musical writing, a sport writing, a military writing, a dance writing. Writing that almost always requires the use of grammars and a theory of practices. The school socialization mode is, thus, inseparable from the nature of the book-entry knowledge to be transmitted (^{VINCENT; LAHIRE; THIN, 2001}, p. 29).

Therefore, sharing the theory of form and the school mode of socialization (^{VINCENT; LAHIRE; THIN, 2001}), the aim of the article is to reflect the ways of educating rationally systematized by the pedagogical literature linked to the “utensil box” teacher training model, in observance of the historiographic understanding proposed by the historian of education Marta Maria Chagas de ^{Carvalho (2000}). This model has spread, in Brazil, starting from the Normal Caetano de Campos School, mainly due to the contribution of the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância (1896-1897). Forming a historical research, in the area of History of Education, the methodology articulates the analysis of documentary sources, specifically the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância and the works of ^{Froebel (1897}; 1902; 2001), a bibliographic review and the historiography produced, highlighting the works of Carvalho (2000), ^{Fernandes (2018}), ^{Monarcha (2001}) and Kuhlmann Jr. (2010).

As final considerations, the oriented and prescribed ways of teaching by the gardeners authors of the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância are understood as devices of a school form of childhood socialization, through the conceptual and didactic bases of Froebel’s kindergarten pedagogy; which is, the pedagogical model of the “utensil box”.

The pedagogical literature of the “utensil box”

In Brazil, as well as in other Western countries, childhood schooling was carried out in association with teacher training in the Normal Schools. Aiming to ensure the systematization of teaching, through the republican model of education recently established (^{CARVALHO, 2000}), the formation of pedagogues encompassed the propagation of published papers aimed to offer good teaching patterns.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the pedagogical literature aimed to train teachers and to guide the ways of teaching in brazilian schools was connected to the “art of teaching” pedagogy (^{CARVALHO, 2000}; ^{FERNANDES, 2018}). This literature can be conceived, as appropriated by ^{Carvalho (2000}), a “utensils box” from São Paulo’s model of teaching. Linked to modern pedagogy, especially to philosophical ideas from the swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and the german Friedrich Froebel, the pedagogical literature of the utensil box understands the child as being active and in progressive physical, emotional, and cognitive development; the educator being responsible for observing their nature and offer appropriate means for their free and spontaneous activity.

In accordance with the “art of teaching” pedagogy, this literature guided the school education of children based on the triad of integral education, which is also guided on Pestalozzi’s educational theory (“heart, mind and hand”), and, equally, on the “developmental method” proposed by Froebel (^{KISHIMOTO; PINAZZA, 2007}), based on “ABC of things²” (^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

In republican Brazil, the utensil box model expanded from the Caetano de Campos Normal School, made up of three types of school institutions: Kindergarten, Model School (primary education) and Normal School (extensive to teacher training). In this model, there is the predominance of teachings related to active pedagogy and the “intuitive method”, based on education of the senses - foundation of modern pedagogy. Considered the “art of teaching”, the teacher's task is to predispose children to a graduated series of objects and a set of usage procedures, that guide their action from the so-called “lessons of things” (^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

Thus conceived, in specialized magazines and pedagogical manuals of the late 19th and early 20th centuries the pedagogy of “art of teaching” or “imitation” prevails. In this pedagogical model, it would be up to the teacher to appropriate, through observation and reflection of the practice, good teaching patterns; ensuring the exemplarity of the education of the senses, according to the cultivating materials of the integral development of children (^{CARVALHO, 2000}; ^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

Froebel, creator of Kindergarten, was one of the first educators to direct pedagogical literature to young women and mothers interested in early childhood care, as well as in the ways of using the materials that make up its “developmental methodology”; that is, in Froebelian “gifts” and “occupations”. He believed the “ABC of things” should precede the “ABC of words” and give words abstractions their true foundations.

This pedagogue designed the materials that constitute the “ABC of things” associated with an application methodology, in compliance with three interconnected child development phenomena: i) the spontaneous action (child's natural impulse to interact with objects); ii) the perception (learning objects by stimulating the senses through games mediated by language) e, iii) the abstraction (knowledge of objects through the interiorization of their structures). (^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

The pedagogy of Froebel's Kindergarten, besides being explained theoretically and methodologically in books like Pedagogics of the Kindergarten (1897) and Education by development (1990), was widely disseminated in teaching manuals published between the nineteenth and twentieth century; The paradise of childhood by Edward Wiebé (1869), being one of the most notable works, published in Brazil with the title “Guia para Jardineiras”, in the two volumes of the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância (1896 e 1897).

In this sense, with the creation of the Caetano de Campos kindergarten (1896), attached to Escola Normal and Escola Modelo, there is the constitution of a school form of childhood socialization, through the “utensil box” teacher training model (^{CARVALHO, 2000}). This model was guided by a “program of activities” and a set of impersonal rules and disciplinary norms in compliance with the pedagogies of Pestalozzi and Froebel. Published in the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância, collaborated to systematize the actions of teachers in the Caetano de Campos kindergarten, while it served as a good model of teaching and education to other Brazilian establishments from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

About Revista do Jardim da Infância

In 1896, the same year that Jardim da Infância was installed, attached to Escola Normal and Escola Modelo, director Gabriel Prestes edited the magazine Revista do Jardim de Infância, aimed at making Froebel's tactics known, as well as assist in the creation and organization of other establishments. Although Gabriel Prestes’ editorial project was restricted to the publication of two editions, the magazine would perform “[...] key role in the cultural and educational scene of the late 19th and early 20th centuries” (^{MONARCHA, 2001}, p. 110).

Source: Collection Escola Estadual Caetano de Campos (Aclimação), São Paulo (SP). Available at CRE Mário Covas: http://www.crmariocovas.sp.gov.br/obj_a.php?t=pedagogicas01.

Figure 1: Cover of the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância (1896). 

The first edition of Revista (1896) was composed by the work of Gabriel Prestes as a translator, highlighting “presentation of the Revista”, “Cook County Normal School Kindergarten Plan”, “Guide for gardeners” (WIEBÉ, 1869), and “Inspector Anna W. Devereaux’s Kindergarten Program”; besides a summary of the “Froebel Gifts”, collected from Edward Wiebé’s work and from the Kindergarten material catalog manufactured by J.L.Hammett.

From the inspector Maria Ernestina Varella, the edition exposes the “Annual Garden Report”, the “Program and Schedule”, as well as the article “Practical exercises of the ball game: first gift”. From the professor Rosina Nogueira Soares, highlights her work as a translator in the sections “Toys”, “Marches” and “Songs”. From the poet and assistant director Zalina Rolim, displays a series of short stories, talks and earrings from the Kindergarten. From gardeners Isabel Prado, Anna de Barros and Joanna Grassi, “First drawing exercise done in the 3rd Period of Kindergarten”; “Drawing”; and, “The toy in the garden”.

The second edition is characterized by the dissemination of Kindergarten pedagogy from 2 (two) sources: North American and European. Gabriel Prestes also stands out as a translator. His participation includes the publication of “Kindergarten Program”, extracted from the book by the Italian inspector Amélia de Rosa, with the continuity of “Guide for Gardeners” and a “brief” of Froebel principles, both taken from The paradise of childhood (WIEBÉ, 1869).

From the authoring gardeners, the edition favors the publication of authorial texts and several translations. Inspector Maria Ernestina publishes the original articles “Second gift” and “Gymnastics in the Kindergarten”. The gardener Isabel Prado, “Exercises with rings performed in the 3rd Period of Kindergarten”, and Joana Grassi, “Broken numbers”. In this volume, Zalina Rolim publishes several articles of a theoretical nature, highlighting the titles: “Summary of Froebel’s principles”, taken from Kindergarten and child culture papers (BARNARD, 1890), and the texts “Of the tale and the art of counting” and “Games and the expression of individuality”, extracted from Frederico Froebel ed il suo sistema de educazione (ROSA, 1896).

In view of the above, the work carried out by the professors, authors of the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância, is understood as a “box of utensils” of the São Paulo’s education model, in which the ways of teaching in kindergarten would head toward in an appropriation process, objectification and systematization of Froebelian pedagogy, understood as “art of teaching”. The “box of utensils” of these gardeners does not constitute, though, a mere “copy” of the Froebelian system. As understood by ^{Carvalho (2000}), it is opportune to relate the “engineering” of the São Paulo’s model of education “[...] to the conceptions that proposed the art of teaching as a good copy of models” (^{CARVALHO, 2000}, p. 113).

Taking in consideration this direction of understanding, the analysis of ways of teaching of the magazine Revista do Jardim da Infância comprises the examination of the Program of this children's institution, regarding language lessons and exercises with froebelian gifts; noticing the good teaching patterns offered by the professor and poet Zalina Rolim and by the inspector Maria Ernestina Varella³.

The good teaching patterns of Revista do Jardim

The Program organized by D. Maria Ernestina Varella, the inspector of Jardim da Infância Caetano de Campos, systematizes teaching and early childhood education in São Paulo through language exercises, memory, objective nomenclature and handicrafts. Organized in 3 (three) periods, the Program consists of graduated activities that vary, only, in relation to the depth of subjects, teaching materials and processes destined to 4, 5 and 6 years old children; consisting of the following axes: Language (conversations and tales, and, for the second and third periods, formation of words by printed letters); Froebelian gifts (non-divisible solids and construction gifts); Manual work (small paper, cutouts, interlacing, folding, chopping, etc.); Modeling (ball, cube and cylinder); Drawing (using sticks, chopsticks, slates and graph paper); Numbers (counting from one to ten with balls, numbering with chopsticks and cards, small operations and printed numbers); Colors (primary and secondary by color map); Singing (small hymns and marches); Gymnastics (movement of the head and fingers through easy melodies); and, toys (of movements, imitation, gait etc.).

The Kindergarten course was divided into 3 (three) periods, in which “[...] the Garden can only admit children up to the age of 6 (six) years”, the third and last period being “[...] preparatory to the first year of Model School” (^{VARELLA, 1896}, p. 10). Time at school, used to involve 20 (twenty) distinct moments: 1. Singing, greeting; 2. Conversation; 3. March; 4. Rest; 5. Talents; 6. Playground (partial); 7. Discs and ball counting; 8. Preparation for lunch; 9. Lunch in class; 10. Garden Playground (general); 11. Inspection, singing and calling; 12. Drawings; 13. March; 14. Handwork; 15. Recreation (partial); 16. Color exploration; 17. Rest; 18. Toy; 19. Thoughts, prize and farewell songs; and, 20. Departure.

The recess would be divided into three intervals of school time: two partial and one general. The partials would take 10 (ten) minutes for students of the second and third periods, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. For children of the first period, the partial breaks would contain 15 (fifteen) minutes in length. The general recreation would take up more time, totaling 30 (thirty) minutes, of which would be destined “[...] fifteen for lunch that is made in class, taking advantage of the teacher to correct certain defects that are natural in every young child”. The other fifteen minutes would be spent in the garden outdoors, “[...] having children as much freedom as possible, but under the supervision of the teachers” (^{VARELLA, 1896}, p. 12).

Although Professor Maria Ernestina Varella’s Report corresponds to the first year of activities of the Jardim da Infância, this organization of time and school space, according to documentary and historiographical sources, would have prevailed when the institution was installed in its own building at the back of the Normal School, localized in the Praça da República; thus constituting a model of institutional and pedagogical organization to be followed by other establishments.

Fonte: Photograph by Guilherme Gaensly. Available on the site Tesouros de São Paulo: http://docvirt.com/docreader.net/DocReader.aspx?bib=fotos&pagfis=4576.

Figure 2: Jardim da Infância Caetano de Campos, 1901-1910[?]. 

Separated from the facilities of the Normal School and surrounded by a vast garden, the building had large classrooms, with laboratories, teachers room, storage of materials, a huge hall decorated with the portraits of Froebel, Pestalozzi, Rousseau and Mme. Carpentier; many balconies ornamented with imported glass and covered areas for children's games. The educational material was imported from the United States, having arrived “[...] at the beginning of May 1896 all Froebelian material [...], including a harmonium that, for a long time, served for singing lessons and sung marches” (NOSSO ESFORÇO, 1949, p. 2). From opening to mid 1926, the Caetano de Campos Kindergarten adopted “[...] the Froebel method, and the games that make up the ‘gifts’”. Subsequently, the Froebelian games, being applied in several ways, were being understood as “[...] material of appreciable value, and from which almost all other methods originate” (NOSSO ESFORÇO, 1949, p. 2).

In this sense, the ways of teaching and educating at the Jardim da Infância Caetano de Campos are exposed in the Magazine both in relation to daily activities (singing, greeting, entering, recess, leaving etc.) as well as formal activities in view of language exercises, of gifts and occupations, of Froebelian geometric and mathematical notions. The organization of the periods and space itself already included a formality imbued with educational intent, which expresses the republican ideal of education, endorsed by Rui Barbosa (1882), based on children’s intellectual, physical and moral development (^{NASCIMENTO, 1997}).

All activities in Kindergarten would be demarcated by songs and marches which, besides being linked to the formation of habits and moral and corporal values, would regulate the behaviors of teachers and children during the execution of tasks. These formal attitudes would contribute to assist “[...] the construction of the relevance of a social group organized based on specific rules” (KUHLMANN Jr., 2010, p. 122). These rules would be dictated by the ways in which the institution performed the entrance, the queues accompanied by singing, rest, recreation, thoughts, merits, the various preparations from one activity to the next, etc., actions repeated daily and constantly.

The modes of application of the program and schedule of the Kindergarten established, thus, a certain “regularity” to the actions of children and teachers, materializing through “[...] constant ritualization of activities”; considering that:

The songs and body practices help to schedule different times, indicate the beginning and end of activities. In addition to them, several other resources are used in the organization of daily life: activities are commanded with signs; guessing games are made to define who will be the head of the room or helper of the day; are selected one helper to distribute the material, and one commander of the march and the children's line (KUHLMANN Jr., 2010, p. 123).

These ways of teaching and educating regarding social habits and behaviors are present in several articles of the Magazine. Through the performance of songs, hymns, marches and movement games, children would learn a “symbolic meaning”, in which the music, the gardener gestures and infantile body expressions would constitute “[...] the mark of being a member of the group [...]”, that would be realized by “[...] knowledge and mastery of these acts” (KUHLMANN Jr., 2010, p. 123).

In this sense, the Kindergarten had a repertoire of Froebelian songs and games, to be developed during all daily activities; like the “Farewell song”, exposed below:

Through songs, marches, games and rhythmic games, oral language would permeate all times of the Kindergarden, not being restricted to the lessons taught by the poet Zalina Rolim. Through formal language exercises, though, children’s minds, hearts and hands would be systematically improved - foundation of modern education.

The subjects to be worked with the children in the so-called “language exercises” should be done through “children’s conversations” and “very short and simple stories” (^{VARELLA, 1896}, p. 20). The conversations would correspond to the presentation and exploration of themes articulated to the children’s experiences, but, also, to school content from natural, moral and civic sciences.

In these language lessons, the gardeners should present, initially, an object or a corresponding representation, in order to arouse children's curiosity, and, furthermore, the “harvesting” of children’s impressions on the theme.

In the “Fruit Lesson”, published by the poet and assistant director Zalina Rolim, the author provides a “good conversation pattern”:

Before socializing this conversation model, Zalina Rolim offers an “explanation” of how to teach and educate with this language exercise. She warns that, before the lesson, “[...] it would be convenient if the teacher had more than an apple: a pear, a peach, plums, grapes etc., to show it to the children”. And reiterates: “The best would be a branch with fruits and flowers, or a colorful drawing” (^{ROLIM, 1896}, p. 45).

Consistent with the Froebelian orientation that early childhood education privileges the presentation of the “whole”, the exact pronunciation of the “name” and the appropriate stimulus to the senses (^{FROEBEL, 1897}), Zalina Rolim recommends that the teacher articulate the conversation with the children's visual, tactile and olfactory senses; advising that the gardener should give, first, “[...] the name of the fruits and ask questions about its colors”, as well as “[...] encourage children to distinguish them by touch [...]”; drawing their “[...] attention to smell, taste etc.” (^{ROLIM, 1896}, p. 45). In addition to these recommendations, she warns that it would be convenient “[...] a series of drawings showing the gradually developed apple” (ROLIM, 1896, p. 46).

In Kindergarten, children’s conversations should include a “History for the previous lesson”. The notions already learned from the “Fruits” lesson would be expanded with the narrative of a “short story”, which would contribute to arouse children’s interest and curiosity, fantasy, the taste for beauty; and, above all, it would bring a moral utility, whose meaning of the content would not be up to the teacher’s deduction, although “suggestion” was allowed. Thus, the “Fruits” lesson would be continued with the story “The apple sleep”, translated by the poet, from the book In the child’s world, by Emilie Poulsson.

The educator Zalina Rolim was active in the literary part of the programming of the Kindergarten. This teacher was responsible for adapting, translating and also creating songs, short stories, toys and children's games. Regarding the “short story”, the master of the language lessons translated and published the article “From the tale and the art of telling”, from the book Frederico Froebel ed il suo sistema de educazione (ROSA, 1896). From that source, Zalina Rolim reflected the Froebelian principles about the short story being an “effective means of education”. Through the narrative pathways, the educator would develop “[...] the most beautiful feelings, nobler, more delicate and that leave in the children's minds the vivid memory of when they perform with pleasure”. The effects produced by a “good story”, in this sense, would be “[...] large and refer mostly to moral education [...]”, considering the expressions internalize “[...] indelible in the soul, have a suggestive character and stimulate the imitation of beauty and good” (ROSA, 1897, p. 87-88).

In addition to the Froebelian idea that tales offer good incentives for children’s moralization, Zalina Rolim, through reading Amélia de ^{Rosa, reflects the principle established by Froebel (1897}) that the narratives are articulated to nearby children’s experiences, including tales about domestic animals, which would be the “[...] first companions of children’s toys, attracting children with their lively and agile movements” (^{ROSA, 1897}, p. 88). Taken from real life, the stories should therefore “[...] be adapted to the special nature of children, seeking to flood their knowledge and sharpen their observation” (ROSA, 1897, p. 88).

The work of Carlos ^{Monarcha (2001}) highlights the repercussion of the Revista do Jardim da Infância in São Paulo society. Among the sources made available by this education historian, there is a text by Antônio D’Ávila, in which “[...] observed the stiffening of the kindergarten organization according to ‘^{Froebel processes’” (MONARCHA, 2001}, p. 91). In this writing, the intellectual states:

The Jardim da Infância brought to São Paulo by the industrious hands of Gabriel Prestes, [...] it arrived here with the rigid Froebelian character. There was a Bible - The Paradise of childhood [...], from whose pages our programs, [...] our lessons of gifts and occupations sprang up. It was a solid piece, along the lines of Froebel's geometric mathematical spirit, which gave Kindergarten a rigid, orthodox stamp of principles and standards. For more than twenty years it was a pure Froebelian Garden, framed in the didactics of gifts and occupations (D’ÁVILA, 1972, apud ^{MONARCHA, 2001}, p. 91, emphasis added).

Antônio D’Ávila’s considerations (1972) make sense if the ways of teaching and educating with Froebelian gifts are observed. In the article “Practical exercises in the game of the ball: first gift”, the inspector Maria Ernestina offers complete systematized classes with the 6 (six) colored balls of the first Froebelian gift.

For the preparation of the lessons, the teacher should organize the children in a circle, and, at the “sign given by the teacher”, the “smaller” child in the group would do “[...] the distribution from hand to hand until the last of the class" (^{VARELLA, 1896}, p. 261). This process of “circulation of balls” would be accompanied by “Music 16”, which is part of the catalog of translated songs from Kindergarten:

After this preparation, the gardener should encourage the children to extend their right hands already bearing their balls. After the procedure was done, the master would ask them what they could do with the toy, obtaining the possible answers: “My ball can jump”. “This ball can fall”. “My ball can move” (^{VARELLA, 1896}, p. 262).

Once some answers were obtained, the educator would then encourage the children to “roll” their balls, and this activity was accompanied by the singing of a small square. Subsequently, he would guide the children to raise their hands, through the following “orders”:

This exercise would promote the distinction of the right and left hand, so that the movements were performed with grace and agility. This orientation is compatible with the ways of teaching and educating suggested by Edward Wiebé, in the manual The paradise of childhood (1869), which was translated by Gabriel Prestes. In the words of Wiebé:

This first occupation aims to teach children to distinguish between right and left and to give their own name to the various colors. It is also ready to develop the vocal organ and to instruct them in the principles of politeness (^{WIEBÉ, 1896}, p. 75).

Consistent with the prescriptions of the Gardeners’ Guide, Maria Ernestina describes several types of employment related to the exploitation of marbles. Activities with the first Froebelian gift should be guided by “comparison exercises”, which would allow children to recognize spherical objects in relation to color, shape and movement, as well as differentiation of colors.

Regarding the spherical shape, it was necessary to compare it with fruits and objects significant to children’s life, so that the children reached conclusions such as: “My ball is round like an apple”. “This little ball is round like an orange” (^{VARELLA, 1896}, p. 265, emphasis added). Therefore, children should be encouraged to replace the possessive pronoun “mine” with the demonstrative “this”.

After the replacement, the gardener should ask: “Who likes the ball?” If the answers are affirmative, the teacher and the children would chant “Music 13”, which also integrates the repertoire of songs from Kindergarten. Once some syntheses were achieved, the children should also pronounce the word corresponding to the shape, replacing the word “round” with “spherical” (^{VARELLA, 1896}, p. 266).

After the gradual investigation of the properties of the first gift, the inspector suggests creating a story to be developed in the form of “dialogues”, preparing children for the “farewell to the balls”, as well as opening the introduction of the second Froebelian gift: the sphere, the cylinder and the cube. In this story, the gardener should call “six girls” and deliver a colored ball to each one; warning them to speak as if they were their balls, when they were going to “say goodbye to their friends”. The children should then leave the room and return to the class dramatizing the lines; as can be read in the textual fragment exposed below:

And so, conversational games would continue until the sixth ball, in an analogous process of relations, was kept in the box, and especially in the child's heart and mind.

According to Froebel, “[...] the starting point of human development and, therefore, of the child's development, is the heart and emotions” (^{FROEBEL, 1897}, p. 42). Training aimed at objective action and subjective thinking, however, would continue inseparably and constantly from the sentimental faculties; considering that “[...] both have their roots in the emotional nature” (FROEBEL, 1897, p. 42). The child’s physical and spiritual activity, in this sense, should be nourished by observation exercises mediated by “speech games”, especially when their members were already strengthened and their ability to speak could “[...] enter into a kind of talk to your educator” (FROEBEL, 1897, p. 47).

For Froebel, the child is naturally observant. From the first manifestations, apprehends the world that is close to him, realizing “[...] the bird, the bird in the cage, the sparrow in the window [...]” (^{FROEBEL, 1897}, p. 47). According to the perceptive faculty, the child develops the capacity to turn an inanimate object into an animated object, attributing qualities to them through the representative faculty. In this sense, conversation games with balls would enable children to exercise their fantasy and imagination. By believing that the ball represents a bird or a chicken, the child takes a new step towards creative activity, expanding thinking through comparative relationships; like those demonstrated by Froebel:

‘See how the bird flies, now here, now there!’ Now, the bouncing ball can become a kitten: ‘Here comes the kitten [...]’. Now, a dog: ‘Oops, now the dog goes over the fence’. Now the ball becomes a chicken: ‘Tip, tap, tap, the chicken comes running’. Now, the rooster: ‘Tap, tap, tap, the rooster takes the corn’ (^{FROEBEL, 1897}, p. 47).

Considered in this way, the properties related to the ball (movement, lightness, jump, presence, absence, return, etc.) would give rise to several significant representations of children’s symbolic development. In this perspective, the games with the balls should be performed “[...] in part to other objects - for example, an apple, a scarf, [...] a flower etc.” (^{FROEBEL, 1897}, p. 51). These objects should be brought to the child through various exercises, although the ball should continue to be conceived as “[...] the object of union and explanation, and, therefore, the true means of connection and understanding, [...] to connect the child with their educators and neighbors” (FROEBEL, 1897, p. 51).

Final considerations

For intellectual Antônio D’Ávila, the Children’s garden of Caetano de Campos would have lost much of the “spirit of Froebel”, leaving the standardization of stereotyped actions, in which the same attitudes, questions and answers would be observed; as well as “[...] the same gifts taken from equal boxes, the cube taken from the left hand, [...] the sphere with the right, all uniform, mechanized, rigid, according to guiding manuals” (D’ÁVILA, 1972, apud ^{MONARCHA, 2001}, p. 92).

However, it is considered that the uniformity and the excess of directivity in the ways of teaching and educating in Kindergarten, then exposed in the Revista do Jardim da Infância (1896, 1897), found support in Froebel. His active pedagogy has developed highly prescriptive and directive. The spontaneity and freedom of children’s activities should be systematically regulated by the role of the educator, who would be able to predict and order the children's behavior. Says Froebel, in The education of man (2001): “Active education, the one that orders and prescribes, has, in any case, only one of two meanings: or to suggest clear and vivid thoughts, the true idea, founded on itself; or offer something that serves as an example and model” (^{FROEBEL, 2001}, p. 27). And it continues on the following pages:

What spiritual wealth, what freshness of soul, what fullness of inner and outer life the child will enjoy - who has been properly educated, truly directed - when it comes to the time when childhood ends to reach adolescence (^{FROEBEL, 2001}, p. 63).

Understood thus, if the São Paulo school model collaborated to institutionalize childhood, through devices of a school form and socialization (^{VINCENT; LAHIRE; THIN, 2001}), these attributes are already present in the conceptual and didactic bases of Froebelian pedagogy. The gardeners’ “box of utensils” thus reflects the nature of teacher training at Escola Normal Caetano de Campos, which, between centuries, conceived of pedagogy as “the art of teaching”. The appropriations made by the gardeners who authored the froebelian “ABC of things” would not, therefore, present great distances from the principles and practical applications of Kindergarten means of employment, education and instruction (^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

This model of childhood education in São Paulo would, however, show signs of corrosion in the middle of 1923, when Professor Alice Meirelles Reis would have considered, after attending Professor Lourenço Filho’s classes, “[...] to introduce in its class the reform brought by Escola Nova, which demanded respect for the freedom of action and the interest of the child” (NOSSO ESFORÇO, 1946, p. 2).

Based on the teacher’s innovations, there would have been, in Kindergarten, the beginning of a process of adaptations and modifications to the Froebelian developmental methodology. At this point, modern pedagogy had its hegemony questioned by the pedagogy of New School; offering materiality to a new model of teacher training, based on “authorized knowledge” linked to experimental research, based on Educational Sciences. Model identified by ^{Carvalho (2000}) as that of “Library Science”.

According to ^{Carvalho (2000}, p. 111), the pedagogical models that have marked out, since the nineteenth century, the institutionalization process of school in Brazil “[...] had exhausted its capacity to standardize teaching practices”. This “corrosion process” would be marked by political, social and economic motivations that constituted "[...] the political and pedagogical platforms of the movement that Jorge Nagle [...] called enthusiasm for education and pedagogical optimism” (^{CARVALHO, 2000}, p. 111, emphasis added).

The reformers of the Brazilian New School, since the 1920s, appropriating the theoretical and didactic formulations of the American philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859-1952), started to question the model of formation of pedagogy as an art of teaching, oriented in the intuitive teaching method and in the educative centrality of the teacher; warning that the child, to whom the training processes were destined, should, in fact, be the center of educational activity. Conceptions about child activity would be redefined. From the direction of intuition, the emphasis will be on free and creative activities from early childhood, in a psychologically and pedagogically organized school environment. It would no longer be a matter of teaching and educating solely by awakening the senses, but of promoting the quality of experiences (^{FERNANDES, 2018}).

In this perspective, integrating the educational proposals from the early 20th century, numerous books of a pedagogical nature were elaborated and disseminated, in order to train the young teachers of Brazilian kindergartens in the molds of the renewing spirit of education, highlighting publications that received direct support from reformist educators, including Professor Lourenço Filho, as well as from agencies linked to the Ministry of Education, such as the National Institute of Pedagogical Studies (Instituto Nacional de Estudos Pedagógicos - INEP) and the Brazilian-American Elementary Education Assistance Program (Programa de Assistência Brasileiro-Americana de Ensino Elementar - PABAEE), which, as highlighted by ^{Abreu and Eiterer (2008}), they constituted “field” institutions to form the pedagogical-curricular bases of education in Brazil.

However, unlike the spread of specialized manuals and magazines of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, whose prescription of models was linked to the pedagogy of the “utensil box”, in which the provision of good teaching patterns would guarantee the organization and In the effectiveness of the republican school form, the pedagogical scholastic literature would be the result of a new conception of pedagogy, and, as such, it would be elaborated through other rules. It is, therefore, as ^{Carvalho (2000}) reflected, to train educators through a new pedagogical model, then guided by “authorized knowledge”.

However, this constitutes another chapter in the pedagogical literature aimed at teacher training and practice in Brazilian children's schools, which was reflected by ^{Fernandes (2018}) in his doctoral thesis, whose fundamentals and historical developments should be discussed in another communication.