This is the first comprehensive book about the original kindergarten, a revolutionary educational program invented in the 1830s by charismatic German educator Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) that grew to become a familiar institution throughout the world by the end of the 19th century. Using extraordinary visual material, Inventing Kindergarten reconstructs the origins of the most successful system ever devised for teaching young children about art, design, mathematics, and natural history.Kindergarten--a coinage of Froebels combining the German words for children and garden--involved not only singing, dancing, nature study, and storytelling, but also play with the so-called Froebel gifts. This series of 20 educational toys, which included building blocks, parquetry tiles, origami papers, modeling clay, sewing kits, and other design projects, became wildly popular a century ago.Architect and artist Norman Brosterman tells the story of Froebel`s life, explains his goals and educational philosophy, and describes each of the gifts, illustrating them all. Examples of art by 19th-century kindergarten teachers and children and diagrams from long-forgotten kindergarten textbooks are also reproduced. Additionally, Brosterman shows how this immensely influential educational program may have affected the course of art history by popularizing modern concepts of geometric abstraction.