Four ways of putting materials in a young child's hands

In the earliest years, this account says, a child still has little prior knowledge, and comes to know a new thing by touching it, smelling it, and using the senses again and again. Teaching has to follow that way of working. Materials, as defined here, are whatever a teacher uses toward the care and teaching of a young child: not only machines for seeing and hearing, but every tool and aid for an activity, whether the teacher made it or bought it. Four thinkers are then compared.

Pestalozzi is introduced as a pioneer of modern whole-person education, writing out of a time of revolution, war, and poor and orphaned children he hoped to help out of economic hardship. His three-fold education — head (the intellect), heart (the moral force), and hand (skill) — aimed at raising a complete person. Those capacities, he thought, already lie inside a person and unfold in sequence. Materials should lead to a more intuitive grasp, and should involve the body, but the child's own autonomy matters most; recognition should not be forced. The teacher should keep intentional intervention low, while still arranging stages of difficulty.

Froebel, in The Education of Man (1826), is described as a pioneer of watching children in order to learn who they are and what they need. Observation, especially of a child's spontaneous play, is where a teaching principle is found. Materials matter less in themselves than the play they make possible, and that play, he believed, can draw out almost every aspect of development. He designed his own gifts — ball, cube, cylinder — and stressed that they be used in an age-appropriate, staged way, so that a child might come, through creation, to basic principles of shape, color, number, point, line, plane, and form. Like Pestalozzi, he wanted the child to act with the materials spontaneously.

Montessori, Malaguzzi, a written record, and the 2019 Nuri curriculum

Montessori, through her own observation, held that a young child is not a miniature adult, and has a unique character. Like Froebel, she watched inner change as it showed itself in outer behavior. A 1973 account by Lillard is cited for the claim that a child has a nature able to create from inborn capacity, a view treated here as a basis of modern child-centered thought. She wanted materials matched to each developmental stage, and believed that a child already has the skill to meet the needs of that stage with those materials. She designed her own: exercises of practical life, materials for the five senses, materials for number, and materials for language — a spread the writer treats as distinctive.

Malaguzzi was sure that children are born with potential and competence, a universal trait wherever, and in whatever culture, they are born. Like the others, he wanted children to compose and lead their own learning and play. Unlike those who stressed a fixed sequence, he would let the pace and the direction of the materials differ with each child, and would not plan the activity in advance, leaving it to the child's own judgment. The materials should still allow sensory and bodily work, and, besides that, interaction with other children.

A written record is recommended when new materials are being made. A child who spends long days in a kindergarten is shaped by the setting, which should vary with temperament and preference, remain safe, and not lean into a single domain. Recording, here, means watching and listening, then writing down what a child thinks and does. It helps a teacher see the present interaction, judge the pace and the stage, notice a limit, and plan later materials more accurately, including when interest is missing. The advice is to observe closely, to listen to the child's own impression, and to record particular moments that serve the purpose, rather than everything.

In December 2017 the Ministry of Education published a plan for innovating early education, as part of a national task and a concern for an equal starting line, and named a reorganization around the child and around play. In July 2019 the 2019 revised Nuri curriculum was notified, as the common national curriculum for children aged three to five in kindergartens and daycare centers, and it was put into force from March 2020. A newly added character section defines it as that common national course, links its structure to the 2015 revised elementary and secondary curriculum, and stresses a child-centered and play-centered approach. Those are the official dates given for the plan, the notification, and the start of the curriculum.

Sources

1. a comparison of Pestalozzi, Froebel — with The Education of Man dated 1826 — Montessori, with a 1973 citation, and Malaguzzi on teaching materials for young children, together with a case for keeping a written record, and Korea's 2019 revised Nuri curriculum, notified in July 2019 and in force from March 2020.

Last updated: 14 November 2026