ABSTRACT
Friedrich Wilhelm Froebel was born in Oberweissbach, Thuringia on 21 April 1782. His mother died when Friedrich was 9 months old. His father, a Lutheran minister, remarried. In 1805, with a small inheritance from his uncle, the 23-year-old Froebel went to Frankfurt to study architecture, but instead began his career as an educator. Froebel deeply admired Pestalozzi and was particularly fascinated by the boys' play and the nature walks that Pestalozzi conducted. In 1812 he moved to Berlin to study natural history and mineralogy with Professor Weiss, who convinced Froebel that underlying all life was one law, which was the basis for all development. Froebel developed ten gifts, small manipulative materials such as a series of six coloured yarn balls, wooden balls, cubes, brick-shaped blocks, wooden tablets with different shapes, lines, and others. Froebel was also strongly influenced by philosophers of his time, particularly Hegel, Schelling, Fichte and Schiller.
