I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. This book is great and I definitely need to use the bibliography at the end to look more into Froebel and his work/theories in the future, especially on elements like mental stimulation in infants. I found having the information broken up into the foundations, at home and at school to contextualise the theory in a more direct way, especially with things like the role of sports being in the school section and building character at home. I also found the preface and who was Froebel bits right at the beginning of the book cool as it's always interesting to learn a little bit about the person behind critical theories. However, I did find that the book places quite a lot of emphasis on God and religion throughout which I understand was a product of its time but is a little christian-centric for today’s more secular society.

I received an advance reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

Where Children Grow is a book of proverbs and wisdom by the founder of Kindergarten; Friedrich Froebel. Friedrich founded kindergarten in the 19th century, so much of his teaching and writings are different from present times, and I found this very interesting to read about. Mostly from a Christian perspective, he had much wisdom about children and child development, and this bleeds through the pages. If you have an interest in education, children, childcare, and child development, I highly recommend this book - you'll definitely take away something from it.

Froebel invented kindergarten and, for his time, was extremely revolutionary in his approach to learning. As a teacher and parent I was keen to read this and I found the introduction by Mathis very interesting. I enjoyed reading about how Froebel worked and what he did in his lifetime very much. The book then uses excerpts of Froebel's own words; it's here I lost my way a little. Some of the quotes and ideas were extremely thought provoking and echo sentiment I see in my practice as an EYFS teacher, others were harder to relate to. Not just due to how they were expressed, as Mathis says we must grant some pardon to ideas of his time that now would be sexist or limiting, but also because there is much relation to God. Teaching in a secular school, this felt very jarring with my own practice - however, as a parent, I could marvel in some ideas a little more.
An interesting read if you're interested in Kindergarten, Montessori or Steiner education, and it's a short read!