Finger plays for nursery and kindergarten — Story, Setting & Ideas

From Field to Table: Sequential Work in Three Plays

Three consecutive plays—"How the Corn Grew," "The Mill," and "Making Bread"—trace a single foodstuff from planting to consumption, each building on the previous step. "How the Corn Grew" opens with a field "all hard and brown and bare" and proceeds through ploughing, harrowing, planting, rain, crows, harvest, and the song of "Harvest Home." "The Mill" personifies a river that "went singing day by day" until it reaches a mill-dam, then turns a wheel that grinds corn "to golden meal" and wheat "to flour." "Making Bread" shows the mother sifting flour "white as snow," adding yeast, kneading, and baking. The sequence reinforces cause-and-effect and the labor behind a common food, a pattern that aligns with Froebel’s idea that imitating work leads to understanding its meaning.

Sound and Motion: The Role of Music and Rhythm

Each finger play is set to music composed by Cornelia C. Roeske, with the digital edition providing MIDI, PDF, and MusicXML files. The verses use consistent meter and rhyme—for example, "A merry little river / Went singing day by day"—which makes them easy to chant or sing while performing the gestures. Poulsson notes that some plays suit babies as young as ten months, who "pound and clap gleefully," while older children enjoy more complex ones like "The Caterpillar." The combination of sung words, hand movements, and narrative sequence creates a multisensory experience that reinforces vocabulary and story structure. The music is not merely decorative; it sets the tempo for the motions and helps children anticipate the next action.

Illustration as Instruction: Bridgman’s Visual Cues

L.J. Bridgman’s illustrations are integral to the book’s design, as Poulsson urges readers to study them for guidance on the hand motions. The preface mentions that the pictures are "charming and expressive," and the table of contents notes that the image for "The Lambs" is missing in the original, indicating that each play had a dedicated illustration. The digital edition advises viewing the pictures at "normal or medium text size" for best effect. These images likely show the exact finger positions for each verse, serving as a visual script. By linking the abstract words to concrete visual and kinesthetic actions, the illustrations help bridge the gap between hearing a story and physically enacting it, a method consistent with Froebel’s emphasis on learning through imitation.

Readers may find it useful to first review the illustrations and music for a play before attempting the motions with a child. The plays vary in complexity, so starting with simpler ones like "All for Baby" can build confidence. The sequential grouping of "How the Corn Grew," "The Mill," and "Making Bread" offers a natural unit for exploring how food reaches the table. Because the excerpts do not include all eighteen plays, the full range of themes—such as animals, nature, and daily tasks—remains to be discovered in the complete text.

Holding Poulsson’s little finger plays, I remembered how gently it taught tiny hands to shape a story. It made me think of that other quiet volume, Study of Child Life — Story, Setting & Ideas, which seems to sit beside it on a shelf, sharing the same patient breath—each one trusting a child’s day to unfold slowly, like a rhyme half-remembered.