Out of the ideas of Pestalozzi and Froebel, in the early 1900s Maria Montessorideveloped her method, depending on practical tasks such as personal care andcare for the environment, putting independence at the centre of the curriculum.

a walk one day in the Thuringian hills, and meaning ‘children’s garden’ or‘garden of children’, the word ‘kindergarten’ is now used the world over todescribe preschool or nursery education.

Specifically, Froebel wanted children to play with educational toys, which was a fairly unusual notion in the early 1800s.

Buckminster Fuller

Buckminster Fuller developed his geodesic dome as a child in the Kindergarten.

Kindergarten itself is a German invention, and the first kindergartens opened in the United States were by German immigrants. They adopted the ideas of educational theorist Friedrich Froebel, who opened the first kindergarten in the world in 1837 in Blankenburg, Germany.