Page:American Journal of Psychology Volume 21.djvu/127

Rh else without any feeling of incompleteness whatever. On the other hand not a few children of similar age go far towards completing the whole surroundings; not only representing all parts of the house in a rude way, including bay windows, piazzas, and perhaps a tower, but even completing the yard with fence around it and gate leading to the road. This gate is frequently rather elaborate with two blocks for posts and another on top of these; or else an arch is built over the gateway. Some extend this so as to represent a whole farm, or even a rural community, or village. The farm includes usually a barn with stable and horses in it, henhouse, pigpen, fences, fields, with cows in some of them. The village consists of store, post office, church, shops and streets.

Several interesting things are revealed by this building. In the first place the vagueness of children's ideas is beautifully shown here. They have the crudest notions of even the most familiar objects. Of course some allowance must be made for their inability to execute and embody their ideas in objective form. But their incomplete notion of objects is shown by the fact that they often emphasize one or the other part of an object to the exclusion of other perhaps more important parts, and still consider it complete; for example, the chimney, stair steps, or steeple is called a house or church; a well may be built on top of the ground with blocks and offer no difficulty whatever.

Children rarely undertake to produce a copy of their own house or other buildings with which they are familiar. Only a very few cases are reported in which this was attempted. The children seem to have vague conceptions of their own, the expression of which is more satisfying to them than the making of a copy of one they are acquainted with. The house which they build is sometimes called a mansion, or castle, of which they have heard some story or fairy tale. It may be one which they are going to have when they grow up. It thus seems that the child can more readily represent a type of any familiar object than he can produce a copy of it.

Other forms of construction are towers, pyramids, columns, and steeples. These were mentioned in about 75 per cent, of the reports. The chief aim is to build them as high as possible, the higher the more delighted is the builder. The blocks are either all used in this building or else piled up until the tower falls. The falling of the tower is enjoyed very much and often it is pushed over with great pleasure. These towers are built in various ways; sometimes two blocks are set upright and a third placed across the top, and others placed similarly on top of these. Others pile them in rectangular columns with square bases or in the form of a pyramid. The steeple of the church