Stick Anchoring Essay

Stick Laying
The Tenth Gift advances children's thinking another step from the concrete toward the abstract. Round, smooth wood sticks with diameters of ⅛ inch, but sometimes one-quarter inch square metal or wood rods depict the straight edges of solids − such as, the cubes and oblongs found in Gifts 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. The square and triangular tiles of Gift 7 are regarded as faces of the cube, and other pyramid structures, used to create flat pictures. The Connected Slats of Gift 8 are intermediate to planes and lines, thereby giving children the ability to "draw" outlines of angles and figures, while maintaining features of planes. The sticks go a step further to provide children with exceptional opportunities to explore objects by "sketching" their outlines with embodied

The Ring represents the periphery of The Ball (Gift 1); and periphery of the Sphere and edges of the Cylinder (Gift 2), in striking contrast to the Stick (Gift 10), which stands in relation to the edges of the Cube and Rectangular Prism (Gifts 2, 3, 5 and 6) and Parquet Tiles (Gift 7).
The Thread
The Twelfth Gift, the Thread, encompasses a pliable line, which grows out of the preceding Gifts capable of a different kind of manipulation. When the ends of a thread are tied together, a circle forms, which unlike the rigid shapes of the metal rings, the thread is a soft, colorful cotton or wool line capable of being changed into diverse forms. A red-colored thread is prepared by tightly knotting the ends of an eighteen-inch length, and then saturated with water, thus growing pliable and acquiring the property of shaping readily into various forms. When taken from the water the saturated thread is placed on a damp slate, which has lines forming a network of squares on its