The Goldammer Gift or 5B: from ages 8 to 13 years; or children in the Connecting School and Academy.
When Friedrich Froebel passed away in 1852, he left behind notes on expanding his Building Gifts. Several of his followers went on to develop these as in the previous Gift Six. One of his staunchest followers and the woman who is credited for popularizing Froebel's kindergarten during his lifetime and for many years after after was the Baroness Marenholtz-Bulow. The Baroness went on to train many teachers both men and women after Froebel's death. One of these men was Hermann Goldammer.
Hermann Goldammer worked for several years with Froebel's notes to create another building gift that would introduce the child to the curved line of the Gift Two cylinder. What he came up with was Gift 5B. The numbering system is flawed in many ways, so we shall refer to it as the Goldammer Gift. This Gift has as many supporters as it has people who dislike the Gift. Regardless of your personal thoughts, children need to be introduced to curved lines. This can be achieved by the next three Gifts.
The Goldammer Gift begins in true Froebelian fashion of what the child has seen and played with before; Gifts Two, Three and Five are represented. As the child moves from the known to the unknown, new shapes are introduced. The Goldammer Gift includes the divided cylinder and cubes that have a quarter of a cylinder removed. This introduces the Forms of Knowledge of concave, convex, and semi-circles. Forms of Life are expressed with round columns and arches leading a child to the study of Roman and Middle Eastern architecture. Forms of Beauty showing undulating curves and rosettes and representing Greek art can be created.
After learning the intricacies of this Gift and free building in all three Forms, an in depth study can be taken up, where historic buildings are built, replicas of artistic forms with the Occupations are created, and lesson books are written and illustrated and read, along with compatible stories for a complete unit study.