kindergarten
- a school or class for young children between the ages of four and six years.
Origin of kindergarten
Examples from the Web for kindergarten
Contemporary Examples
Now, some of the kindergarten children were standing straight as soldiers in a line at the door of their first-floor classroom.
Many cases were kindergarten age, and EV-68 accounted for more than 80 percent of cases.
He was able to go to the beach, to the park, and even to his kindergarten graduation.
From kindergarten through their senior years, kids spend much of their waking life in school.
There is a set of booster vaccines at about kindergarten age, with a little bit of variation from practice to practice.
Historical Examples
It was no kindergarten way of learning to drive four-in-hand.
A Woman TenderfootGrace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
My papa is a doctor, and my mamma teaches a Kindergarten school.
This same Morning-glory is the subject of one of the kindergarten songs.
Lotus BudsAmy Carmichael
Seela's joy is to be considered old and allowed to go to the kindergarten.
Lotus BudsAmy Carmichael
One day in deep depression of spirits the Coney arrived at the kindergarten.
Lotus BudsAmy Carmichael
kindergarten
- a class or small school for young children, usually between the ages of four and six to prepare them for primary educationOften shortened to (in Australia and New Zealand): kinder, kindy, kindie
Word Origin
Word Origin and History for kindergarten
n.
1852, from German, literally "children's garden," from Kinder "children" (plural of Kind "child;" see kin (n.)) + Garten "garden" (see yard (n.1)). Coined 1840 by German educator Friedrich Fröbel (1782-1852) in reference to his method of developing intelligence in young children.
Kindergarten means a garden of children, and Froebel, the inventor of it, or rather, as he would prefer to express it, the discoverer of the method of Nature, meant to symbolize by the name the spirit and plan of treatment. How does the gardener treat his plants? He studies their individual natures, and puts them into such circumstances of soil and atmosphere as enable them to grow, flower, and bring forth fruit,-- also to renew their manifestation year after year. [Mann, Horace, and Elizabeth P. Peabody, "Moral Culture of Infancy and Kindergarten Guide," Boston, 1863]
The first one in England was established 1850 by Johannes Ronge, German Catholic priest; in America, 1868, by Elizabeth Peabody of Boston, Mass. Taken into English untranslated, whereas other nations that borrowed the institution nativized the name (cf. Danish börnehave, Modern Hebrew gan yeladim, literally "garden of children"). Sometimes partially anglicized as kindergarden (attested by 1879).