Her German-language kindergarten impressed Elizabeth Peabody, who opened the first American English-language kindergarten in Boston in 1860. In the United States Margarethe Schurz founded the first kindergarten in Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1856. The kindergarten was much more influential in the United States and in the northern part of Europe. This also characterizes the present-day écoles maternelles. The French opted for an eclectic method, where schoolwork was combined with kindergarten activities. There was a similar development in France, when the salles d'asiles of the 1830s were replaced by the first infant schools fifty years later.

Ultimately, the kindergarten supplemented and transformed but did not replace other modes of early childhood education in Britain. By 1890 the kindergarten had been incorporated into some publicly funded British schools but did not achieve universal success, and between 1900 and World War I, reformers turned their attention to private kindergartens ('free kindergartens') for the poor, which charged little or no tuition. Women helped to set up private kindergartens for middle-class Britons between 18. Johannes and Bertha Ronge, who left Germany after the revolutions of 1848, took Froebel's ideas to England and founded a kindergarten in London in 1851. After 1860, the kindergarten also returned to Germany, where today it serves children aged three to six. Because of Froebel's unorthodox ideas, the Prussian government banned the kindergarten in 1851, but the kindergarten idea spread not only to other European countries but also to North America, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. He also established a training school for women, whom he saw as the ideal educators of young children. In 1837 Froebel opened the first kindergarten in Blankenburg, Germany. He advocated the use of 'gifts' (or materials, largely geometric) and 'occupations' (or crafts), which the teacher taught the children to manipulate. During the 1830s and 1840s, Froebel made a case for the importance of music, nature study, stories, and play as well as symbolic ideas like children sitting together in the kindergarten circle. He built upon the ideas of J OHANN H EINRICH P ESTALOZZI, a Swiss follower of J EAN-J ACQUES R OUSSEAU's belief in the inherent goodness of children. The kindergarten was developed in the nineteenth century by F RIEDRICH F ROEBEL, a German reformer and educator.

A scene from an early kindergarten in New York City, 1879.

Kindergarten age